My Encounter with an Academy Award Nominee: Discussing The Twilight Saga New Moon soundtrack with composer Alexandre Desplat!

It’s not every day that you get an opportunity to speak with an Academy Award nominee, let alone one who recently was the recipient of two World Soundtrack Awards. But for all his accolades, French film music composer Alexandre Desplat is a true artist, devoted wholly to his craft. If he is publicly acknowledged for his work, so be it. He accepts it humbly, and keeps his head buried in whatever project he undertakes.

With the release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, however, Desplat may find himself unintentionally metamorphosing from workhorse to rock star. Having delivered a score that ignites imagination and passion from its listeners, surely many more honors are in the cards.

He completed seven scores this year (Chéri, Coco avant Chanel, Un prophète, L'armée du crime, Julie & Julia, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the aforementioned New Moon) and he’s already got three in production for 2010…so far. How can someone possibly concentrate on such a work load when he is consistently offered awards?

It is here where our conversation begins…

It’s funny; I thought I would get better at it when I go up on stage to grab whatever award it is. But as I look out into the audience, I see people like Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Robert DeNiro, and Charlize Theron, I get so impressed and I ask myself, “What am I doing here???” I’m very humbled by it and very happy at the same time.

Do they affect you as a creative energy and the projects you take on?

The main thing there is to be inspired by film. That’s what drives me; that’s what I like; that’s my life. The rest is just an accident. You get an award or you don’t get an award, who cares? But if you make a great film, it’s fantastic, and it’s the best thing you could do if you find a great relationship with a director. Of course, the great thing about awards is that your name becomes more exposed. But I think the body of work that’s behind you is most important. Because if I did bad work and provided bad music for movies, I’m not sure I would get another call.


Read the full interview here!

Halloween Horror Music Happenings – Soundtrack and Film Score reviews with bite!

For the month of October, I decided to start writing up extensive spotlights on a number of horror movies…well, some of them are horror, and some just have scary elements. Everybody does features pertaining to the best horror movies (or scariest, or goriest, or most shocking), but no one seems to give any attention to the music that, in many cases, is the actual backbone of the frightening atmosphere.

So, for every day this month, I am creating feature articles to give respects to some amazing soundtracks. Sure, some of the movies might not be the cream of the crop, but this is about the music, not the movies themselves. You would not believe how many bad movies are released every week that have great musical backdrops.

The factor that sets the horror genre apart is that most of the composers work either with unbelievably small budgets, or they have a very limited time frame in which to work. So it is even more incredible that they are able to produce quality product.

In addition to giving a little overview of the film and examining the soundtracks, I also have been coloring the features with excerpts from Roger Ebert’s reviews from when the films were originally released (because his work is more entertaining than it is legitimately critical), and I have also received some guest commentary from Cradle of Filth vocalist Dani Filth. I’ve also got some VERY special features to post in the coming weeks, so be forewarned!

So far, I have posted articles spotlighting Children of the Corn, Disney’s The Haunted Mansion, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Candyman, The Silence of the Lambs, The Lost Boys, Christine, and the recently released Trick ‘r Treat. You can join the fun every day here.

Enjoy!

My first interview with a Soundtrack composer, or How awesome it would be to be in San Diego between July 23-25

So, as many of you know, I've been a soundtrack / film score fiend for as long as I can remember. I collect scores (on CD and vinyl), and I used to do some soundtrack copywriting for Muze, before they were bought by Macrovision. That little void was what prompted me to pitch an idea to Examiner - to allow me to share my knowledge and passion for soundtracks with the masses via their site. Soon after, in addition to being Heavy Metal Examiner, I became Soundtracks Examiner.

It's been a rough road, because soundtracks are like the red-headed stepchild of the music industry - unless it's a Broadway musical, a Disney production, or Twilight, most people don't really care about soundtracks. It's definitely been an uphill battle to share the joys that film scores bring me.

However, today is a banner-day for me, as I have posted my first interview with a composer...and not just any ol' lacky from Media Ventures / Remote Control Productions (though they do seem to nab a lot of the high-profile movies these days). I was given the opportunity to spend some time with Battlestar Galactica / Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles / Eureka music-meister Bear McCreary.

Here's a taste:

On the subject of Battlestar Galactica, word is out that you’ve completed compiling the music for the Season 4 two-disc set. How did this project grow beyond the confines of one disc?

Fans have been bugging me for a two-disc album since the beginning of Season 4. I’ve honestly been fighting it. I wanted to compose a nice companion piece the ever-expanding BSG universe. I don’t like having filler on my soundtrack albums, so if a cue isn’t good enough for me to put it on CD, I don’t put it on for the sake of filling space. So I really didn’t think I could fill two CDs, but when I got to the end, I realized that the finale alone had over 60 minutes of scoring that I thought was really good. There was maybe 100 minutes of music in that episode, but there was about 65 minutes of it that was worth putting on CD. So it was then that I realized that we really did have to do a two-CD set to do the show justice. I mentioned it to La-La Land Records, and I believe their words to me were, “well, duh!”

Regarding your latest release, Caprica, it sounds to me more emotive and character-centric than the Battlestar scores, which are very atmospheric, encapsulating all the action and drama of the environment.

Well, Caprica has a much smaller cast, and that cast can essentially be divided into two families – The Adamas and the Graystones. So I wrote two themes, one for each family, and they serve as the thematic thread that ties the Caprica score together. Battlestar, as you mentioned, tends to be attached to arcs, subplots, and sometimes thematic ideas. There are also themes for every single character on the show, and there are at least 50 of those alone, not that they all get used all the time. So Caprica was a very different approach.

Check out the full monstrosity here!

Thanks!