by Merrill Barr:
When it comes to just about every motion picture medium, the most underappreciated element is always the score. Unless your name is John Williams, Hanz Zimmer or James Newton Howard you’re pretty much cast aside as a washed out musician who couldn’t sell any records or draw a crowd for a live show. But the facts of reality couldn’t be further from that pre-conceived notion.
This year’s New York Comic-Con featured a panel of lesser known composers by name but all of whom’s work you’ve heard: Dino Meneghin (Teen Wolf), Frederik Wiedmann (Green Lantern: The Animated Series), Jay Vincent (Lego: Ninjago), Kevin Manthei (Ultimate Spider-Man, Invader Zimm), Will Bates (Another Earth). These gentleman represented the unknown 99% of the composing industry, but you’d never know it by their work.
When asked what made them interested in composing versus other forms of music, Vincent stated that he enjoyed the challenge of trying to compose different tracks for each project. This is something that all the panelists agreed with. Including Menuhin and Bates who came from a musician background.
And when talking about their background, and if composing was something they always wanted, Bates stated that his endgame was always film composition — annihilating the “washed out” notion associated with most composers. From his early days of humming the entire score of Star Wars to his parents, composing was what Bates always wanted to do. Going so far as to score cheap commercials which he later learned was not the path to take, because the ad composing world and the film/tv/games composing world run parallel to each other and almost never come together.
For Manthei, when asked what he thought the biggest challenge was as a composer he said it was trying to make the ten different producing voices in the room come together for a single musical vision that the composer has to remove themselves from. Contrary to popular belief, like the rest of the filmmaking process, composing requires collaboration between the composer, director, producer, writer, etc…
As a composer, one of the hardest things to deal with are cryptic notes that they then have to decipher for the sake of the piece. One such note recalled by Menuhin featured the line “I want it to sound like the idea of rain.” What the composers learned from this process is that most of the time the noter has a really good idea in their head and it takes a developed relationship to understand what the noter is trying to express.
Which brings us to the piece of advice all the composers agreed upon, but was stated by Vincent: “It’s all about relationships.” For aspiring composers, what matters most is not the piece of music you throw online at the age of fourteen. It’s about the guitarist you meet in middle school who hones his skills through the years, and you collaborate with throughout your life to create great pieces of music down the line. For it’s those relationships that’ll get you into the business above all else.
The biggest take away from the composer panel is that these men love their job, and don’t care about being the guys sitting in the dark corner while everyone else has fun on set. For them it’s all about the music and the art of making it. They’re just lucky enough to get paid for it.
(I have no place to put this quote in the article itself but it was so awesome I wanted to include it for all of you. When discussing composing for video games, Manthei stated, “In video games you’re either writing an ambient track or THE BIGGEST BOSS BATTLE EVER.”)
Stay tuned to DarkMedia for more coverage from the NYCC throughout the weekend. And be sure to check out the coverage from Opening Day.
DarkMedia contributor Merrill Barr can also be found on his podcast, OSNAP, and on Twitter @sonic43.
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