Composer Michael Giacchino might be a fresh name to the feature film world, but he's no stranger to anyone who

watches television or plays computer games. From his beginnings writing orchestral music for Dreamworks Interactive's Medal of Honor computer games, to the dramatic action of "Alias", he's been moving up the ranks in the music community. Now with his feature film debut, The Incredibles, Giacchino breaks out into the mainstream. SoundtrackNet had a chance to talk with Michael at his studio in Los Angeles.

How did you get the gig for The Incredibles? It was a combination of many things, but mainly because director Brad Bird had seen some of my work on "Alias", and he wanted a very specific sound - and some of the stuff I did on that show was in the ballpark of what he was looking for. It also just so happened that some of the guys I worked with years ago were at Pixar, so they could vouch for me. When you look at it, Pixar films are usually Randy Newman and Thomas Newman - very well established guys. I always felt like someone was going to look at me and say, "who let that guy in here?" The great thing about Brad was the same situation I had with J.J. Abrams. When I met J.J., I was only doing video games, and J.J. heard the score to those games and wanted to meet me to get me to work on "Alias". The mentality that someone like J.J. or Brad can look at someone and say, "I like their work - I don't care if I don't know their last name" is so rare in this town. When I was doing videogames, I was the "videogame guy". I'm lucky in that I was working on some of the coolest games around, but it was hard to leap out of that, and it took someone like J.J. to say, "I don't care if they're just videogames - I like his work." The same thing happened with Brad. People would say, "but he's just a television guy," and Brad would say, "So what? I was a TV guy!" What were the primary influences on The Incredibles? When I first met with Brad, he asked me what I grew up listening to. I told him I loved the Pink Panther movies, Star Wars, "Jonny Quest", "The Flintstones", "The Jetsons", "The Twilight Zone" - all these things. And we quickly realized what he and I both had a love for those 1960s jazz orchestra scores. It was an amazing time, when they were just going for it, with those jazz influences. No one was saying, "Oh that sounds cheesy" - it was what it was, and you believed in it, and just went with it. Brad's point was, when he was a kid he would hear that theme to "Jonny Quest" and would want to be Jonny Quest. And that's what he wanted for The Incredibles. He wanted the orchestral jazz energy that they used to have in the Bond movies, Pink Panther movies, and everything else I mentioned - the quasi-big band stuff. That's what he wanted in the score to his film. Anyone who is working now, who is in my age group, is lying if they say that stylistic approach never influenced them growing up. You could not have survived popular culture growing up in that time without being affected by it in some sense. The whole film carries that sensibility - from the architecture, to the design, color palettes - it's all influenced by this time that we grew up in, and it's nostalgic. But the challenge was to make it nostalgic, but new - and something that's not made fun of. Because many times when you hear these kinds of scores today, they're used in a way to parody something.

"!

Both Brad and I truly believe that this style of music is as valid today as it was then, as a storytelling tool. So we committed to it, and said we'd go down this road, and score this film in a way as to not have people thinking of its a parody. The biggest challenge was to also keep it new and fresh. Brad was confident in his story and characters. And the score can be taken seriously; because its at home in this wonderful world he created.

How did you get started writing music professionally? Originally I worked at Disney in their publicity department in New York City, and then they moved me to Los Angeles. From there, I went over to Disney Interactive as an assistant producer. That's where I started working on video games, and thought I might be able to score some of them - I was writing music all the time on the side, but wasn't sure how you become a composer. I'm still not sure how - just keep trying, I guess. So I was lucky in a position where I was working on projects where I could try to submit music for projects. When Dreamworks started up, they helped me start up a videogame company called Mission Control. We developed some children's games, and while some of them never got off the ground, some of the guys who worked for me as animators there ultimately ended up at Pixar. Mission Control kind of went south, and at that point I started doing music for Dreamworks Interactive, and went freelance on my own. I did a bunch of games for them, including Medal of Honor. Steven Spielberg even helped you out - how'd that happen? Firstly, you have to understand is that with Spielberg, he's not just a fan of John Williams music, but he really understands ALL music. He knows it like nobody else! He understands music history, music theory, and so much about what film music and popular music is about. When he was directing The Lost World, I was asked to throw some stuff together for a few levels of the game, which they were going to show Spielberg. I was upstairs in my office when they had the meeting, and I got a phone call from the conference room - Steven wanted to meet me! So I came down, and we started talking about the music - and he said "So when are we going to record this with a live orchestra?" And the CFO and CEO were standing right there, and were thinking "uh, no!" that wasn't part of the budget. But it was Spielberg, so they said "we're working on that!" He understood that leap, from synth to live orchestra - he understood what the live musicians bring to the sound. It was relatively unheard of at the time, but who knows - maybe if he understood budget-wise, why it was prohibited, he might have said "no", but in his world, that's how it's done - they use a live orchestra. It was to be no different for this. We didn't have a huge orchestra, because they didn't give me a lot of money to do it. So I ended up putting everything I made on that project back into it, just to get as big of a group as I could. There was no money for orchestration, and we couldn't afford to do it in Los Angeles. So it was a big learning experience for me - how to put it together, learning under fire. Each time I would streamline the process, and understood it better. You can go to school forever, but you're never really going to learn until you just do it. So everything I did in school prior to that really helped as a baseline, but orchestration and the understanding of all of those things are only aspects of music you can really "get" if you do it. So it was the greatest school I ever had, working for Dreamworks doing video games. It was a great training ground. From there you went on to score "Alias"... Actually, there was something in between the video games and "Alias". Dreamworks was doing a project called "Semper Fi" which they hoped to have as a TV series, but it ended up being a movie-of-theweek. Steven gave me that job based on my work on Medal of Honor. So he has been one of the greatest proponents for me - one of these guys that didn't have to take notice of what I was doing, but did. As a result, I got amazing opportunities out of it. "Semper Fi" didn't go anywhere, but J.J. contacted me

#!

afterwards. Apparently a friend of his, Jesse Alexander, who is a producer on "Alias" is an avid gamer, and told J.J. he needed to listen to the games, and talk to me about working on the show. So J.J. sent me an email out of the blue, and asked to meet with me. I didn't think anyone did that, since usually agents would be involved - but that's the type of person J.J. is. If you look at the group of people around him, they're all great people, and he understands that they're all going to work together for a long time. I look at the people I work with on the shows and we can hang out as easily as we can work together. It's an interesting and unique situation. I hear from other people who are in nightmare situations, but I never feel that was with J.J.. I'm very lucky! What do you think about the state of scoring for television shows today? Television has gone through a drastic change, as far as music goes. You look when you had shows like "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "The Twilight Zone" and all these great series - the only way to do that music was live. You didn't have a fake orchestra in your computer, like you have now. So as the synths evolved, the producers looked at it as a way to bring the production costs down. And that really took over in the early 1980s, and then it grew to the point where it became the standard. Television used to be a great place for musicians to start out. It was composer's and musician's bootcamp. Musicians who were trying to get into film work started out in television. That's where they made relationship with people, and as they grew, they all moved up together and did film work. It's not like that anymore. I grew up listening to live players, so when I hear synth stuff, I go crazy because that's not how its' supposed to be! "The Flintstones", "The Jetsons", "Jonny Quest" - all the things I loved as a kid, were all recorded with live players. And I was always just so disappointed with current television - not to say that you have to use live orchestra for everything, but I don't like synth orchestra - when it's supposed to sound live, but it's not. So that's why with "Alias" you're using an orchestra? I told J.J., since I felt so strongly about it, that if he wanted it to be an all techno show, that's fine - but if there was going to be any orchestra, it should be real. J.J. wanted a techno aspect, and I wanted a strong orchestral part of it because I knew that would carry the emotions of the characters. In a show like Alias, which already throws such unbelievable premises at you, you need every weapon you can to keep it grounded so that people somehow will suspend their disbelief. Fortunately we have amazing actors on the show, and so musically I wanted the emotions of the players to hold it all together. J.J. 100% agreed with me, and went to the network and fought for that money. And we got it, and thank goodness we did, because it allows you to watch the show and not disbelieve it as much as you might if we had gone with a full-on synth/sampled music score. Also, in a show like "Alias", which is almost like a spy-opera, you have to rely on these thematics. So themes for different characters developed over the first season and into the second season, but it's interesting - it started out in season one with a lot more techno in balance with the orchestra, and as the characters developed and became stronger, the music skewed more orchestral. It was a natural progression that happened - it's not so much about the electronic aspect about keeping the energy and rhythm up, but rather about the characters and what is going on with their lives. And then into season three, it became a mostly orchestral show. How do you think your computer game work might have affected the game industry when it comes to music? There are many more orchestral scores being recorded for games now than ever before! I think it allowed more people to point to what we were doing and say, "Well, they're doing it! Why can't we do that?" It's a process - it's expensive, and adds a lot to the budget, but you can feel the difference. People might not know if it's synth or live, but the can feel it if it's synth or live. It's one of those things they talk about in their experience of the game. It helps people get sucked into what the game is. It's no different than movies - you have to have a good game, and start with that. In movies, if you don't

$!

have a great story to tell, good luck. The greatest score in the world might be great on a CD, but it's really not going to help your movie be better! Which is why you see a lot of scores thrown out, because they see that the movie isn't working, and the last thing they can do to change the movie is to throw out the score and put a new one in. Its sad, actually. Maestro Giacchino, you became a film composer after your studies in film direction and production. How did your education influence your approach to music? My studies at the New York School of Visual Arts (before starting my formation as a composer) have surely been important for my career. To tell the truth, before to become fully aware of my inclination to music, I wanted to be a director: when I was a student, I used to shot short films in stop-motion animation (but, as a matter of fact, for every film I used to be engaged the most of the time in writing the musical score). In many ways, today I have not betrayed my early plans: in fact, I believe that a film composer is essentially a storyteller. A film score tells a story along with the moving images. Sometimes the music can make a dull moment in a film become interesting. However, even if the music has a great power in this sense, it is necessary to constantly remember that the film comes first: that is the most important thing in cinema, not the music. On this topic, I remember the work I did on Ratatouille with Brad Bird. While I was seeing the film with the director, as soon as there was a scene that, in my opinion, required music, I said: I will write something for this, it needs something more. However, the most delicate part of the operation was to decide where music was not required at all. In various occasions, I had to discuss with Brad about this topic: sometimes he absolutely wanted a musical score for a certain scene that, in my opinion, was already perfectly working. So, in cases like that I simply did not write anything! The music must know when to make a step back: when its absence gives to a film a maximum of communicative impact. What are the main differences between writing music for animated films and writing for "live" films? In animated films, the composers used to indulge in a specific, traditional style... It was normal to comment upon an action in a continuous way, by following with the music the "trajectories" of the characters. It was equally common to deal with simplified and schematic emotions. To tell the truth, I believe that, nowadays, clichs are still around, but they are not as overused as once they were. For what concerns me, I do not write in a different way when I work on an animated film. Animation is just a technique to tell stories: it is true that this technique often tells "fantasy" stories, but this is not an artistic limitation at all. I absolutely do not believe in all that prejudices about animation being "for children". I cannot understand why a guy in tights that can fly and is indestructible can be the protagonist of a story "for grown-ups", while a little mouse that discovers about his talent and his true role in the world cannot! Animation: perhaps this is the field where you display with the greatest evidence your taste for melody. Someone thought that my preference for melodic themes derives from my Italian roots. To tell the truth, I cannot call myself an Italian, even if my mother is from the Abruzzi. I can only say that my melodic vein must be born from my passion for the great film themes. John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, but also Max Steiner... I received many influences, and it is not easy to tell which one was the most important. In my music, the themes are surely important: they must evolve with the story of a film. In Ratatouille, two different themes tell about the two sides of Remy's personality: the creative side and the... "thief" side, that is connected to his nature of a mouse. Ratatouille was a really interesting film: Brad Bird wanted me to express with the music the taste of food, while the film would have tried to do such a thing via images. Perhaps our joined efforts are particularly evident in the scene where Remy tries to make his brother mile aware of the various combinations between tastes: the music accompanies stylized shapes that appear on a dark background, trying to translate the tastes in sound and color. Also in the most recent Pixar film, Up, I cared for the narrative function of the main themes. For instance, in that film there is a group of three themes: one for Russell, on for a huge bird and one for a talking dog. These themes can be used separately, but it is also possible to play the three of them simultaneously: so, they can be used in various expressive

%!

combinations. The music, through the themes and their elaboration, should be like the engine of a story. If a film were a book, the music should be something that makes the pages turn. Someone counted all the different themes that you used in Lost until this moment: they are sixty-five. How do you deal with a musical material of this vastness? Sixty-five? I had no idea! Surely, Lost is like an opera: every character has a theme, and someone has even more than one. However, even with this basic intention, I always try to vary and change the musical materials, in order to keep the audience reactive: in a show like that music should not be too strictly linked to specific characters or situation, to avoid to make the narration predictable. What is essential for me is that the music for Lost should keep a distinct "sound" that makes it immediately recognizable. This intention of mine is perhaps linked to an experience that I had many times in my childhood... My parents used to send me to bed while they were watching TV in the lounge, so I was able to listen to the audio of the shows they were watching from my room. I often tried to guess what was the series that was being aired using only the music as a reference. I slowly became aware of the fact that the shows with the most recognizable "sound" were also the best shows. So, I wanted Lost to be like the series I... listened to when I was a child. Can you describe some of the "technical" details of your work (from the sketches to orchestration...)? When I start a work, I firstly see the film. Then I go to the keyboard and, while seeing again the film, I start composing. I do not use pencil and paper anymore, but only digital devices: The Incredibles was the last film for which I worked in a "traditional" way. I compose and orchestrate at the same time: so, the sketches I send to my orchestrators are already almost complete. I do not have many collaborators, but a little team that I completely trust, and that can always understand my intentions very well. I must mention my sound engineer Dan Wallin and my orchestrator Jack Hayes: the first one is 81, the latter is 90, but they are more capable and energetic than many young people! As for the recording process, I prefer to have the whole orchestra playing at the same time: the separate recording of the different sections does not bring the same sensation of "presence". For the same reason, I avoid to use pre-recorded synthetic sounds: in Speed Racer, that features electric instruments, everything was played with the orchestra during the recording sessions.

&!