My name is Michael and welcome to my portfolio website and blog. Here I document my adventures in cinematic music creation and more.
Hope you have a nice stay!
All tagged film music
First off! Where have you ben Mike? I know its been a while since I wrote for Score of the Month, but after much hiatus for personal reasons and going a bit mental for a while, I am firmly back…
It's a new year, it's been 4 months since my last #ScoreOTM and it's currently Oscar season which means there is one hell of a lot of films out, all of which contain noteworthy soundtracks which makes my choices fairly hard at present when it comes to music score reviews…
Welcome back to #ScoreOTM... Today we're going way back to an era of serious orchestral sound design and vast experimentation because yep, I'm naming Jerry Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes (1968) as my 7th Score of the Month entry!
Thanks for staying tuned and welcome to #ScoreOTM #6; this one absolutely had to go to Daniel Pemberton for his work on Guy Ritchie's new film "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"... If I ever saw this man in a public house, I would send over a pint without a second thought! 1hr 32mins of pure entertainment...
This #ScoreOTM will probably come as a surprise to some... The hardcore gamer of my youth is currently screaming as I admit this, but I've never played the Assassin's Creed games! (although I have heard the majority of Lorne Balfe & Jesper Kyd's scores). I also don't generally go for movie adaptations of games...
I'm a little behind on my monthly posts folks, but rest assured, I'm picking up where I left off! You may have guessed it based on my Tweets over the past few weeks; but Nicholas Britell's score for Moonlight has definitely taken 1st place.
I saw the film at the cinema just ahead of the release date as Odeon were running advanced showings and loved it. I'm a big fan of pretty much all the Batman films to date and with the more recent Nolan trilogy being on my radar all the way through Uni, it was great to be able to revisit the films in a more tongue and cheek light…
I was lucky enough to snap up some tickets to "Interstellar Live" at the Royal Albert Hall in which Hans Zimmer, Chris Nolan, Michael Caine and even Stephen Hawking were present! I got in early for the pre concert talks which commenced around 90 minutes before the show began…
How much should you give away? How much do you expose yourself? Should you open yourself up for criticism? Should you hide your art away?
Music, and any art come to think of it, is an incredibly personal thing. There is a reason people won’t show you that paining they have been working on for the past two months, why that poem just never seems finished, and why film composers can be late on their deadlines ;).
It’s all about exposure! It’s fairly human to talk your way around things, get yourself out of sticky situations, and let’s be fair, talk utter bullshit at times; but when you play a piece of music to someone, or unveil you latest painting, suddenly you are naked, open to criticism and in many cases, at your most vulnerable as both an artist and as a person.
I’ve listened to loads of music from various fellow composers and what I find interesting (although never comment), is just how much that specific piece, written at that specific time is actually saying about the person, it’s very personal…
I had heard Zimmer comment in an interview around the time of Chris Nolan’s Inception in 2010 that he had been contemplating taking some time off from movie scoring to take his music around the world with a bunch of his friends and an orchestra.
I had been intrigued by this but after another seeing one move after another being added to his IMDb page, including another Pirates of the Caribbean, Sherlock 2, The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel, 12 Years A Slave and Rush to name a few, it seemed this was going to be unlikely.
This is not to say that I wanted to stop hearing Zimmer’s scores in new movies, far from it, I just wanted to see some of his scores performed live and knew I would be interested to study the stage placement and arrangement of the band, not to mention it would simply be an amazing event should it ever actually take place.
Then I noticed that with the exception of Interstellar (Nolan’s upcoming 2014 feature, and one I’m really looking forward to), his schedule looked fairly light in comparison to the previous years. This was followed by one boring weekday afternoon sitting at my day job bored out of my mind and daydreaming about film as usual, I received an email from one of the many live event websites of which I am partied and they happened to be advertising an event called Hans Zimmer Revealed. I instantly looked into it and excitedly bought the best and most expensive seats I could afford at the time, the gig was finally actually going to happen…
I ventured out to the Royal Albert Hall to watch a selection of live Danny Elfman’s cues for his work on the Tim Burton films and thought I’d share some pictures we managed to take on the night. A really great atmosphere and fantastic to see Mr. Elfman himself performing the role of ‘Jack’ from Nightmare Before Christmas.
Legendary sound designer Richard King and the prolific Hans Zimmer feature once again on The Soundworks Collection, this time discussing the sonic experience of The Dark Knight Rises. I have heard mixed reviews about the film with people saying they preferred the second, personally I loved it and I can still remember the sonic combination is King and Zimmer thundering through the cinema. Watching this has just made me want to see the film again. For those of you who struggled with hearing Tom Hardy's Bane performance, I would recommend visiting an IMAX cinema as I think you will be surprised at the difference in clarity with regards to the dialogue in this film.
