Michael Giacchino did Epic Video Game Scores Before Doing LOST

I was surprised today to learn that one of my favorite composers created one of my favorite scores (funny how that happens. ;-) ).

The score is Medal of Honor: Frontline, a PS2 World War II game. The composer is Michael Giacchino, composer for LOST.

What surprised me playing Frontline was the game's emotional depth. It's serious and very sad at points, akin to Saving Private Ryan (not a coincidence, as Spielberg's Dreamworks Interactive teamed with EA on the Medal of Honor series).

As a WWII game, the orchestration in Frontline leans LARGE: action cues feature chorales, big brass fanfares, piccolo flourishes, cymbal crashes, etc.

LOST's action is more about terror and fleeing, and everything is blankin' strange, so the music is quirkier. Non-Western drums suggest the jungle, and the orchestra slides and tremolos its way to creep things out.

But if you ask me, LOST's ratings are down because we've heard less of the longing, sweet Oceanic 815 main theme. It represents the emotional center of the show, and I think the audience may miss it. To be fair, there's not much sweetness to be had when the main characters are locked up in zoo cages. But the producers say we're "back to the beach" now, so I'm hope to hear it more this season.

Not surprisingly, the best and most listenable part of the Frontline score are two cues echoing the sweet side of LOST's music.

The main theme "Market Garden" (iTunes) is below, the other is "Arnhem" (iTunes). They're both worth the 99 cents.

For a free listen, someone created a WWII photo essay around "Market Garden" on YouTube. I should warn the images get a little heavy, but it's a nice way to experience the music.

Michael Giacchino - Market Garden - Medal of Honor: Frontline

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck: Shoot Him Now! Shoot Him Now!

My girlfriend recently showed me some Russian cartoons she grew up with, and I soon wanted to share with her my favorite childhood cartoon: "Rabbit Seasoning", where Bugs Bunny repeatedly tricks Daffy Duck into being shot by Elmer Fudd.

While she marveled at the gun violence, I couldn't help noticing the score makes productive study for film composers. The Looney Tunes cartoon musical style is very familiar: every action on the screen is extravagantly cued, down to the last footstep and blink. Popular songs are quoted for Paul-Schaffer-style musical puns (such as H.R. Bishop's "Home Sweet Home" accompanying Elmer and Daffy's arm-in-arm stroll to a mountain cabin - where Daffy is promptly shot).

Composer Carl Stalling's style may seem overly literal and hyperactive today, but it's extremely clever and the orchestration is rich. And the music moves so quickly, it's like studying a score on fast forward. 6 minutes and you've covered a hundred bases - fanfare, confusion, intimidation, flirting, rage, the list goes on...

Of course the music is only there to serve the dialogue:

DAFFY
Shoot him now! Shoot him now!

BUGS
You keep out of this. He doesn't have to shoot you now.

DAFFY
He does SO have to shoot me now! I DEMAND that you shoot me now!

My favorite musical bit is the little flute trill when Daffy pulses his eyeballs as he's up in Elmer Fudd's face...

AOL has the legal version of it freely available online, albeit with a preroll ad. But it's worth it:

Rabbit Seasoning

When Harry Met Sally, recut

In a fit of silliness last summer in Prague I stayed up all night making a recut of When Harry Met Sally to look like a horror film, using music from Batman Begins.

Some links to it came out today, 7 months after I posted it. The music is from the Batman Begins score, which I just adore, a collaboration of composers Hanz Zimmer and James Newton Howard.

Anyway, the links (any of these will get you to the recut, people seem to like it):
SnarkyGossip (the original poster, thanks Wendy!)
Boing Boing
Hainsworth
VH1 Best Week Ever
Xene's World
David Chandler
popcultist
johnny r

(btw, iFilm made an unauthorized copy of this recut and put it on their own servers. Isn't that ironic, since Viacom, which owns iFilm, is today ordering YouTube to take down unauthorized videos? On the other hand, VH1 - also part of Viacom - was nice enough to embed the original YouTube video...)

UPDATE: ah, the power of Boing Boing...more linkers:
Pretty is as Pretty Does
Angry Chix
The Political Pit Bull
Kisreal
PistolWimp
DirtyCarl
Kajagugu Poker
in my diatribe
milner videos
l33t geek
UmmYeah
vson
sounding furious
StarDirt
Dmitry Kedrin
cupojoe
More here...

Also someone copied & uploaded it to CollegeHumor.com...

ANOTHER UPDATE: Links from Steve Rubel, Steve Bryant, Metafilter, HotAir, Zigzigger...
MORE: Fantent's doorfame, Ray Richmond (Hollywood Reporter)...

Jerry Seinfeld Hates Movie Trailer Music

From the WSJ, a story on Jerry Seinfeld trying to do something original for his new movie's teaser trailers:

Mr. Seinfeld, who is writing and producing "Bee Movie," and voicing the lead character, Barry Bee Benson, says he wanted the previews to cut through the clutter in a crowded Hollywood marketplace. "Who's not tired of the usual trailers with all the excitement, loud music and quick cuts," Mr. Seinfeld says. "They're exhausting and annoying."

He's right. Though his point is about more than just the music, I've observed the musical language of trailers as narrow and stale of late.

One of the most common and well-worn motifs is the dark ambient beginning, followed by a few percussion shocks when the main plot is revealed, then an accelerating, crescendoing climax. It's been great fun for years, but there must be other things marketers and composers can try, yes?

Bee Movie's trailer definitely branches out, mainly by removing the music. Silence backs up a very awkward scene, not entirely unlike the comic style of "The Office".

Then it's off to the races with a very funny slapstick scene backed by a very traditional, big slapstick orchestral cue.

btw, IMDb lists Rupert Gregson-Williams as doing the score, he also scored "Over the Hedge"...

Google TV's Got Heroes...or a Hoax?

A video is going around the Internet by a Mark Erikson, who claims on his vlog "Infinite Solutions" that you can get a double-secret Google TV beta account.

Google TV supposedly will let you log into Gmail and watch any primetime show from Fox, CBS, and NBC for free (ABC and the CW are inexplicably not in on the deal...)

This has the hallmarks of a virtuoso Internet prank, complete with laughably complicated instructions to obtain your secret access via logging in and out of GMail a dozen times.

But it's produced "just so" that it puts a twinge of doubt in the viewer..

...ok, this is definitely a hoax...

...but there have been reports that media companies are talking with Google...

...maybe this is Google's clever way of generating buzz....

...stranger things have happened....

...remember how Google launched Gmail on April Fools' Day???...

...and how did this guy get rights to include a clip from "Heroes" in his vlog, anyway?...

But enough of the conspiracy theories. Mostly I got a good laugh from Eric's videos. I love the idea people out there are logging in and out of Gmail.

And if I want to watch Heroes, I can always check it out 9pm on Mondays on NBC. Or on YouTube, of course! ;-)

After the jump, the embedded videos, including Heroes...(via TechCrunch)...

The original "Google TV" video by "Infinite Solutions"...


The update, responding to accusations of a prank:


All over the world, people are waking up with strange, new powers....

Composer Brian Eno & Ambient Music on Youtube

I wrote recently about Brian Eno's composing work on the upcoming video game Spore, and linked to a talk in San Francisco of Wil Wright & Brian Eno talking about developing the algorithmically-generated musical score for the game.

Well since then I bought some of his albums and was surprised by a couple of things.

One, the music appears to have been hugely influential - listen to any number of scores from films in thriller and horror genres, and you hear sounds resembling stuff on "Ambient 4 On Land", which Eno composed 1978-1982.

Two, think of the era where he came up with the stuff. Jimmy Carter is president. There's no Internet or CDs. Hardly anyone gets cable. Record shops and radio stations have Blondie's "Rapture" and The Clash's "Combat Rock".

Along comes Brian Eno with this slooow, spooky, new age music composed mostly of gongs, gurgling, electronic fuzz and the occasional frog. And he gets a record contract. I'm kind of curious who the A&R guy was who discovered him and what the story was there....

It's awesome stuff. Not exactly dance floor music. and you wouldn't want to blast it out of your car. I've heard Brian Eno say once that he created ambient music partially is because he wanted something to listen to while working that wouldn't break his concentration.

(Of course, Stephen King listens to Metallica while he works, so I guess YMMV...)

Here are a couple of YouTubes...

The first talks about his "Music For Airports" project, where he came up with music to be played at O'Hare airport, and what kind of music you might want to hear when getting on and off planes:


And another called "77 Million Paintings",which is related to the algorithmic music stuff that is going into Spore. Enjoy!

The Most Famous 6-Second Drum Break in History

Well, would be the "Amen Break" from the 1969 song "Amen, Brother" by the Winstons. It's so famous it has its own wiki entry.

Yes, you've heard it, thousands of times. Many composers have borrowed it in many genres. It's a 6-second drum solo which got sampled and became very popular in hip hop in the late 80s, and then in the UK jungle and D&B scene in the 90s.

A fellow named Nate Harrison created a video about it which is now on YouTube, showing the history of the sample, with a number of very interesting musical examples, including NWA's "Straight Outta Compton", leading up to increasingly crazy recut versions of the beat in various jungle tunes.

After 11 minutes or so the video goes into meditations on copyright and ownership, etc, which is still mildly interesting, but the musical examples are all before the 12th minute of the video:

Heard...Damien Rice: CSI Promo

A Very Special Episode of CSI (Grissom Leaves CSI) deserves a Very Special Promo Song...Damien Rice, 9 Crimes. Here's a video of him and Lisa Flanagan performing it on The Tonight Show...

YouTube: The Last Emperor (Live)

Actually David Byrne collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto on The Last Emperor, the main theme of which is *real* nice solo piano theme (think of a Japanese-virtuoso-version-of-George-Winston). Here's a live performance of it on YouTube, the studio audience in the video loves it: