My Top 6 Film Composers

I've already talked about my favorite film scores, which was almost impossible to write, but now I'd like to get a little bit broader in a sense. I figured that I might as well write my favorite film composers as well. Now, this list is going to be really biased, mostly because a lot of my composing is truly inspired by some of the guys on this list. I was actually going to do my top 5, but then couldn't decide who should be the fifth and who should be left out. But either way, this is my list of top 6 film composers.

Harry Gregson-Williams
One of the two reviews that I've ever actually done is by this guy. He's done movies like Narnia, Shrek, and the Martian. He's also done a few 3A video games in his time as well, including COD Modern Warfare and Metal Gear Solid 5. But my biggest reason for putting him on this list is because of his really compact themes that contain so much emotion. Especially in some movies he's worked on with Ben Affleck, he's managed to write beautiful themes without all the gratuitous stuff like what John William's music sounds like.

Michael Giacchino
This is the composer of that one other review I did... He's done movies like Up, Ratatouille, Doctor Strange, and Rogue One. He's also known for the entire Lost series. He's managed to win an Oscar for his work on Up in 2010, and a nomination two years before that for Ratatouille. Personally, I really like his flexibility. He can perfect a score like Up, but still be able to pull off something totally different like Rogue One. Giacchino is also the only composer to have written for every branch of Disney (Doctor Strange, Rogue One, a bunch of live action, and a bunch of Pixar).

Thomas Newman
Newman is probably the unluckiest guy on this list; he has 14 Oscar nominations and 0 wins. He's done movies like The Shawshank Redemption, Nemo, and American Beauty. I personally really like him because of his amazing use of leitmotifs in a lot of his movies, but also because of his incredible use of instrumentation. He also has a relatively minimalist approach to composing, which is something that I feel works 90% of the time, and I really enjoy music like that.

John Williams
Oh no... he's not at the top of the list! The only reason why Williams isn't much higher on this list is because of how similar all of his scores are to each other. If it weren't for this, he'd probably be up at the top.

Howard Shore
Ah... Leitmotifs. Howard Shore satisfies my desperate need for them. I've talked about them before, and if my explanation doesn't make sense, compare it to the Wiki and mine might start to seem like a good explanation. Especially on his work with Lord of the Rings, the leitmotifs add SO much to the entire movie. His composing genius astounds me all the time anyways.

Hans Zimmer
Zimmer is quickly becoming the most financially successful film composer yet. He's written music for movies like Inception, Interstellar, and Pirates of the Caribbean. His music is possibly the most powerful in Hollywood today, and his dynamic portfolio is incredible. With the ability to write for any scenario, Zimmer easily deserves a spot at the top of my list.

Hans Zimmer in his insane studio. Courtesy of Guitar Master Class

A Rant About Deadlines

As mentioned in a previous post, I've had the opportunity to score a student film that I took a part in producing. We planned to submit it to our high school film festival, so we had to be on our game. Sadly, the deadlines messed us up from the start. We wrote the script with only about four hours of work put into it, then rushed into filming. Our original plan gave us three full days to film the full movie, then a week to edit and score. However, filming was pushed back because of weather, and so we had to fit in two days of filming into one day, which means that if you get a shot and aren't happy with it, too bad. When we had all the shots that we wanted, there were only six days until the submissions were due. It took four days to finalize a rough cut for me to score... leaving me two days to write a film score, record it, and mix it. And I had school on those days as well. Yeah. I hate deadlines.

This was my first project that I've worked on with such a tight schedule. Sometimes it takes me that long to get a melodic sketch of one song that I really fall in love with. The problem is that I couldn't write something then say "You know what, that could be a lot better". I didn't have time to make changes. I spotted the movie with the director at about 5:00p.m. on Wednesday, then had to hand him a finished .wav file at 7:00a.m. on Friday... This forced me to write whatever first came to mind then move on. I would have sections of score that were basically just whole notes. Here's a picture of a few seconds of the score:

Clearly VERY boring score...

I've been able to quickly discover how deadlines can ruin a score. I worked long hours on something that I wasn't proud of. I slaved away at a computer for about half of a 62 hour period, without sleeping, for nothing. The film wasn't even accepted into the film festival, I'm learning now. It leaves me to wonder, what if the music was better? What if I had another week to work on it? Would I have made a better score, then been accepted into the festival? If we had been accepted, would I have the chance to redo the music? I WILL NEVER KNOW!

But this leaves me to wonder, does this happen to pro film composers to? There have been a lot of questionable scores for really great movies before. Is it just because they didn't have enough time to do what they're good at just because of a freaking deadline!? This rant sounds really stupid, but my point still stands. Deadlines suck.

On the bright side, I've reached my goal. I managed to compose as much music as I decided to by the end of the school year. It ended up being terrible, but I still reached my goal either way. I'll just stop here.