Scoring for Marvel - 18 Years On!
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- What's it like scoring an animated feature film for Marvel? A few years ago I scored eight of them so join me as I rediscover the old project files and dive back into a film score I wrote 18 years ago. Lots of lessons about how to approach projects like this along the way. So if you are interested in writing music for film, film scoring and film composition. Come on down. Scoring for marvel - 18 years on is both an insight into film scoring and a trip down memory lane! So if composing music for animated feature films or scoring animated movies is your thing Scoring for Marvel should hit the spot.
00:00 Intro
01:49 Ruining a Hard Drive
05:27 Back in the Shed
06:26 Getting the Job
09:06 Animatic
12:29 Coming Home
15:57 The Process
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Imagine having the privilege of watching someone's cool grandpa talk about all the great film projects he's worked on in his career.
Thank you so much for this vlog Guy!
How do you know he's a grandpa?
@@BlainSlackJaw I'm assuming he is one but if he is or isn't, I'm grateful for him putting out videos like this.
@@fauxdauteur He is not
I was an animator for 14 years in Burbank before becoming a full time drummer in Vegas 10 years ago. When I see animatics, it totally brings back memories of blue pencils under ink ( blue pencils dont show up on the xerox copiers), done on yellow post it notes. Now its all done in photoshop on wacom tablets.
Since I found your channel, I've bought a a New Mac M2, Native Instuments Komplete Collectors Bundle, S61 keys, and a few Spitfire and Audio Imperia libraries and totally loving it!
I just recently was looking through my old dvd’s and found the invincible iron man one. Turned it around and saw your name on the back. I’m 16, I loved that movie when I was younger, so I was so excited when I found out you did the music.
This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while, thank you GUY!
"Scoring for marvel... -2 min ago" sounds cool
Excellent! This is my favorite Doctor Strange story! It was such a surprise that you had scored it. Thank you for sharing your experience. 😁
Youre welcome
An underappreciated aspect of any creative endeavor relying on technology, is how to resurrect and deal with old media if you want something back! It's always frustrating and hopefully doesn't end in tears! Loved the walkthrough of the scoring!
So true = glad you enjoyed it!
Maybe setting everything up in a virtual machine so that everything's playable and then export it as an VM image of it could be useful?
That's what I've done. Another thing is exporting all tracks to standardized formats, such as WAVs, and saving the score in MIDI so it's not only available withing some DAW's project file, which may not be loadable in the future, in more modern versions of the software.
I own all six of the Marvel Lionsgate animated movies that you've scored. It is among my favorite work that you've ever done. I continue to enjoy these scores today when I re-watch these movies. Thank you so much for sharing this story and please continue to share more experiences.
Wow, thanks!
That final version was EVERYTHING GUY! How amazing! It really sets an imaginative and thoughtful mood.
I'm a really big fan of your score for the ultimate avengers movies, specially the Nightcap music (Tony Starks theme). It was taken off spotify a little while ago and I was wondering if there was anyway you could get it re-added or if there was somewhere else you could listen to a high quality version of the Avenegers Score. Nonetheless thank you for your amazing score on that movie, it is one of my favourites. Great video!
Those scores are so beautifully done! They should hire you for the bigger titles tbh even the 20 years old samples were excellent to my ear!
“Animatics on the sketchy side.” That’s my kinda joke. 😂
Loved this video, beautiful piece. Thanks for sharing!
I used to watch iron man armored adventures all the time!! It was so cool to find out you scored it
OH Man Guy! You are such an inspiration! Also, I'm so impressed with your reverse engineering skills on getting that obsolete firewire drive dusted off and hooked into that Rube Goldberg interface contraption to pull off data from 18 years ago! Also, haven't heard the term mix minus for decades when I've used this technique back in my studio days. I really enjoyed this episode. Thanks again!
what a blast this video is, how awesome, what a career and how cool to share it with us all 🙂 one of my fav channels.
"Sounds alright" come on that was absolutely beautiful.
Ikr
Amazing to see you bring the old files back to life. Something I've never succeeded with .... not unexpected that I was using a Roland D10 plugged into an Atari 1024 running Pro24 and the first iteration of Cubase (back in the 80's).
Thanks for bringing us along on a trip down your memory lane! It's a nice place!
This is really interesting, Guy. Love all this behind the scenes stuff :).
Gah, 20 years ago I was using E-MU's Virtuoso 2000 rack unit, a PC and my Ensoniq 16+ with great pride, lol 😄
DAW's were quite pricey back then, especially Mac-based. 🤯 I could only record midi to wavs, then arrange in multitrack with Cool Edit Pro. 🤓
Your career, diversity, displays, experience & abilities are incredible and inspiring. Thank you, Guy! 👍
20 year old samples sounding rad still! such a good watch for all composers and audio geeks. THANKYOU!
I've been watching some of your older videos where you're doing work on DP, so it was quite cool to see this! 🙂
Very interesting, Guy. Thank you for sharing your experience
Congratulations guy. 18 years with Marvel. That's an impressive career. I wish you 18 more. You are an excellent and talented creative and communicator,
Thank you very much!
Loved this. You gave me a mini heart attack holding a spinning drive wondering if you can read data of it 😮
Top tip - never move a spinning drive, especially one full of gold 😊
Great fun! Thank you so much!
That was really interesting, thank you for that Guy.
you're welcome
Thanks for sharing, this is amazing!
Omg. This is very nice!
Thank you for sharing this. I like this kind of videos a lot. Even if much wasn't being said, a lot can be learned from it. Stay safe.
Jesus those drives are SUPER FRAGILE, banging it around all over the place could easily destroy it! Just for future heads up on the rest of them! : )
man that takes me back I watched doctor strange tons of times even had it on dvd i forget if they made a VHS version but still man to believe that you worked on those Guy
its like a trip down memory lane
I absolutely LOVE the fact that you were able to reuse your iron man score/theme from "The Invincible Ironman" not only for the ultimate avengers movies, but also for a little bit of Iron man: armored adventures and various other appearances of the character! Now that you have the old hard drives, do you think there's any way you can release them for others to listen?
Has to be a good one when Guy breaks out the hammer 2 minutes into the video 😂😂
Thank you! … That was great to watch, interesting, funny, and just what I needed to see. 🤠👍
I really loved the sound of your score. It is amazing. :)
Thank you very much!
Great video, thank you very much!
Very interesting and helpful.
And it felt so familiar seeing DP in action, I still love using it.
Have a great weekend!
:)
Huh; I used to do the sound design weekly for Marvel during the mid to late 90s when they only had online stuff like the weekly cybercomics and an attempt to bring back an audio serial in Flash 4 (Excelscior Theatre: The Secret Adventures of Captain America) -- I was even the voice of Captain America! It was a lot of fun but it was purely shoestring - it was when Marvel thought they were going to go bankrupt so we were recorded all the voices on a DAT recorder in the closet and I'd bring all these pieces home and assemble them at home, then do some scoring underneath and hand it all over to be animated
Oh I remember all that before Saban stepped in - I came along straight after all that
Shucking a drive with Guy.
Great stuff, Guy! Got me thinking; what are some of your personal favorite pieces, or full scores, you’ve written so far?
Fascinating as always. You touched on union stuff. I wonder if you would care to do a video on unionisation as a musician for film and how it works for a composer. Not that I would want you to put yourself in an awkward position regarding future work but given the current Hollywood strike situation I would value your take on the subject. Love your work Guy.
Yeah, I hope that's changed for the better at least a bit since then, even though of course there's still massive issues given the strikes and all.
Love listening to your stories. I didn’t need any pictures to this piece of music. Just lovely! Now i need to find a list of all the programs and movies where you have composed the score. ❤. That WD drive brought back memories (and nightmares). Had one of those die during videoproduction. Only backup was the original HDV tapes. 14 days of reimporting the materials in realtime😂. Learned my lessons😅
Thank you for interesting video and the tale. It's amazing. And its a really good school for all of us, who worked in mediacomposition industry! Great!
Guy your are the man!!!!
Thank you for this.
one of he best videos ive watched of yours. What a Guy. ;)
thank you!
Awesome episode!
Amazing score ❤
Wow so cool video we need more legacy stuff like that 😊
9:30 😅 Nice video there! :)
This was amazing! And really highlights the problems you face when using computers to make music - will it work in 20 years time?
Id love to do any music for marvel! Great video! Ive also still got my marvel cards from 90s.
One good advice: You should not move a hard drive like this while its spinning. You putting pressure on the spindle (gyroscop effect) and it might break. Especialy the old drives got this weakness.
@10:07 Some of us remember all these screams from a game called Command & Conquer. Some of the most viscerally realistic screams I've ever heard :)
You can actually get firewire to USB adapters. Would save the disassembly
Love your channel Guy! ❤️ I'm making music now with my home studio using cubase 11 Pro. Making themes for games or film is so much fun I almost enjoy it more than my songs. Would you ever do a video about what kind of money you make doing scoring?
Lovely
You're amazing for doing this, Guy! Thank you for walking us through your process :)
Btw, speaking of Marvel - have you heard Daniel Pemberton's Across the Spider-Verse score? If so, what do you think of it?
Dan Pemberton is absolutely brilliant - so original
I am very impressed with two things. First, the music. For an 18 year old score, it stands up extremely well in 2023. I thought it sounded amazing. Played through my home studio monitors via an expensive DAC and AMP. The second more impressive thing to me is if you pay attention to his facial expressions, his eyes, his body language as a sample of this music is played for the 1st time to us, his audience, you can see the passion he has for his work, and love of music, rather deeply I think. What a nice surprise this video / channel was to me via the Google suggestions.
These old FireWire drives actually have a usb connection on the back as well, so a usb cable with a usb-a to usb-c adapter might have worked 😅
I dont know if this has ever been a video but as a sincere admirer of Danny Elfman could you make a video talking about the unique styles of the biggest names of the filmscoring world? What makes a Silvestri a Silvestri? Why can I instantly recognise a piece of Elfman?
OMG i subscribe to your channel because i think you are funny and i saw a few review videos made by you... and only now i realize you are a real producer...
I do my best
Amazing!!!
Amazing the drive fired up!
I bought a Focusrite FireWire interface for next to nothing because I wanted an ADAT preamp. I had to reset something to allow it to run as an ADAT expander but I had to find an old computer that I could install an FireWire card and windows 7 on for it to work. Luckily I work in IT for a university and we have all kinds of stuff knocking around in the back of cupboards!
Wait you did Next Avengers?! Man I remember loving that movie!
Tough job. That’s a really crude animatic. I did stuff for Kellogg’s in the mid 1990s that had more detail and more of a sense of moving elements than that Marvel one did. And actually, I prefer the warmth of your mockup to the realism of the small orchestra. Granted the real viola was vastly better, though.
When you left the studio to go back to the shed, I suddenly thought of the old Monty Python bit about Sir Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson! 😂
Like how you managed to access the drive and transfer the files, because WD external disk supposedly have their own electronics in the case, at least I couldn't access mine on the IDE disk. Congrats, love your YT channel - and good luck transfering other disks, suggest to buy decent NAS system with RAID0 or RAID5 setup, with at least 1 drive as "cold spare". Cloud storage is also a possibility as 2nd backup.
Yes I used to use Raid0 a lot and now backup to the cloud
@@ThinkSpaceEducation make sure to backup all your old drives, as they might die over time, also technology they are on might not be available later in 5-10 years. Just like VHS is hard to find today. Cheers!
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for watching!
You're welcome! @@ThinkSpaceEducation
That old soundtrack sounded goog and more
Maybe it would be a lot easier if you had a bunch of converter adapters …I have 20 +year old drives and it’s just a matter of converter adapters …
I remember prying up one of those WD chassis many years ago when the power supply died. It was a mess!
Love this content and hearing the creative results of a former YOU, even if it was for a short piece. Question: Having used Macs during those years, I’m wondering if you ever used Logic? It certainly had its quirks and was not as complete as todays Logic Pro, but still quite powerful.
Yes I use Logic in tutorials a lot. been doing it today actually
Very interesting!
:)
Hey Guy! Great video. What motivated you to stop using Digital Performer and switch DAWs?
I'm at the 3' mark and I'm just continually saying to myself, "Self, Guy is beating the ever loving snot out of that drive and enclosure, and it's certainly a mechanical hard-drive and very old and run of the mill, so he should be BABYING that drive like it's an egg with a crack in it that you don't want to break. But he's throwing it about and hitting the desk with strong vibrations...please be much more careful, Guy!!!" I'm on repeat...
At stuff Guy - I'm intrigued to understand what happened between your DAW version & the live orchestra. Does/did DP spit out scores or was there a transcription elf somewhere busy scribbling out charts?
Your soundtracks really immerse me into the world of Marvel! I'm kind of sad that I can't find the soundtracks for Planet Hulk and Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow.
Eek could you not have just purchased an adaptor lead to convert the firewire to plug into the thunderbolt port?
Why is it so delightful watching Guy battle it out with an old hardrive? Just so joyous.
Wonder how much is done on the piano first, or if it's arranged immediately. Maybe it's like a jigsaw puzzle, start with the margins or the moments that require melody. Then fill the gaps with rhythm and ambience. It has to be a lot of work, at least a month.
Yup a bit like that
Hey Michelmore! what VST do you use mainly for orchestration on the daw? or do you mainly work with real recordings?
A LOT of different ones, like Sine, Synchron, Play/Opus, Kontakt, and then within them libraries from many different companies - based on what I've seen.
I just cam across your videos, really love them! I’m a pro jazz musician just starting to dip my toes into this style of composing. Did you have to conduct the orchestra during the live recordings? Is that a skill worth working on?
He has, at least, conducted orchestras on other occasions. Seen other videos of it.
Would love to hear this reimagined with today's level of sample libraries. I have to wonder if a live orchestra would still be necessary.
Live orchestra always brings so much extra we definitely would still use lilve players
For 20 yr old samples, they sounded pretty stinking good.
I noticed you were using DP then and now Cubase. What made you change? Anything you miss from DP?
Fyi, for connecting old firewire drives like this, I've had success with two apple adaptors in series: thunderbolt-4-to-thunderbolt2 and thunderbolt2-to-firewire800.
Do you do any of your own orchestration, and do you have any videos on how to do it?
Guy retreiving that HD was like a naughty kid sneaking down to have a sneaky look at the christmas tree! 😂
exactly!
Guy, you need to archive all your music, and by archiving I mean uploading all your files to a secure server with guaranteed backup, many of those old hard drives have a shelf life and once they are gone they are gone. What if a distant future relative wants to examine your scores in more detail? This is your contribution to the world, meaning past, present, and future. You are responsible to preserve it for longevity
I do dont worry but not from back then
Guy, thank you for sharing this with all of us. I did notice these Marvel soundtrack were recently removed from Spotify. Will they return on spotify or are the accessible elsewhere?
I have no idea why Disney took them down
You seem to get just as excited as I do when I plug in an old drive I thought was broken
My first DAW was DP….. my current one is Reaper
15:43 huh. Musicians of the world, unite!
Mmm… Now Guy has the trimmed beard, other people must have noticed …. I’ve never seen Guy and John Williams in the same room at the same time?🤔
OK you got me. Stephen S was only saying the other day he wondered when people would notice
Oh dear Guy! I would sooner hold my nose and buy the double Apple dongles to convert FireWire to Thunderbolt 2 (which should work with “modern” Thunderbolt). Rendering a working archival drive into scrap metal can be easy if one isn’t careful extracting media from enclosures…
You should have given me a call, I still have a couple of FW800s hanging off the back of my iMac i9 (via a selection of dongles)
My old laptop has a FireWire port it’s that old :)
Wonderful stuff as always Guy. QQ; You mentioned receiving notes and making adjustment. Who are you getting notes from? The director, producers, direct from animators... all of the above? Thanks in advance.
The director Frank Paur and producers Eric Rollman and Craig Kyle in LA
Oof, not firewire. I went all in on that thing. Biggest regret of my life.