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01:06How are you?
01:08I'm good.
01:08I'm really good.
01:10Excellent.
01:10Yeah.
01:11So this is a suburban thriller.
01:15It's a family drama.
01:17It's a complex look into motherhood.
01:21How did you...
01:22Were you writing for the characters or were you writing for the scenes?
01:27I thought about this score a lot because it is a thriller, you could do the things you
01:33need to do to make the house stand and nobody would flag you, nobody would tell you, you
01:40wouldn't get fired.
01:42But I always felt like this was such an...
01:44The word motherhood is really, I think, the key to this because there's like that last
01:47music we played.
01:48There's an element of the story that goes to this mythic connection between a parent and
01:52a child that I feel like the actors did such a great job.
01:56And my goal with the score was to try to obviously give you all those wonderful thriller beats.
02:00The show delivers these amazing surprises and plot twists.
02:03But I wanted it to really get you in the gut.
02:06I mean, the acting goes there, the writing goes there.
02:08So that was sort of, I would say, the overall goal with it.
02:13So horns in House of Cards, a lot of strings here.
02:17Talk about your instrumentation.
02:19Yeah.
02:20And this is probably a good idea to thank our bosses in the studios because this is a wonderful
02:25event.
02:26First time I've ever done this.
02:27And thanks to all the studios that really make this happen.
02:30Thank you for doing this.
02:31This is an incredible celebration of the art of TV music.
02:34If I would have told you 10 years ago, this is incredible.
02:40And I love strings.
02:43It's a big part of my musical voice.
02:45It was obviously a big part of the House of Cards score and a lot of other things I've
02:48done.
02:49I learned around the time I was doing, the reason I mentioned studios, around the time
02:52I was learning this, Carnival Films, who was sort of the production company part of Universal,
02:58they told me, hey, we got money for an orchestra.
03:00And I said, oh, thank God.
03:01And that's really, as I was writing that first episode, I said, okay, you know, it really
03:07affects when you know you have the resources that you can write it.
03:10And obviously, given the things I just said about emotion, you know, strings are great
03:14at really going to that emotion in a very honest way.
03:18But also the thrilling aspects.
03:20I mean, when you have a real string orchestra, I can do all the fun stuff and the scary stuff
03:23and the spooky stuff and all that other creepy, creepy stuff.
03:26So talk about pacing the score, particularly in the revelations and the investigation that
03:34goes on.
03:35Yeah.
03:37I was talking about this last night and it's, you know, it's, you never want to tell the
03:41audience what's going to happen.
03:42Luckily for our show, I don't think people are really going to guess, especially at the
03:46end of the show.
03:47But you want things to feel organic and you want them to be surprised.
03:51So one of the things I try to do is just be honest with each of the characters in the
03:56moment they are.
03:57I, of course, know where the story is going, but really one of the things I worked on a
04:02lot and tried to spend a lot of time fascinating about this show is like it's kind of about
04:07a lot of people who are human beings making very difficult choices and often the wrong
04:14choice, a moral choice, but what, but in even Peter, the husband, there's some sort of weird
04:19logic that follows from everything they do.
04:21If Peter was obviously a narcissist, you know, we know that, but he had his own justification.
04:26So I tried to write from the honesty of the character's point of view, even the people
04:31that end up being unreliable narrators or dishonest people to Sarah Snook's character.
04:35So that was one thing I felt because it's almost a way of, I wouldn't call it manipulating,
04:41but it'd be bringing your audience along, you know, and not feeling like you were always
04:47having to goose the drama in terms of pacing, but just sort of letting moments really stand
04:53emotionally so that when shit happens, it's surprising and it's like, well, wow, something
04:57just happened, you know?
04:59And, you know, it's funny, this last episode, Sophia, I forgot, I'm going to forget her last
05:05name, but, you know, this is a good example of just how deep the acting bench is.
05:08You know, this episode seven that that last theme is from, you know, this is a character
05:12we think is a kidnapper.
05:14She is a kidnapper, you know?
05:16But again, wow, what an amazing tragedy and a story and a tragedy, but also what a great
05:22performance.
05:22Like everybody, all the acting in this show is so good.
05:25I mean, Sarah is just remarkable, but really so many acts, so much great acting.
05:29And that's, I mean, I'm selfish, but that's what I love.
05:31You know, I love scoring great performances.
05:33That's just, I get really excited.
05:36What got you into scoring for film and television?
05:40Wow.
05:41You know, I mean, I grew up in the, I was born in 1963, so I grew up in the
05:4570s, and I would
05:46say there's two things.
05:47One is going to the movies, obviously, you know, all the stuff you'd imagine, Star Wars
05:50and Apocalypse Now and having my mind blown, Dear Hunter, but also just like watching, we're
05:55at the TV event, watching TV in the 70s was great.
05:58Like Rockford Files and Mannix and, oh gosh, Barnaby Jones.
06:02I mean, there's so much great music on television.
06:04I thought, that sounds really cool.
06:05And I was into writing music, but it was really, I went to the Eastman School of Music, and
06:10my senior year, there was a course in film music, and I did that.
06:13I thought, oh, this is really interesting.
06:15You mentioned the trumpet earlier, you know, I'm a jazz trumpet player.
06:19And so, I thought maybe I was going to be, you know, like a Wynton Marcellus type guy
06:23or, you know, make records.
06:24And I did some of that, and I still do some of that, but I found that writing a score
06:29is
06:29much like, very much like playing jazz in the sense that you're in a band.
06:32It's all about listening to what everybody else is doing.
06:34It's an incredibly collaborative art form, and that's what I love.
06:38Everything I do, whether it's film or concert music, whether I love the ways in which, you
06:43know, the whole can become greater than the sum of its parts when you get a lot of really
06:47smart, talented people together.
06:49Jeff Beal.
06:51Peacock's all her fault.
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