The Film Scorer

As the title gives away, this is one of my rare repeat-guest interviews, this time with Laura Karpman. Coincidentally, the last time Laura and I talked was almost three years to the day. Then, we discussed her scores for The Marvels and for American Fiction, and this time we're talking about East of Eden, her new short film Cosmic Symphony, and Unsung: A Symphonic Suite for the Superhero Women of Classic Hollywood. Compare those five projects - quite a range, eh? The plan for the interview was really to focus on East of Eden, but as these often go, we were off on a tangent almost before we began. The cool thing about when that happens is that it's completely off the cuff - neither of us had intended on talking about Cosmic Symphony, so I don't have any direct questions prepared and she presumably hadn't been talking about it too much in other interviews. As a result, everything feels more reactive, with some ensuing anecdotes that hadn't been talked about before. It's also interesting hearing how different a composer's job can be when they're scoring a project that they also directed - she ends up "unleashed and free” while also having to fight against the hangups of Laura the director. Of course, we also dig into East of Eden. The primary focus is on how she approached scoring Cathy, viewing her with empathy and not simply as a "monster". This results in her actively and consciously pushing the viewers' perspective of Cathy through score - something that music almost always does, but that gets unfairly maligned sometimes as "manipulation" (which we talk about too). Laura also penned an essay about East of Eden and unsung, which you can read here. The essay isn't required reading for this interview by any means, but it's something we reference a couple of times and makes for a very good supplement. Of course, it's also interesting on its own, particularly as it isn't something that composers do often. Laura's score for East of Eden, and much of her other music is available on all major platforms, while the show is currently airing on Netflix. You can find out more about Laura on her website.

After a teeny tiny little break (completely unintentional), the show is back on the road. Joining me in this welcome back party is Tim Kasher. Tim is probably best known as the frontman for bands like Cursive and The Good Life, but he also has a parallel career as a director and film composer, primarily scoring the films he's directed. His latest is the film/score Who's Watching. The film follows a stalker making a film about his victim and he's also a bass player for a local metal band. As a result, we get score written from the stalker's perspective (as if he made it) and healthy doses of underground, grimy metal. Totally up my alley. So we dig into those, our mutual love (and criticism) of metal, the reason (or lack thereof) for bringing Cursive together to write a new song for the film, and plenty more. Two little warnings here: first, we got a lot of swearing in this one and not just in general, as the band within the film has a pretty explicit name. As a result, I haven't edited any of that out. Second, each of us had some audio issues (my primary audio file ended up getting corrupted and was unusable), so it won't sound quite as crisp as normal. Tim's score for Who's Watching comes out on October 30 (a little horror just in time for Halloween), while much of his other music (solo and in his bands) is available on all major platforms, as is the film itself.

Olivier Deriviere (Plague Tale, Dying Late, Streets of Rage) joins me on The Film Scorer. Olivier has had two big projects come out within the last year or so, the third entries to the Dying Light (Dying Light: The Beast) and Plague Tale (Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy) franchises. As such, we dig into the music of both games, which are strikingly different from one another, the latter having plenty of heavier, "rage"-filled moments (with inspiration from 28 Days Later) while the latter introduces a number of Greek instruments and choir, with any peace shattered with the roar of a carnyx. Of course, we also dive into a number of other directions. The most notable of these, for me, is the responsiveness of a game's score to the player's actions. Oftentimes, a game's score can serve as a backdrop in given locations or will have general responses to what happens in the game (such as going from exploration to combat), but Olivier goes much deeper, telling me that his scores can react to thousands of different parameters. For instance, in Dying Light: The Beast, the score responds to various elements of the game's parkour system, changing as the player makes different moves, makes mistakes, or enters into a "flow state", while Olivier used the game Get Even as a sort of R&D laboratory, pushing the extent to which the music and gameplay can interact. In his view, as games get increasingly technical with things like physics, lighting, and graphics, why shouldn't the music follow suit? Olivier's scores for Dying Light: The Beast and Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while the games are available digitally. You can find out more about Olivier on his website.

This week, Lorne Balfe joins me on The Film Scorer. Lorne has about two-hundred credits to his name across film, TV, and video games, including projects like Top Gun: Maverick, a couple Mission: Impossible films, The Crown, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, and a whole load more. Not a bad resume... Now, although he normally releases about ten scores a year, 2026 has been a much quieter year for him, conducting at the global tour of Top Gun: Maverick in Concert and working on the new adaptation of The Cat in the Hat, coming out in November. We talk about each a little bit, but it also gives us an opportunity to really jump away from focusing on any single project. Instead, Lorne and I spent the hour and a half we had chatting about a pretty wide range of topics, getting really deep into the film scoring industry and the business side around it. We also have a bittersweet moment where we talk about composer and conductor Nick Glennie-Smith, who Lorne knew and worked with for many years before he passed away in mid-August. One note - Lorne and I were chatting away before hitting record, so the interview starts a little in media res. But don't worry, nothing juicy got cut off.

Today, Takeshi Furukawa (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) joins the show! Takeshi's latest projects have been scoring the both seasons of Netflix's live action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender as well as Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf, the sequel to the hit indie platformer Planet of Lana. It's no surprise, then, that we planned on talking about both Avatar and Planet of Lana II quite a bit, and we do get into them some. For Avatar, we primarily focused on the constraints of the live action version, including the change in medium, the change in tone, and the production only receiving permission to use certain existing themes from the animated original. On Lana, we really focus on the expansion of the score, whereby as the game increases in scope, so too does the music. This included added to the breadth of music and palette, and in particular Takeshi finally getting his hands dirty with synths. The most notable thing, in my opinion, however, doesn't fall to any specific score. Rather, it relates to Takeshi's career as a whole. Our interview ended up being maybe the most open and personal a composer has gotten on the show, with Takeshi discussing his anxieties and fears as a composer, culminating in the worry that one day he'll "disappear", that “I’m afraid that people are going to get tired of me.” It feels ridiculous to hear him say this given the skill and diversity of his scores, and the high profile of the projects he works on, but I'm sure it's a very real concern for many composers, well-founded or not, and I hope it provides comfort to other composers listening in. Takeshi's scores for the Avatar: The Last Airbender series and Planet of Lana I and II, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while the show itself is available on Netflix and the games are available digitally. You can find out more about Takeshi on his website.

Hard to believe that we're already about a quarter of the way through season 6 - feels like we've only just started. To commemorate this occasion, I'm joined by Kara Talve. Kara has been the principal composer of The Simpsons for the last few years, serves as the principal composer at Bleeding Fingers Music (the Hans Zimmer-founded composer collective), and has scored projects like Prehistoric Planet (and the upcoming Harry Potter series). In fact, we spend much of our conversation talking about Prehistoric Planet, for which she received her fifth Emmy nomination just a few hours before we conducted this interview. Prehistoric Planet gave us plenty to cover: the constantly changing styles and genres (in part due to the ever-changing locations and "characters" of the show), building unique instruments, driving the story due to minimal character or narrative, and more. The instrument side of things was particularly interesting to me. A lot of the time it feels like a gimmick that perhaps has a connection with the film but doesn't actually noticeable change the sound of the score. But then you get something like the terror tone, an instrument based off of the fossilized larynx and trachea of Llallawavis scagliai, creating an otherworldly evil sound. To make this and other instruments, they consulted with paleontologists to get measurements, frequencies, and other aspects related to these creatures. Kara even mentions that using bone in percussion gives a resonance you don't normally find, which reminded me of the use of a deer skull as percussion in Agalloch's seminal album The Mantle. Kara's score for the first two seasons of Prehistoric Planet, and much of her other music, is available on all major platforms while the show itself is available on Apple TV. However, for unknown reasons the score for season 3 remains unreleased (and Kara makes a call for its release during the interview). You can find out more about Kara on her website.

Gavin Brivik is the latest guest on The Film Scorer! I've been familiar with Gavin's work for quite a while, probably dating back to his score for the 2021 film Wild Indian, which was one of those situations where I hear someone making great music on under the radar indie films and wonder when they're going to break out. How to Blow Up a Pipeline helped put Gavin on the map while scoring seasons one and two of The Pitt has really changed things, earning him an Emmy nomination in the process. One of the driving keys to Gavin's success, in my opinion, is that he's a longtime listener to the show, which is actually how we start the conversation and why it has an in media res beginning - it was too good for me to keep out. All this is just window dressing, however. While we touch on The Pitt, Pipeline, and my own Film Scorer project, we really planned to dig into his latest score: Faces of Death, which is sort of a legacy sequel to the 1978 film of the same name. As a result, we end up going down perhaps the most philosophical conversation that's ever been had on the show, largely stemming from the question of "What makes a piece of art evil?" and going from there. But don't despair, there's still plenty of film music conversation, and we even break the news that Gavin is scoring the Rainbow Six Siege games series, which includes a collaboration with Metal Gear Solid. Gavin's score for Faces of Death, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while the film itself is now available on Shudder. You can find out more about Gavin on his website.

One of the great pleasures of this show is talking to people whose work I really enjoy. Although I'd known Keegan Dewitt's music for a number of years (probably first taking notice with 2018's Gemini), his score for last year's The Chair Company really floored me, with the distinct and ever-changing palette and approaches intriguing me almost as much as the show's labyrinthine plot. So with all that said, it's great to have Keegan on the show. However, we really focus on Keegan's latest project - scoring the hit romance series Off Campus. As such, we spend much of the conversation talking about his score for Off Campus, including collaborating with the show's time (particularly the music supervisor's and series creator Louisa Levy) and a little snafu where he accidentally disclosed some confidential behind-the-scenes info early on in the show. Along the way, we cover a number of his other projects, discuss how to score comedy and romance in new ways, and the three reasons to take on a project. Keegan's score for Off Campus, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while the show itself is available on Amazon Prime. You can find out more about Keegan on his website.

On the latest episode of The Film Scorer podcast, I'm joined by John Paesano (Daredevil, Marvel's Spider-Man)! I've been a fan of John's for a while, with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes being a recent favorite, so it was an extra pleasure chatting with him. His latest score is for the Netflix series The Boroughs, in which he channels an 80s/early-90s big, symphonic, melodic adventure style of scoring. Given that the show itself is designed to be very score-heavy, with music going right in the forefront, it takes full advantage of John's score, a welcome refresher given how much less-common the style of scoring has become. While he talk a fair bit about The Boroughs, it's only one of many topics, which include Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the hesitancy of using symphonic scoring, and (my favorite) a chance "encounter" we had more than fifteen years ago. John's score for The Boroughs, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while the show itself is available on Netflix. You can find out more about John on his website.

Here we are, season 6, episode 2, things are in motion, momentum is building, and I'm joined by one of my favorite composers: Cristobal Tapia de Veer (The White Lotus, Smile)! Cristo's latest project is the 2026 BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies, featuring some incredible child actor performances and an increasingly psychedelic and psychotic score. We focus our conversation around that score, but inevitably veer off into different directions, also covering some of his past works with Lord of the Flies director and his longtime collaborator Marc Munden as well as Smile director Parker Finn, our shared interest in metal, the inspiration and magic of the unknown, and plenty more. I even ask point-blank about what happened in The White Lotus. How does he answer? Cristo's score for Lord of the Flies, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while the show itself is available on Netflix.