Well, the music for Tomorrowland has now been recorded!
Though there was one early session a few months back (to record just a snippet of the movie), we spent this whole last week (Mon-Fri) recording the music for the rest of the film. The sessions last week took place at Sony (the old MGM lot in Culver City), where many Pixar films (including the original Toy Story) were scored – and where more than a few of John Lasseter’s Hawaiian shirts still hang from the rafters. No spoilers as always, but once again a great score, and the movie looks great (with some really neat, cool-looking shots).
This is Michael Giacchino’s 4th film for Brad Bird (after The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol).
A nice treat: on Tuesday, Richard Sherman came by the scoring stage (there was actually a reason why he’d want to come); along with his brother, he wrote the music & songs to Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Winnie The Pooh, and a ton of other Disney (and non-Disney) music. 86 years old now, he’s still sharp as anything, and stood up to talk to us for a bit (if you want to see what he looks like, both Michael and Brad put up a picture of him on their twitter feeds).
One little interesting thing: after recording all the music cues for the movie normally all week, at the very end of the final day, we returned to just a few of the cues (just a handful), and with revised, newly-printed parts, recorded them in retrograde (reverse), with everything printed backwards (notes, dynamics, tempo changes… everything). In other words, if the original version was “A, B, C#, D, E getting louder”, then this time we played “E, D, C#, B, A getting softer.” Then they will digitally “reverse the reverse” (reverse the retrograde version), which will make it sound kind of like the original version of the cue – except with the attacks and ringouts reversed, to kind of give it an interesting effect when mixed with the original version recorded earlier in the week. Neat idea (if they use it), for just a tiny handful of the cues!
Surprised that there’s not any discussion of this movie yet (this is supposed to be a general discussion thread), but I guess that’s because it’s still early, and there’s not much info or advertising about it yet.
Anyway, the scoring for Tomorrowland has now finished.