“rough” draft #3 — exploring original music for TV and film.
i originally intended for this piece to be a slightly deep dive into daniel pemberton as one of my favorite film composers working today, right behind ludwig göransson, and the impact of his effervescent and visceral approach to composing on the broader industry. for example, the sonic links between pemberton’s SPIDER-VERSE scores and goransson’s BLACK PANTHER scores. even outside of the superhero genre, i don’t think the SINNERS (2025) score would sound the way it does without the ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (2023) score. my ears can hear the connections music creates with itself, here with the use and relationship of guitar and the drums. in some cases, without the conscious knowledge of the creators. i think of pemberton as a composer’s composer – someone not enough general audience members know who’s quietly inspiring the names we do know. that exploration into pemberton will come. i will write it because i want to read it, and because i believe the interrogation of film music in further detail needs to exist outside of the incredible but small number of podcasts, video essays, and books i’ve been consuming for the past 10+ years, largely from composers who are fascinated by their own field enough to share it with others. and apparently also outside of my brain and the pages and pages of notes i’ve been trying to figure out how to share with people.
growing up and hearing so much about famous composers, i expected i would be able to read or access a great deal of writing or scholarship or simply a bit more analysis of the choices of these composers’ instruments, chords, tempo, and the result of these choices on the story taking place on the screen, whether live action or animated. i’m a woman born in the late 80s – hans zimmer and john williams have made an indelible impact on who i am as both a movie and music watcher and lover. williams’ JURASSIC PARK score emphasizing the triumphs and horrors of humans’ careless ingenuity. zimmer’s GLADIATOR score intensifying maximus’ real world myth-making as a general becoming a gladiator becoming a giant. the what of their compositions is what people can easily recall: the themes, the emotion, the intensity, the nostalgia, but over the years, i’ve consistently been left wondering about their how and why. why did the composers themselves feel drawn to their selected instrumentation? what notes, if any, were they given from their directors? are there any patterns we notice about the most memorable movie music? what is it about these pieces that resonates with us as human beings? what is it about their music and our humanity that becomes so inextricably linked people who haven’t even seen the films know and understand its impact?
original music crystallizes moments. both then and now.
the portals opening scene in AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019) instantly became a moment in cinematic history and it doesn’t happen without the what of alan silvestri’s “portals”. but the how and why of “portals” itself is what’s stayed on my mind nearly a decade later – the repetition of the avengers leitmotif silvestri developed for THE AVENGERS (2012), the selection of the leitmotif specifically from the original film and what that means to the story in AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019), and the reprise of the leitmotif with more triumphant orchestration. the brass and percussion – what both signify in the annals of cinematic history, and by extension, human history, reinforcing our knowledge of what victory sounds like. silvestri’s decisions are informed by and create narrative connections, which breathes life into the music and into the stories being told in part by the music.
in a very opposite way, original music can also introduce a completely new and fresh vibe to a much older time, helping us see and feel characters as anachronistic to the world around them – daniel lopatin’s MARTY SUPREME (2025) original score is a fantastic example of this, using an 80s synth-heavy score to help us see marty mauser’s narcissism and intense commitment to making his dreams come true as brash and foreign to that of his contemporaries in the 1950s.
we’re also seeing this purposeful composition in television – the romance genre providing fertile ground, with kris bowers’ bridgerton (2020-2026) original scores, weaving connections between couples over seasons through his thoughtful repetition of leitmotifs, and more recently with peter peter’s poignant original music for heated rivalry (2025) contributing heavily to the emotional underbelly of shane hollander and ilya rozanov’s decade-long love story. it has been encouraging to see my initial analysis of heated rivalry season 1 original score resonate with others because it tells me we’re hungry for this exploration. we want to know more about what this music means to the overall story being told onscreen. why we’re hearing what we’re hearing.
there will always be a place for analysis of lyrics and lyricism – words are endlessly fascinating. but what they lie on top of, or where they don’t reside at all, deserves to be put under the microscope as well. music that leaves room for interpretation but also speaks loudly. tells us something but not everything. or sometimes too little or too much, when done less than ideally. right now, i’m thinking about pemberton‘s use of flutes in THE DRAMA (2026) – the flightiness and anxiety and breath. the playing of the instrument influences the way we hear it and interpret it. john murphy’s use of the electric guitar in “raising the flag” to reimagine john william’s original superman theme (1978) in SUPERMAN (2025) and how this choice reflects writer-director james gunn’s decision to tell a modern superhero that also harkens back to the original comic’s central tenet of goodness and hope for humanity. zimmer’s INTERSTELLAR (2014) and pemberton’s PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026) original scores and what they tell us about how our thoughts about space travel, humanity, hope, and love have or haven’t changed between 2014 and 2026. beyond the role original music plays on the art its created for, it’s also hard for me to not see the way instrumentation and orchestration can and do reflect the state of affairs in our world today – piano and guitar highlighting internal softness and humanity buried under shame and cynicism, strings and woodwinds highlighting our anxiety, percussion and electronic music our persistent rage and rhythm and discord. a silent story being told in the music of television and film about where our hearts and minds are as humans. a story i hope to keep shedding light on.
