I was totally going to wait a couple of weeks to post this rant, but after reading a post over at Kotaku in regards to the MW2 soundtrack being oscar-miked, figured I should oscar-mike the hell out of this rant :).
Yesterday I posted about my new word, Overcrowditation (which I'm very proud of), and how it describes composers within the game biz and game scores themselves with their numerous composers. Not only is Modern Warfare 2 totally guilty of M.I.O. (Massive Internal Overcrowditation) and improper creditation, but it brings up a wholly new issue which scares the **** outta me as a freelance composer. The hiring of A-List, big wig, film composers for millions of dollars. You wonder why MW2 cost $50 million to develop? I give you three words... HANS... FREAKING.... ZIMMER!
(zimmer tidbit #1: He has a freaking chandelier in the hallway where his office is)
Now, I should preface all of this with the fact that not only am I a HUGE fan of the Zimdog, but he is the sole reason I got into doing music in the first place, let alone he basically pioneered the sampling of instruments so all of us game composers have him to thank for that alone. I buy every one of his scores as soon as they are released and will continue to do so, but please Hans, stick to composing for films and not writing themes for games, we have our own niche as game composers and actually NEED the work, well.. I suppose game composers like Inon Zur are doing alright.. but some of us really truly need the work. To make matters worse, when your hero in the film score world becomes your competition... ugh.. that sucks.
(zimmer tidbit #2: He played keyboard in the Buggles, yup.. the band behind "Video Killed The Radio Star")
This is happening all over the place, not just with MW2. Steve Jablonsky (known for his scores for The Island and Transformers) just scored Gears of War 2 and The Sims 3. Tyler Bates (Dawn of the Dead and Get Carter) has finished scoring Army of Two: The 40th Day. This is a disturbing trend indeed.. and is a trend all of you peeps who want to break into composing for games need to be aware of. Companies used to hire guys like me who can sound like a specific Hollywood composer... now they have the cash to actually HIRE said composer. How's that for some seriously stiff competition??
Now, how many of you caught the "Themes" part above when I was knocking Hans for scoring games? That's right, the Zimdog didn't actually compose most of the music for MW2, he just did... the themes. He's done this before for films like Pirates of the Caribbean.. but strangely in that case, Klaus Badelt got the credit for the score (as is the way it should have been). But with MW2, Zimmer is getting all of the credit.. not the real composer..Lorne Balfe.
(zimmer tidbit #3: Zimmers personally built Moog synthesizer was sampled for the Spectrasonics Omnisphere synth library)
Lets get to the meat of this thing... MW2 had 14 (F O U R T E E N) composers excluding additional soloists and the army of mastering techs they have over at Zimmers cushy Santa Monica company, Remote Control Productions (formerly Media Ventures). Here's a full list of contributors for the music of MW2, and some of these names will blow your mind:
Main Themes by Hans Zimmer
Music Produced by Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe
Music Composed by Lorne Balfe (Balfe is one of Zimmers apprentices that Hans has helped move up in the ranks by letting him do additional music... uncredited... in many of his films... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1154632/ )
Additional Music:
Mark Mancina - yes, the composer behind Bad Boys, Speed, Twister and Assassins... um.. WTF.
Nick Phoenix - really? This guy does trailer music and is the brainchild behind many (if not all) of the sample libraries at soundsonline.com. Thats right, SD2, EWQL Orchestra, Symphonic Choirs... all this guy. So why is he involved.. strange. A little tidbit about Symphonic Choirs and Voices of the Apocalypse if any of you own either of those two sample libraries. DO NOT use either of them for film trailers as Phoenix will sue the begeesus outta you. This is actually listed in the manuals for these libraries.. albeit not as eloquently as I put it :) . Since he does trailer music with it, he wants to keep everything status quo. Moving on.
Thomas Bergersen - Works with Phoenix.
Dave Metzger
Jacob Shea
Noah Sorota
Atli Örvarssön
Additional Arranging & Programming (these are all basically additional composers)
Bart Hendrickson, Clay Duncan, Ryeland Allison, Andrew Kawczynski, Tom Broderick
Music Editor - Dan Pinder
Music Production Services - Steven Kofsky
Music Supervisor - Tom Broderick
Score Wrangler - Bob Badami
Soloists ‑ Guitar Tom Broderick
Percussion - Satnam Ramgotra, Ryeland Allison
Violin - Noah Sorota
Music Mixed by Alan Meyerson
Additional Engineering - Katia Lewin Palomo, Slamm Andrews, Jeff Biggers (actually met Jeff when I was in L.A. once.. nice guy. Remote Control does quite literally have an army of engineers at their disposal. So don't feel bad if your music doesn't sound as good.)
Assistant Engineer - Adam Schmidt
Production Coordinator for Hans Zimmer - Andrew Zack
Music Mixed at Remote Control Productions Inc.
Yup... $50 million, that's what it will get you... a big time name to help market your game (Zimdog) who has tons of resources to soloists and engineers that most of us couldn't even dream of having access to. It should be said that I thought the bits of music that Zimmer actually wrote for the game were amazing and really made me smile while playing... those bits of music within the MW2 score should be overly obvious to any of you other Zimdog purists out there. But this score must have cost as much as a small country in Europe.
(zimmer tidbit #4: You want to work for Zimmer? Good luck, they don't listen to unsolicited demos and you would have to work there for FREE as a midi programmer for the better part of 3 to 4 years to even get noticed.. or so I've heard)
Just because you have the money Infinity Ward / Activision (and we all know you do), doesn't mean you have to spend it all. There's plenty of us out there that could have done what was done for this score.. and for far cheaper. Not saying it would be done better... after all Activision.. you did hire the great Hans Zimmer... or did you?
You know I've been wondering this Hans Zimmer and credits thing for some time now too. Guess they really are just buying his name on things lately.
ReplyDeleteThis trend in big studio games drives me crazy...lets have an army of composers and squeeze the life out of the score. I just firmly believe that a composer is not the same as an art department. There is no need for 20 guys to compose the score to a game or movie. You lose the beauty behind the composer's artistic translation of the material. I don't know if they expect that more composers will get it done faster or if it will sound better. But to me, more means overdone, worn out themes. It's like over flavoring a soup...the more ingredients you put in eventually makes the soup a tired mess of indistinguishable flavors. No thanks! I want original takes on game worlds and fresh scores to bring them alive. One composer capturing the essence of the game and story and producing a work of art. Not tired out themes we've heard a million times. Now I will give Zimdog his due credit. Man is a genius for creating media ventures...but I still prey for the poor souls trapped there editing midi notes for free.
ReplyDeleteWell now you know Jarkko! Pretty interesting isn't it? Zimmer has been doing this for years in the film industry, I just wish it had stayed there. I don't feel that there is any need for multiple composers on a single game project.
ReplyDeleteOnce again Ed, great points! I totally agree with you and think that it really detracts from the "style" of a game when multiple composers are involved.
Rich,
ReplyDeleteThe restriction on film trailers for VOTA and Symphonic Choirs has actually been lifted. The Symphonic Choirs product page (http://www.soundsonline.com/Symphonic-Choirs-Virtual-Instrument-PLAY-Edition-pr-EW-182.html) mentions that it no longer applies to VOTA, at least as far as the Symphonic Choirs VOTA expansion is concerned, and the restriction is not mentioned in the EULA for the PLAY version of Symphonic Choirs. I don't know whether or not this new license applies to users who agreed to the earlier license and are still using earlier versions of the libraries.
Well now, that's VERY good news indeed. Had no clue so thanks for the update!
ReplyDeleteI was always a bit miffed by that restriction so it's great to hear it has gone bye bye. I only recently picked up Symphonic Choirs and honestly just assumed the same restriction from VOtA applied to it as well.
I'm happy to see the considerable subtle element here!. Media Files Optimizer
ReplyDelete