When a big video game production company hires a Grammy-award winning composer like Austin Wintory, out of Hollywood, to create the musical score for a game that takes place in New Orleans, what does the composer do?
He moves production to New Orleans, specifically Esplanade Studios, and hires the most talented local musicians money can buy.
If this sounds expensive, it is, but the gaming world generates the kind of revenue that justifies big production budgets.
The revenue that blockbuster video games bring in is staggering. Think “Grand Theft Auto V” or “God of War.” In terms of media, it is not film, TV or records that reap the big bucks; it’s video games.
Movies and television together account for about $35 billion in box office revenue annually (theaters and streaming), and the global recorded music industry generates around $27 billion, but the global gaming industry generates around $200 billion over the same time period.
“Some games are free to play, but you must have a recurring subscription,” said video game and film composer Austin Wintory. “Those games can make unbelievable fortunes. Take the video game “League of Legends.” It makes so much money because there are fan bases in the hundreds of millions, and there’s an ancillary merchandising market, as well.
“See a sword in a particular game that you like? You can own it, because there’s an entire adjacent industry manufacturing the props made popular in these games.”
New Orleans musicians heard on video games
Assembling a group of musicians in New Orleans is easy, because the city has some of the best in the business. On a recent evening at Esplanade Studios, Wintory is working with his group of percussionists. Whether it’s Alexey Marti on congas or Doug Belote on drums, the composer is very specific about the particular sound he is looking for.
Grammy Award-winning composer Austin Wintory conducts the orchestra for bestselling video game, ‘Aliens: Fireteam Elite.’
Wintory and drummer Belote get into the nitty-gritty about technique: when to use the pedal, at what point to bring in the snare, and how to shake up the rhythmic profile while staying on the brushes. It all sounds like code, but it is the language of musicians trying to elicit a very clear-cut and definitive sound.
“For composers who score films, and I’ve done about 60 movie scores, the process behind video games is much different,” Wintory said.
“I must come up with a score for these games before I ever see the video, whereas when scoring a film, you are rolling the footage and designing music that goes with each frame. Because I don’t have footage in this instance, I ask the studios behind the video games a lot of the same questions that I would ask a film director, because it’s critical I have the right feel. So, I’ll want to know what we are trying to communicate, what they want the audience to walk away with, and what the high-level philosophical aspirations of this game might be.”
Music for different video game scenarios
Wintory says he also needs to get into the details of what the music is going to attach to. Is the music accompanying combat, or is it a visualization of the rooftops of London? He says it’s very important to have radically different music that can be appropriate for many different kinds of scenarios.
New Orleans drummer Doug Belote rehearses at Esplanade Studios for an international video game being produced here in the city.
While a typical film may run between 90 minutes and two hours, video games can be long and may require 40-50 hours of music. It’s a process that can take years, just for one game.
Esplanade Studios composer Jay Weigel, left, and Los Angeles score engineer Jim Hill listen to the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra’s recording of the new NFL/Simpsons tune.
And, it’s a collaborative process between the composer, and in this case the co-producer Jay Weigel, and the score engineer, Misha Kachkachishvili, who all find themselves at a mixing console, making the sure the elements are all coming together to produce the desired sound, which Wintory has running through his brain.
A boy wonder from Denver who conducted the Utah Symphony at the age of 18, Wintory, 41, now has 300 scores behind him. His score for the video game “Journey” made history as the only video game soundtrack to be nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.
Although Wintory now makes his home in Los Angeles, center of the film world, L.A. is not a hub for video game composers. The closest thing to that, Wintory says, is Japan. In the states, it might be Seattle or Silicon Valley, all tech hubs. So, it’s nice to have a video game produced in New Orleans — not a tech hub, but definitely a place where the crème de la crème of musicians reside.
The video game Wintory is working on here in the city, whose subject matter and title are for the moment tightly under wraps, will debut later this year and showcase New Orleans, this time, in a different light.
发表回复