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 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.