Composer Mark Isham Talks Music for TV, Scoring ‘Bill & Ted’ Remotely
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The Cannes Film Festival may be off this year, but its Marché du Film is up and running virtually. Monday’s sessions included a “Meet & Listen” conversation with award-winning composer Mark Isham, who revealed that he scored the music to “Bill & Ted Face the Music” remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking to Variety‘s Jon Burlingame, Isham explained: “I was fortunate in that the films I was working on wrapped principal photography, and ‘Bill and Ted’ was done remotely using an orchestra in Budapest. It was assembled all with a mix studio.” All resourcefulness aside, Isham said he misses the live experience more than anything — not just in his work. “That’s a big loss, the lack of live music,” he added. “It’s taken a toll on everyone, the musicians and the culture.”
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Isham has worked on scores for “Fallen,” “Blade,” “Crash,” “The Black Dahlia,” and, most recently, “Little Fires Everywhere.” No stranger to episodic TV — he scored all seven seasons of “Once Upon a Time” — he noted how scoring for the small screen compares to film. “It’s different mainly because of the time structure,” said Isham. “You can have all eight episodes and approach it in a cinematic way. You can thread something from episode eight into episode one. But with twenty-two episodes, by the time you are writing episode seven, episode one has aired and there’s no going back. … It’s fun to come up with new solutions and put that spirit and interactivity into the world.”
Watch the full conversation below
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