"It's quite different from the first score, but it retains a lot of the same cool elements," Debney says. "There's a lot of guitar in it, but most of it is couched with the orchestra, so we never lose sight of that whole thing."

"That whole thing" means the vast enterprise referred to as a tentpole or summer blockbuster. Composers tasked with scoring these movies not only have to contend with super-heated action, rapid-fire editing and overpowering sound mixes; they also have to cope with schedules that can be in flux right up to the end of postproduction -- and convey a sense of bigness that belongs with budgets reaching $200 million and more.

Ramin Djawadi scored the first "Iron Man" with a strong dose of metal guitar, and director Jon Favreau wanted to keep some of that while exploring a new direction. He also wanted to maintain the continuity of the rock guitar aspect that characterized the hell-raising persona of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and his "metal man" alter ego, Iron Man.

"As Iron Man has evolved from his scrappy beginnings, we want to establish him as being more comfortable with the mantle of a superhero," the director says.

A blend of classic orchestral film scoring from Debney; rock stylings courtesy of guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine; AC/DC songs -- and even a surprising touch of Walt Disney -- contributed to that.

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The double Oscar-winning composer and the English orchestra will soon team up for a concert and also compose for a Hollywood movie. Apart from this, sources also say Rahman may team up with film-maker Danny Boyle for another movie soon. The duo had earlier worked together on Slumdog Millionaire.

A source says, “Rahman has been approached for a big-budget English production by a very big studio. Then there are talks that he might be teaming up with Danny Boyle again. That movie is likely to have an urban feel. That might happen even sooner.”

Rahman had earlier said during the course of an interview, “I thank Danny Boyle for giving me a great movie. It has been a truly memorable experience to work with him and I shall always look forward to working with him. I hope to get an opportunity in the form of a right movie soon.”

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IGN Music: What did scoring the cinematics (of Need for Speed 2 Undergound) entail?

Tom Salta: They would send me each cinematic as it was completed and give me a document that spotted the scene, which means they described what they envisioned the music doing as the scene progressed. We started like that and then I'd come up with things, FTP them back to them, they'd listen, they'd make notes, I'd read the notes, and do the revisions. That's how the whole thing came about.

Read the entire interview at IGN.com...

"I mean, the best way to describe my process is I'll try to pick three or four scenes that I think are crucial turning point scenes to the movie. Maybe, something in the beginning, something in the middle, and certainly there's always some major moments towards the end that define the bigger or more important moments in the film. And I'll put an inordinate number of hours into those scenes. Sometimes, I'll even add the main titles to that. The main titles may not seem important, but they often are to me. Because that's, again, very often how I'll define the tone of what I'm getting into and how it's all going to work.

So if I've written a main title, and I've got three or four or five scenes leading up to a finale. And I feel like I've got those nailed, and I can understand in my head where the themes go and how I need them to behave for me — meaning, do I need them to: If I have a theme I like, do I need it to get whimsical? Do I need it to get heroic? Do I need it to get serious? Do I need it to get mocking? Do I need it to get sarcastic? You know, what do I need it to do? And I need to know that it's going to do all those things I'm going to ask it to. So it's kind of like the theme become an animal, and I've got to make sure it can do all these tricks that I'm going to demand it to do. Before I, then, go about the process of starting the rest of the score."

Read more at firstshowing.net...