MCB Interviews Austin Wintory
Jerry Goldsmith (A Patch of Blue, Patton, Papillion, The Omen, Chinatown) left a legacy of film music for generations to come. As a young piano student, Austin Wintory was determined to turn his Goldsmith "obsession" into a career.
Now, Wintory is one of 17 composers "Primed to take their place on the A-list" according to the Hollywood Reporter. He's scored over twenty five feature film scores, most notably the 2009 Sundance hit GRACE, as well as the 2008 Sundance Audience Award winner CAPTAIN ABU RAED.
"I've always been a traditional pen and paper composer," says Wintory. "I love the look of a handwritten manuscript, but when I did the film GRACE, that score was essentially done with custom samples of various 'found' sounds, and so nothing was really notatable...at first it felt like flying blind but ended up feeling very liberating." He notates final scores in Finale, but develops the initial ideas with sample libraries and Digital Performer.
Sample track from GRACE:
"A film I did last year called A LITTLE HELP is coming out this spring in US theaters, and I'm happy to say I just got double nominated at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards for both Original Score and Original Song," says Wintory. Click here to listen to the nominated song, I'm Lucky, written by Wintory and Celeigh Chapman.
Wintory is currently completing the music for a new PS3 game, Journey. "In general, games are quite different from films," says Wintory. "You reference loops. That's one of the biggest challenges because music which endlessly repeats itself is sure to get very irritating and boring. And yet games have, in effect, indeterminate run-times. So it becomes like a jig-saw puzzle to try and make it all work and still be musical."
Any additional free time is spent working on his non-profit, 'Education Through Music' in LA (www.etmla.org). "We just turned 5 years old and had a huge gala celebrating the work of a legendary LA educator named Reggie Andrews, as well as composer Michael Giacchino," Wintory adds.