We all stared at Godzilla towering over the Cinerama Dome for the last time, as if offering own prayers to the First Gods. Their work, staggering as it was, was about to be dismantled and shoved into storage, piece by piece, to live on only in social media images that could not possibly do it justice. They had come to pay their last respects to Godzilla, as their creation would be torn down the following day. I showed them footage of my taiko ensemble chanting their signature kakegoe during recording sessions. They showed me cell phone footage of a crane lifting the massive rigging above Sunset Boulevard. We exchanged stories of our experiences working on Godzilla. We started chatting, and they introduced themselves as two of the team that had conceived of and built the massive installation atop the Cinerama Dome. I noticed two men standing next to us, who were also staring at the gargantuan Godzilla with the same mix of awe, even solemn appreciation. Looking skyward, I also began to assess what an incredible work of art this giant Godzilla head installation actually was! At least 150 feet high, it pierced the sky with an aqua-blue tinted searchlight replicating atomic breath. Lastly, I want to thank my close friends and family for helping me survive the writing and recording of this score, especially Sonatine McCreary, who is always my first test audience. I want to thank lead orchestrators Ed Trybek, Henri Wilkinson, and Jonathan Beard, music editors Michael Baber and Daniel Waldman, picture editor Bob Ducsay, everyone at WaterTower Music, especially Joe Kara and Sandeep Sriram, publicist Sabrina Hutchinson, my manager Joe Augustine, promo video editor Alec Siegel, the entire team at Kraft-Engel Management, especially Richard Kraft and Laura Engel, and my entire team at Sparks & Shadows for their tireless efforts on behalf of this project, especially Angelina Park and Jason Akers, who trekked across the globe with me to record it. My eternal gratitude goes to the composers of themes I adapted into the score, Buck Dharma, Yūji Koseki and of course, Akira Ifukube, the composer who taught us that music can roar. I am grateful to all the talented musicians, singers, orchestrators, engineers, music editors, copyists, and assistants who invested their time and talent to bring this score to life. My music has literally never sounded better. Overcome with excitement and ideas, I plunged into the journey that would span nearly two years.Ī special shout out is due to recording engineers Simon Rhodes and Casey Stone, and score mixing engineer Greg Hayes and song mixing engineer Jason LaRocca, whose combined efforts took the production value of my music to astonishing new heights. and Legendary could not have picked a better guy to expand their “MonsterVerse” cinematic universe.Ī few months later, Michael offered me the job scoring Godzilla: King of the Monsters. One of those friends was Michael Dougherty, with whom I share a mutual love of all things “scifi, fantasy, horror genre.” That night, Michael told me he was writing and directing the new Godzilla film, the sequel to the 2014 film, Godzilla, and I thought Warner Bros. I invited a few friends to join me at the Hollywood Bowl performance of Danny Elfman’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, with Elfman himself on stage singing the songs. Nearly thirty years later, Godzilla would emerge into my life again and once again Danny Elfman’s music was playing. classics scored by Akira Ifukube, but Peewee’s Big Adventure, a quirky American comedy scored by my childhood hero, Danny Elfman. However, the film that actually introduced me to Godzilla and Ghidorah was not one of the Toho Co. Like many fans in the West, I knew Godzilla through television broadcasts of Japanese films and ubiquitous media culture. His first cinematic appearance in 1954’s Gojira launched the kaiju film genre, “kaiju,” translating literally to “strange beast.” This summer, he has returned to the big screen in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and I am honored to have composed the score for this next entry in cinema’s longest running franchise. Godzilla has permeated global popular culture for over six decades.
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