Giacchino: Leading The Film Audience

According to composer Michael Giacchino, if a composer is doing his job properly, the music will keep the audience riveted to the movie.

The composer’s job is to work on the emotions of the audience watching the movie.

Giacchino explained how his music helps to get across what J.J. Abrams wants the audience to feel, “…so that you as an audience are right there, following the story, every step of the way. Everything that J.J. wants you to feel and follow; I’m there to help kinda yank you through.

“And yes, you can call that manipulation, it is! All of it…Any film is manipulation, really. None of this is real. So anyone who says, ‘you were manipulating me!’ Well, no shit, of course we were manipulating you, that’s why you go to the movies – to be manipulated.”

Giacchino explained the opening scene of Star Trek into Darkness, and why the movie begins in a hospital. “The opening of the film is quite different from what you would expect from the opening, I think, of a Star Trek film,” he said. “It starts off in the hospital and you’re kind of like — ‘wait, am I in the right theater? What is this? Where the heck am I?’ And that’s intentional. We really wanted to give the audience a distance from the characters. Not speak too plainly about what it is that they’re doing, what’s going on, the music isn’t commenting too much about what’s happening.

“But the idea was to get across that — what you see in front of you, is what you see in front of you, but there’s something much bigger going on behind the scenes. And what is that? I don’t know yet. We don’t know. But it’s growing, and it’s evolving, in a way in which Star Trek music really traditionally doesn’t really do. It’s a slightly different way to approach it.”

Star Trek into Darkness opens in theaters on May 17.

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