If you have ever seen one of the How to Train Your Dragon films, you have heard John Powell's famous film scores, which have earned him 3 Grammys and an Academy Award nomination. He is most well known for his scores behind animated films like Happy Feet although he also collaborated on many live-action films like the Bourne Identity. Powell has also frequently worked with Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams.
For his score in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Powell collaborated with John Williams and both used methods of flow and divergent thinking in their compositions. Powell started with different themes for each character, like "hand hero theme" and "Hans searching theme," eventually weaving these themes together into full pieces. Powell also recorded music from around the world for his scores, from a 98-piece orchestra in London to a 36-voice Bulgarian women's choir in Sofia. All of his bits and pieces of theme and worldly sounds were brought together into a beautiful score.
I first fell in love with John Powell's music from the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack. Specifically, the song "Test Drive" is absolutely masterful, especially the more I learn about the details of the piece. The song takes two different character themes and overlaps them first in dissonance and later into a beautiful melody. This mirrors the scene occurring on-screen of Hiccup (a young Viking) and Toothless (his dragon) learning to fly together for the first time and the challenges they overcame to fly in harmony. If you haven't seen the film look up this scene on Youtube (it's worth it!).
One of the greatest Hollywood creatives today, John Powell is an unassuming and hard-working composer who has had an immense effect on the film score field and will hopefully continue to do so.
The How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack has been one of my favorite movie soundtracks since it came out. Simply beautiful, and incredibly atmospheric. I really appreciated this insight to his process!
ReplyDeleteHappy Feet and How To Train Your Dragon were a few of my favorite animated movies growing up. I was actually listening to Test Drive from How to Train Your Dragon on Spotify the other day. It's really cool how he also works with Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams. I didn't realize that this was the man responsible for many of these amazing sound tracks. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI especially liked your point on how he acts as a medium between what is happening on screen and music. I think this point is very beautiful. Great job!
ReplyDeleteDespite seeing many of his films and having heard the music behind them, I had never heard of John Powell before reading this post. I found it incredibly interesting to hear how versatile of a composer he is in terms of the various genres he composes for. I also found it really interesting to hear about how he collaborates with other composers and incorporates so many different musical elements into his scores.
ReplyDeleteI also really love the How to train your Dragon soundtrack. That in addition to Powell's other works goes to show how much emotion and storytelling you can convey with just the music alone. Test Drive is a fantastic example of showing the relationship between two characters without words as well as encapsulating their visions of the future... it's really beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThe film score in How to Train Your Dragon is one of my all time favorites. It completely finishes off the movie and adds a sense of emotion that producers and creators would not have been able to achieve with just visuals. I love how he describes his use of music to tell a “four-dimensional story” because that is exactly how I view his creative product. He connects the visual imagery of a film and the storyline with his music. In his How to Train Your Dragon score, you can truly hear the two characters building their trust and relationship as they learn to fly together!
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