Zimmer - Hollywood's Chief Composer

Rain Man

1988

Berry Levinson was looking for someone to write the soundtrack for his new film Rain Man.

Zimmer suggested that the director use synthesizers and steel drums, which was completely contrary to all tradition. Classical movies about a road trip, where the main characters of the film go, were usually accompanied by a guitar or any other string instruments. But Zimmer had his own point of view.

An unusual combination of instruments and

rhythms, which Zimmer was not afraid to put together, was praised by critics and colleagues, and he received his first Oscar nomination.

The film itself was also nominated for the award. Unlike Rain Man, Zimmer did not receive the award, but this successful work in Hollywood opened the door to the world of great American cinema.

Leaving Wallbrook/On The Road

The Lion King

1994

Lebo M was the first one the composer thought of when he began his work. It is with the part of Lebo M that the

The very idea of a cartoon is about a son,

who lost his father early, was close to the composer. Simba reminded him of himself, who had lost his father when he was a child.

"It was me. And the only thing I could do was to open those deep and dark boxes inside me and let the darkness out. In a strange way, the result was epic and quite huge for a cartoon about small furry animals. I don't care what psychologists tell you. But there's no way a 6-year-old can get over it.

Sitting in front of a cartoon about furry animals, suddenly my past hit me like a truck. And suddenly I was writing about how I felt in that moment. That's how music for kids, music with funny animals, became my way of dealing with or confronting my past."

Circle Of Life / King Of Pride Rock - From The Lion King

In Hollywood, Zimmer's work was highly praised - Disney invited the composer to participate in the creation of the animated film The Lion King.

Oscar

Golden Globe

Grammy

For Zimmer, this was his first experience in

animation, but he knew that it would be necessary to write music with African motifs for a movie about lions.

the cartoon, whose vocals can be heard as early as the credits, which was an unexpected and memorable move invented by Zimmer.

The musical finds of the lions cartoon were very different from anything Disney had done before in animation. Zimmer was surprised at all when he received the offer from the studio.

Hans Zimmer won his first Oscar for the original music for The Lion King.

The Lion King Orchestra Suite

Gladiator

1998

For his work for "Gladiator," the composer

was nominated for an Academy Award in 2001 and won a Golden Globe. The music has become as much a trademark of the picture as the famous actors and director.

Elysium

In Hollywood, Zimmer's work was highly praised - Disney invited the composer to participate in the creation of the animated film The Lion King.

Classic Brit Awards

Golden Globe

Critics’ Choice Movie

Scott was shooting "Gladiator," and to complete the idea he lacked the right music, which, in the director's opinion, only Zimmer could have written.

The sound of "Gladiator" was markedly different from its predecessors in the same genre. "Spartacus," "Ben-Hur" and "The Fall of the World" made old-fashioned use of fanfares and complex string melodies.

Instead, Zimmer made "Gladiator" have a thoroughly modern sound that features the voice of Australian singer Lisa Gerrard, who also co-wrote with the composer.

Honor Him

Now We Are Free

Pirates of the Caribbean

2003-2007

The release of Pirates of the Caribbean was about five weeks away. Zimmer

Music written by Zimmer for

"Pirates of the Caribbean," was nominated for a Grammy Award along with his work in "The Da Vinci Code. Quality did not suffer from quantity, but the composer never won an award that year.

was already busy working on the film "The Da Vinci Code" and offered his place to a colleague. When he went to Verbinski to find out the results of the meeting, the composer knew from the despair in which he was, that they would not do without him.

Zimmer sat at the instrument and sat through the morning until he felt that his fingers were already braided rather than playing. He was in such a hurry that he didn't even write the musical theme for Jack Sparrow, which was only created for the second part of the film.

The result exceeded all expectations of Verbinski and Bruckheimer, and they happily continued their collaboration in the next two films of the trilogy.

He's A Pirate

Guilty Of Being Innocent Of Being Jack Sparrow

One Day

2005

2005

Batman Begins

The Dark Knight

2012

2010

The Dark Knight Rises

Inception

2013

2015

Man of Steel

Interstellar

2018

Dunkirk

Batman

Zimmer reasoned that for Bruce

Wayne by day and Batman by night require different music, so together with Howard James Newton they will be able to show this duality of personality in the best possible way, and Nolan agreed with his arguments.

Eptesicus

Classic Brit Awards

Grammy

From the very beginning, Zimmer knew that the film needed a lot of orchestral music, but he himself had already done several such works and, at the time, wanted to concentrate on electronic melodies.

Molossus

The moment of murder was fundamental to Bruce Wayne's story. According to Zimmer, the hero was stuck in that terrible moment and the composer needed to write a main musical theme for the film that reflected that moment.

Zimmer knew he had to figure out a way to make the audience believe a man who was essentially dressing up in a Batman costume. To do that, he himself had to believe the story, believe the character. That's what got him deep into the psyche of Bruce Wayne and Batman.

The motif of Batman's score is only

two repeating notes that leave the listener with an unfinished, unsettling feeling.

2005-2012

Joker

Sounds like scratching your ears, razor

as if he were cutting stringed instruments. As Zimmer later said, he wanted to write something that people would really hate.

Why So Serious

Composers Zimmer and Howard continued their collaboration while working on the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight. This time the most discussed part of the music from the movie was the Joker's theme.

But gradually the annoying sounds subside as the film progresses. Batman's musical theme absorbs the Joker's theme and becomes more melodic.

Bain

"Let your voice be heard.

and be part of our journey."

Gotham's Reckoning

Zimmer is already on his own. The picture was supposed to be the point in the nine-year work on superheroes. In the third part there was a new villain - Bane - and his composer had to present him in a special way.

Recordings were sent in from 107 countries and in the end the composer was able to create a polyphony.

Despite the successful tandem of composers, was finishing the Dark Knight: Legend Reborn trilogy,

Zimmer's idea was to get thousands of voices to participate. Technically, it would have been impossible to invite everyone to the studio and record the track, so Zimmer decided to involve Batman fans.

Anyone could record themselves and send it to the composer over the Internet.

Inception

In 2011, Zimmer received

Another Oscar nomination for the music for Inception. But the real recognition went to the sound that the composer wrote for the film's trailer.

Inception: Time - Orchestra Version

Saturn Awards

Hollywood Music

Half Remembered Dream

The new interlacing so appealed to the movie makers that they began to use the sound in their teasers, following the example of Inception. In an interview, Zimmer said that the special interlacing was already prescribed in the script.

Zimmer was given the task of coming up with a sound that would "cleanse the room like a Tibetan bell. It had to be sharp and impressive. Together with the film team, they swapped the sounds around, layered them on top and bottom, scrolled back, and ended up with the very "bruuuum." Regardless of the origin story, the interlacing has become almost mandatory in modern trailers.

Dream Is Collapsing

2010

Interstellar

"He sat on my couch and I played him

a passage. He paused for a second and said: "I'd better start making the movie right now."

Cornfield Chase

Saturn Awards

Day One

In the next picture Christopher Nolan offered to collaborate with Zimmer when there was not even a script. He sent Zimmer a letter. There was only one dialogue on the page, consisting of two lines: "I'll be back" - "When?".

In one day, Zimmer wrote a musical, full of love, letter to his child. In the evening he called Nolan and offered to send his composition; the director preferred to come himself and hear what Zimmer had written in person.

First Step

2015

Later, Zimmer asked Nolan what his movie would be about. And the director began to describe an epic story about space, science and humanity.

At the premiere, the composer sat next to his son and watched his reaction. For him, the film took on a special meaning. Zimmer's music for the film earned him another Oscar and Golden Globe nomination.

Dunkirk

The Oil

End Titles (Dunkirk)

The Zimmer-Nolan tandem's last film together to date was Dunkirk, released in 2018. After receiving the script, the composer personally traveled to Dunkirk, a city in France where British, French, and Belgian troops were blockaded during World War II.

From Dunkirk to Los Angeles he brought a small glass jar of sand. The souvenir prompted Zimmer to base the music on a mathematical idea, to which Nolan immediately agreed.

2018

It took Zimmer seven months to write the music, which later received another Oscar nomination. One of the main finds was the use of a church organ.

He never disclosed what the mathematical secret was behind the melodies, but he did admit that the ticking of the clock had something to do with it. According to the composer, if he told us more about it, the viewer, instead of enjoying the movie, would listen to the music and "break" his head, and he wouldn't want that.

Oscar

BAFTA

Hollywood Music

Golden Globe

Critics’ Choice Movie

"I've never watched a single

David Lynch film adaptation, nor the TV series on Dune. And I never listened to the music for them. I had my own vision of what the world was supposed to sound like. So I had to write the soundtrack for Dune, not as an accomplished composer, but as a reckless 13-year-old.

Of particular importance in "Dune" is also

The bagpipe is a traditional musical instrument of Scotland. But Zimmer realized that it should sound different in the film, so he used bagpipes from Caledonia, Spain, and Middle Eastern countries as the basis.

In his youth, Hans Zimmer was surprised that almost all sci-fi films had an orchestra that resembled the music of classical European composers. Similar compositions could be heard in Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, and Planet of the Apes. Because of this, he decided that his music for "Dune" would definitely sound different.

But most often Zimmer used the sound of the flute in the soundtrack. The composer commissioned his flutist Pedro Estache to play the instrument as if he were playing wind music in the desert.

This time the victory went to Zimmer. The composer did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony because of a performance scheduled for the same evening. After Zimmer learned he had been awarded the statuette by the U.S. film academies, he posted a photo of himself in a robe holding a toy Oscar on Twitter: "It's 2 a.m. in Amsterdam, and my daughter Zoe woke me up to go to the hotel bar. Wow!!! #Oscar."

For "Dune," Zimmer used various synthesizers, cellos and improvised instruments. He assigned cellist Tina Guo to play as if she were playing music on a Tibetan battle horn.

Dream of Arrakis

Leaving Caladan

Ripples in the Sand

Dune

2021

During his life Hans Zimmer composed music for more than a hundred films, for which he was nominated eleven times for an Oscar and fourteen times for the Golden Globe.

Several times during his career he has competed with himself, presenting two films at once in the same year. But still every time he shows music to a director, he gets nervous. According to him, it's the only vulnerable moment for him that reveals what's really going on inside him.

In 2018, he wrote a musical

accompaniment to the splash screen of the FIFA World Cup, which was held in Russia.

Living Football (Official FIFA Theme)

"The funny thing is,

that the composer is the only uncontrollable element that works on the film. Because the director can write the words, say the lines, rewrite the script, maybe even play something, can look through the camera, he has control. But when it comes to the composer, he loses it. Because what's he going to say to me, "Here's the best chord in B major"?

Hans Zimmer Composer

The project was created for educational purposes on Sergey Telidchenko's typography course and to demonstrate skills only. All materials taken from articles belong to their owners. Sources.