The Red Band Project

It took us almost a week to fully recover from this year’s HIFF. Though the festival’s over, we’re finally able to look back and blog about a few more things that we saw and did at this year’s fest. We thank you for coming back and checking in with us as we close out our coverage of HIFF 31.

While you may not have heard of Michael Giacchino, I can definitely bet that you’ve seen some of the films he’s worked on: Mission Impossible III, The Incredibles, Star Trek, and UP (which he won an Academy Award for). Though he might not be as well known as fellow composer John Williams when it comes to film scores (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Superman, Harry Potter), Giacchino is definitely on his way to becoming a household name.

As part of the Hawaii International Film Festival’s Sound x Vision section, Giacchino was invited to the festival to ‘talk shop’ at two different panels–both discussing music as it relates to cinema. For the panel that is being covered in this post, Giacchino was on hand after a screening of one of the most recent films that he’s worked on, this summer’s Super 8 directed by JJ Abrams.

Though the video quality might not be the best, from the four videos that we shot you can definitely get a feel for the kind of person Giacchino is as well as his personality. He’s definitely very passionate about his work and seemed very down to Earth both during and outside of the Q&A. He even stayed well after the Super 8 Q&A was over to sign autographs and take pictures with each and every fan.

If you’re interested by his work, I hope you take the time to watch each video. Each of the videos is less than seven minutes long and I’ve also provided a rough breakdown of what is discussed in each one.

Part I
How Giacchino got into making movies . . .
How he got into music and transitioned from making movies to making music . . .
On his experience at the performing arts school Juilliard in New York City . . .

Part II
How he developed his orchestral background . . .
On his early days as a composer . . .
On meeting Steven Spielberg for the first time . . .

Part III (continuation of Part II)
On what he took away with from working with JJ Abrams & Brad Bird . . .
On working on Pixar’s UP . . .

Part IV
On composing for Super 8 . . .