Hollywood Composer JOE KRAEMER On Music For Doctor Who | Big Finish Musician | Sound Designer

0:01 hello i'm colin baker course i am whether you like it or not and you are watching the sirens of audio keep watching it's good [Music]

0:48 [Applause] [Music] g'day audiophiles this is the sirens of audio the show that explores the universe of doctor who in the audio medium my name is duane my name is phillip g'day dwayne good day audiophiles g'day phillip and our first full episode with uh the joe kramer theme if you heard our little mini podcast episode uh we introduced that theme we're very very excited about it and very very grateful to joe cramer for who is the guest on our show this evening um but yeah very exciting to to

1:34 have that as part of our podcast from now on philip yeah it sounds fantastic i'm so thrilled with that again i know it's fantastic that's awesome so looking forward to sharing our chat with joe cramer with you later in the episode but before we get into that i just want to start off today's episode with some feedback that we've received online because we've posed a few questions over the last few weeks to the audience and they've come back to us with a with a couple of suggestions from from a few different sources actually the first bit of feedback i want to read out is from anthony and he wrote this to us via our instagram so instagram facebook and twitter all of those accounts are at audio sirens is our

2:19 handle so you can find us there so anthony said to us hello just started listening to your podcast and wanted to say how much i enjoy it it's nice to listen to a couple of fellow aussie blokes talk about something i've enjoyed for many years appreciate the time and effort you've both put into it so i thought that was a lovely message did you catch that one as it came through phillip i did see it come through it made me smile yeah it's nice to get the feedback from the aussies because the aussie audience for us being a podcast that focuses on audio drama the australian demographic is not as high as say a normal doctor who podcast would be because australian the australian culture isn't really geared for audio drama as much as particularly the uk audience but even

3:05 american audiences i think are more used to audio drama so if you can share us around as much as you can anthony get more and more aussies listening to us that would be fantastic so thank you for that all right a regular listener uh left a message on youtube mac moore thanks for the for your messages mac i'm going to read out one but you remember when our rabbit hole topic was should we should we be political on our show and talk about political topics here's what mac moore had to say he said another great episode but don't turn into other air quotes fan podcasts it's nice to have a place where you don't have people talking about twitter topics a lot of these fans don't even believe the topics they preach as bumping into one at a

3:51 convention uh proofed just carry on being yourselves and i think we as we were talking on that episode i think we came to that conclusion ourselves and that's what we were going to do that's exactly what we we felt and it's usually the podcast i listen to the doctor who wants other ones that you know don't play those silly games yeah yeah actually there have been some that got more and more political that i was regularly listening to that i actually switched off because i got sick of it so and i haven't been back thanks for that very much for that feedback mac really appreciate it uh this is something that was left on the mark right interview episode i think you're going to like this one philip from from a poster called unknown artist says i really like the companion chronicles and they were a great inroad to doing more classic stories

4:39 i haven't heard the new one yet but i agree with you that it's brilliant they're doing full cast adventure set in the black and white era for one thing it liberates people from being dependent on the missing adventure novel series for an expanded telling of that era it's awesome to collect as a book set but it's 32 full-length novels only 20 of those are normal book price at least three of the most important ones are impossible to get and less than half of them are set in the hartnell trouton and pertwee eras i think reviving that era and the per twee years was bang on we've always wanted new stories from that era but there's never been a way or opportunity of getting them especially especially since jon pertwee left us in greatness with his final doctor who show off radio the ghosts of n space

5:26 but if they meet half that quality i'll be more than satisfied well let me tell you unknown artists thank you for your feedback the ones that you will hear are much more than double the quality of the ghost event space that's for sure so if you like the ghost event space you're going to love not only the companion chronicles but mark right we were talking about the outlaws which is full cast not companion chronicles so full cast recreations of that era you're going to love that too anything you want to say about that feedback phillip no it's brilliant we love getting the feedback and yeah i i i never got into the novels so i do understand people's pain trying to get them now so it's some currently collecting all the hardbacks don't know why i started doing that [Laughter] some that are very hard to get

6:12 so here's a piece of feedback from broken moon audio this was also posted on the mark right interview where we also asked the question how would you like our longer episodes would you like them in one hit or would you like them split into two we got several pieces of feedback all requesting the same thing so uh i was hoping for this being the editor myself um it it means we can get more content more content to you but i'll read the feedback from my broken moon audio they say i always like it when the episodes are longer and complete so i can decide for myself when i want to take a break and you prevent that you lose listeners on the second part of a podcast because they may forget about the second part or

6:59 are too lazy to search for it or or in my case i'd probably look at it and go i've heard that one already i don't need to worry about that so we had several pieces of feedback that were saying similar things so i think that's helped me in uh in that question so answering that question for us yeah and i think he's right that the second part generally the the only case which is different is the gary russell the gay russell's uh each part got more views later on than the first part which i don't quite understand why but that's there but certainly i'm i mean louise jameson was i think the first one we split and her part one has had far more viewings than listings and than part two and part two is brilliant so if you haven't listened to the louise jameson one on part two go listen to it yeah get

7:44 back there one of one of our early episodes so that's it for our feedback that i'm going to read out for today that only leaves one thing before we get to our interview with joe cramer philip do you know what that is no what is what's gonna come now it's a rabbit hole let's go right we're in the rabbit hole phillip and nothing controversial today i just want to talk about music since it's you know we're going to be talking with joe kramer later on i want to get your thoughts on the importance of music in doctor who how important is it uh unbelievably important um well it depends it really does depend on

8:30 what what the music's doing music can do several things music can create atmosphere or music can tell stories and throughout the history of doctor who music has done different things and the same composer has even done different things i mean you know the vast majority of classic doctor who's of course dudley simpson and sometimes his music was just simply there to create atmosphere and to create mood but there are other themes that he wrote which are amazingly stunning themes which which progressed the story and told the story on um as well of course you know setting atmosphere preparing you for that scare or whatever's to come um so it really does depend on the purpose of the music and and you know one thing we'll be talking with joe cream about is his view of what music is for when scoring a soundtrack um so yeah throughout doctor who is it's

9:17 done different things but it's certainly something that i've always loved and enjoyed and i've bought any every of the records when they first came out as records later cds now i've got them downloaded on itunes uh i think music plays a really important part and watching the history of the music and often it's those unusual composers that you don't get very often to stand out in an amusing way what do you think what do you think is the place of music oh if you look at some of the dvds where they've got um studio filming as an option to look at and you look at some of the scenes they record without the music you can't imagine these these episodes without it it's it is absolutely vital but there are some standouts for me particularly in classic doctor who

10:04 because there were so many different composers obviously dudley simpson was the main composer for most of the classic era but even dudley simpson if you look through his doctor who work it's widely varied some of the standouts of dudley's for me would have to be something like the talents of wang chiang where he does that distinctive you know he plays the gongs and things like that to give that chinese kind of vibe look at the whole of series eight where he's doing synthesizers only that was and created the master theme for that season as well so that was that was something completely unique um but i think probably the the biggest standouts of dudley simpsons for me

10:50 would have to be i think seeds of death is one of the biggest standouts for me as far as dudley goes and even the ice warriors i love but seeds of death more so because probably because i've heard it much more uh being being one of the very first videos that i bought was the seeds of death and uh yeah i adore that soundtrack it's really really suits the ice worry as well i think so uh it's really quite disturbing that that opening um pitchy thing over the snow and the eyes of the credits come up really why are you talking ice warriors yeah yeah oh so i suppose sorry oh of course i am okay but he does something he does it he does something similar in um in the seeds of death which i i haven't noticed so much because i had

11:36 it on video i watched the um and all the all the credits were cut out on the video version so you never got that but he does do it in in seats of death as well i think it's it's like a operatic type theme over the moon sort of you're going through that's right so um so that's pretty iconic but i'm always a sucker for the other composers that didn't do quite so much but have some outstanding pieces uh i think tristram carey is is the is the iconic masterpiece of series one of doctor who i can't imagine the daleks having any other music to it can you imagine if norman kaye's music went on the daleks instead of tristram carries how different it would have been and i think it was was it norman k who

12:22 did the music for dalek invasion of earth i think or was it someone else um the the percussive sounds of dalek invasion of earth detract from that story for me personally subjectively so much though that that chase scene with carrying with barbara and susan being carried across the wastelands and all that percussion and also of course barbara and they're in the london too those are very strong moments musically which you know you don't like them okay no i don't like the whole soundtrack on that but i i hear what you're saying about the battlestar galactica reboots that was all percussion too because i think oh yeah i love that i love it i think it took very much the same sort of idea right okay but on on tristram carey and it's that soundtrack from the daleks that uh that i loved the most yeah he did a couple of

13:09 other soundtracks he did some different music for dalek invasion of earth he wrote the ballad of the last chance saloon he yeah he um he he did the mutants as well but it's the daleks that stands out to me it was used a few different times it was even used in power of the daleks that same uh score so that's a big standout for me another another big standout for me is roger lim so he's a composer from the bbc radiophonic workshop that john nathan turner brought in and keeper of trucking was his first one so it has some nice themes that we listen to over and over again on on doctor who the music that's some of roger lim's work yes that's over my head yeah um and but the but the score that that he did that that

13:55 is probably top of the list in that in the 80s for me would have to be the case of it andrazani so punchy it is so gritty uh it is to me i think it's the best soundtrack of the eighties uh case of andrazani if it was if it had one of the more synthetic uh synthesizer type floaty uh soundtracks of some of the other cereals it wouldn't have had the same impact do you do five doctors as well who did the five doctors uh let me i don't think he did five doctors because that has a lot of strong themes so this is what roger lim did he did the keeper truck and ford of doomsday black orchid which is an interesting uh soundtrack time flight you know arc of

14:40 infinity terminus so there's a group there in the middle that you know don't really stand out to me but the last two he did case of andrazani and revelation of the daleks were really really punchy and grabbed me it was revelation the daleks that turned me into a full-blown doctor who fan for life tigger's theme so if you tegan oh no i'm sorry i think resurrected the dance revelation all those artists if you think you think of caves and revelation you can see that there is an obvious link there in those two stories that both got the same director as well so you've had got graham harper probably talking to roger lim going i want this punchy music and roger lim's done something different to any other story that he's done for those two stories because of graham harper and i think that really stands

15:25 out to me but um i like kerry as i say yeah we shouldn't forget murray go to the new season too and the effect that um music had on the new season you know particularly the first four doctors and murray girl was doing all that sort of work as well because that's pretty astounding stuff too it certainly is he gets a lot of criticism i i don't really understand why um have you got a standout moment from murray gold that sticks out in your mind uh musically there's many i mean i think roses okay i think rose's theme and then doomsday when when rose is leaving that sort of pulsing beat on the beat on the beach really affects him every time the i'm a doctor theme for matt smith is really powerful um yeah that's my that's my phone theme

16:12 so yeah so what's your one the the musical sting that sticks out in my mind more than anything that really raised my heart rate was the cliffhanger to turn left do you remember when they came out and they saw the bad wolf signs everywhere yeah dropping you know dropping down with all those chinese uh sort of hieroglyphs and all the posters and everything that that musical sting there i still think is probably my highlight emotionally as far as murray gold's music goes um yeah if ever i think of murray gold i think of that scene that only lasts for about 20 seconds but mate it really had a huge impact you know this is this is a this is more than one topic you know just a rabbit hole dwight we should do

16:57 some cd album listenings as part of our remit as audios we should do a couple of shows and you know pick and compose and just let's do some specials along the way some of your poses let's do it but i have one more question for you for this rabbit hole topic oh dear yesterday i i i want to give a quick mention to kerry blyton because his three stories siberians death of daleks revenge of the cybermen also big standouts for me but i have a favorite classic serial soundtrack of all time do you have one i mean the one i would probably play most often would actually be death of daleks because because i play saxophone um so having a saxophone quartet doing most of the music in that

17:43 is something that i used to listen to all the times a saxophone player so that's one that stands out okay what's yours it stands out to you but do you have a favorite no i'm not that think of it off the top of my head okay what's your favorite i'll give you my favorite then and it would be a composer who did just two stories uh for the fourth doctor uh jeffrey bergen was he said yep so he did the seeds of doom but my favorite soundtrack of the classic era is absolutely terror of the zygons i think it is the most eerie scary soundtrack that's most suited to the scary side of doctor who ever and i can't imagine tara of the zygons without it he gets the scottish theme he

18:28 gets the absolute horror of the zygons who are really quite silly if you look at them carefully but he he manages to evoke such scariness and fear throughout that whole story that is a beautiful thing and once again here's two stories uh both directed by douglas canfield so once again the director had a big part to play in these ones yes definitely well okay yeah well i think we need to do some revisiting later on and uh yeah pick a composer and look at their stories and talk about their music let's do it let's jump out of the rabbit hole we'll have a chat now in a moment with joe kramer but first i'll throw in a trailer not for his first doctor who but i've thrown a trailer for the first

19:13 big finish story that he worked on it was vienna here's a trailer we'll be back with joe cramer in a moment coming soon from big finish productions vienna series two ladies gentlemen colleagues friends welcome one and all dinner will be served later but first it's time for the reason for tonight's gathering the vienna salvatore experience oh the guy with the boils now without a chain blade excellent i really don't know what i've done to annoy you people sorry the larger they are we have some new members in our midst so if the rest of you will forgive me a

20:00 quick up to speed vienna is or was an intergalactic assassin bounty hunter she had this endearing notion that her identity was a secret well not to those of us with unlimited financial reasons well i've been waiting for a pretty one screen has got to work so have i i'm gonna ask you again what do you know about drew hollis i told you nothing still think i'm pretty crazy oh you have no idea i desired vienna my own deadly beautiful toy to play with jessie miss salvatore glad you could make it hey since we're working together call me vienna i won't kill you and so i had my own tame assassin to do

20:47 my bidding without question good to have you back on board with salvatore good to be back computer [Applause] vienna series 2 box set we love stories well it's my pleasure today to introduce our special guest music is such an integral part to all storytelling and one of the great composers for big finish is joe graemer joe thank you for joining us well thank you for having me guys it's really great to be here now firstly joining us where in the world you are because we used to um we've got our aussie accents which i don't know how aussie we sound we're used to lots of british accents with people we talk to but yours is slightly different so where in the world are you yes i am american and i'm in los angeles

21:33 yeah i'm in los angeles uh in the valley in uh post-production land and uh you know it's it's uh it's late in the evening here and it's what the early in the day for you just possibly day yeah yeah so just here in l.a another sunny day now most days you grew up in new york though so you must have made the trek west yeah i grew up in upstate new york uh outside of the state capital albany uh in a little town called vorriesville where the you know the longer the name the smaller the town and uh then i moved to boston to go to school at berkeley college of music and then after that moved out to la to chase

22:18 hollywood dreams so yeah i've got my accents right you have a more eastern accent than the the western i think well hey dude i'm not like californian man you know that's true you know how do your passion for music start you know as long as i can remember i've always been you know interested in music and had fun with music you know as a little kid i remember playing the piano and just loving playing the piano and singing songs and my dad was alongside his brother they wrote their own songs and to make their own recordings using like reel-to-reel tape recorders in the 60s and 70s you know in

23:03 the home recording kind of thing before that was really something a lot of people were doing so i grew up in this environment where it seemed totally natural to me to write music and record it at the same time my grandfather had been a projectionist at a movie theater so my dad and his brothers and sisters all had an interest in movies not just in watching them but in how they worked the technical side of them and they all had cameras that they made short films with silent films and and things like that animated films and they were you know very much hobbyists of of different arts of music and film and so it sort of i think became kind of a natural thing for me to combine those interests in you know a sort of career pursuit

23:50 so what age did you start writing and where you said you were in uh boston studying music when did you start doing movie schools tv schools for people where were you so yeah what happened was uh the high school i went to um because the town i grew up in was so small the high school that i went to was actually middle school and high school in one building so as a seventh grader i was going to school with 12th graders so um being kind of a um kind of a ham kind of a sort of show busy type guy even as a seventh grader i caught the attention of a senior high school student named scott storm who made films on super 8. he had a sound camera and he had a

24:37 projector that could do multi multi-track sort of recording on super 8 film and so he would make feature-length movies on super eight and he cast me in one when i was in ninth grade he always remembered me from when he was a senior and i was in seventh grade so he cast me in a role and then we uh while we were shooting the film i was talking to him about music because my father being an amateur musician had a home studio with a four track and some synthesizers and so you know he had never really worked with somebody who could write a score for him before scott he would score his movies sort of using needle drops from tangerine dream records and peter gabriel and stuff like that and so this became a chance for me to

25:23 for him to have an original score and for me to you know write music for a movie as a as a younger as a kid you know the first two albums i bought at the record store were magical mystery tour by the beatles and the soundtrack to superman the movie so you know i sort of grew up with this oh you know love of of john williams and music from movies combined with this love of songwriting and and music production and having this home studio and being in this film sort of created that opportunity for me and i was 15 at the time so that's when i started writing music from movies i had been writing songs before that again because i grew up you know around a father who wrote songs and you know he like said him and my uncle

26:09 would record them so i can remember writing songs in third or fourth grade which would have been about 10 years old so what was the point where you thought this is really what you want to do for life you know i have a specific memory of reading some cheap paperback biography of the beatles and i would have been in about eighth grade at that point maybe seventh and just being just like you know like any kid that age like overwhelmed by how cool it must have must be to be like a rock star you know what i mean and thinking like well i have some musical talent and i seem to be able to impress people with what i can do maybe i should pursue that and then through high school and meeting scott and doing those movies and then

26:55 also you know again with my dad being a musician just constantly writing songs myself and learning guitar and performing in the high school bands and things like that and doing the drama club and being in plays as an actor i it just became pretty clear to me in high school that you know um i was happiest doing that stuff and so when it came time to figure out what am i going to do for college it seemed like pursuing either acting or music would be the two things that i would probably be most happiest doing and i looked at this the state of things at the time and thought you know with acting you know i could be the greatest actor

27:41 in the world but if i'm taller than the leading man i'm not going to get the part or if i'm shorter than the leading lady or whatever you know what i mean or if they want to blonde then i have brown hair you know what i mean and there were just so many things that had nothing to do with talent or skill that could get in the way that i thought i think pursuing that would be just like heartbreaking and crushing and so i decided i'm gonna chase music instead and i frankly i also thought well my whatever skill i have at music i think it's more unique than whatever skill i might have as an actor you've mentioned the beatles a couple of times uh in our discussion what what was it that appealed to you about the beatles well i loved you know that they they sang they wrote their own songs

28:27 um i loved that they incorporated orchestral elements in their music that things like the abbey road medley with this big symphonic orchestrations by george martin or sergeant pepper magical mystery tour i mean my favorite thing on the mystery tour was i and the walrus which is very symphonic with its horns and strings um and the trumpets and magical mystery tour the song and you know the orchestrations for all you need is love and strawberry fields penny lane all of those things just that blending of sort of songwriting and orchestration really appealed to me and i also as a kid loved the nutcracker suite by tchaikovsky and you know combine that with star wars

29:14 superman and the beatles and you sort of have i think kind of all the elements that go into the mix melting pot in my mind when i'm writing a writing music yeah so when you went to study did you study composition or music instruments yeah well so berkeley college of music in boston was one of the only schools in the country at the time that had any kind of film music program where you could study the craft of scoring a film so in addition to studying composing and studying scales and modes and orchestration and arranging and melodic construction and structures they also taught how to conduct and how to time things out using math and counting

30:01 frames and and seconds and frames to hit specific things in a in a scene and how to write music that could synchronize to the scene and how to make a click track and and this was in the dying days of analog and the very nascent days of digital so like i learned how to do all the music editing stuff on 16 millimeter film and 35 millimeter mag on a moviola and then translated that understanding over to pro tools first the wave frame actually which was like a dinosaur of a digital editing platform from the 90s and then eventually over to pro tools and now anything logic cubase sonar all those things um uh so i learned those technical things

30:47 and then i also took composition courses and then there were a lot of electives that i took that dealt with songwriting and lyric writing because those things also really interested me in creative writing and i took a theater course that they had you know so i tried to stay eclectic and well-rounded in my studies so when you finished is that when you move to la or did you do some other things first right so during the time that i was at berkeley um which again it was in boston scott storm was living in boston he was the filmmaker that i grew up with and through him i met a couple of guys from new jersey who made films the rather infamous bride singer and his writing partner christopher mcquarrie and that relationship led to um

31:32 they by the time i was at berkeley they were in california starting um their upward trajectory so i would come visit them and it was during one visit that i realized you know i think i'll probably be moving here to la to pursue some sort of career as a composer um and then when i moved to la i moved in 1999 i graduated from berkeley in may of 93 and i moved to la in january of 94 and on the 11th in fact and i i only remember that because six days later on the 17th was the northridge earthquake and it just so happened that a student a classmate of mine from berkeley was living in la and she was working in a post-production facility a sound mixing

32:18 facility an editing facility and her assistant freaked out after the earthquake and just left the state moved back to the east coast and so she was in a jam and knew i had just moved to la and figured well joe might need some work and so she very kindly uh her name was tammy uh tammy hossler cost letter at the time but tammy fearing now and she you know i owe her a lot because she hired me you know i'd been in la two weeks and i had a job in the film business you know and i was an assistant to her and she trained me and um i'll always be grateful for that so i worked in sound for a couple years to make money and start sort of get myself established in a firm base of operation while at the same time uh mccrory and singer were making the

33:04 usual suspects and i was on going to the set whenever i could for that and macquarie and i seemed to be on the same page in terms of films that we liked and music that we liked and so that relationship built over the next couple years and led to doing the way of the gun together which was our first movie we did together in 1999 and into 2000 so the way the gun was your first big movie b-score i think you conducted that as well in terms of the orchestra um how how big a process was it to do your first big main movie school yeah you know it's funny it was it was big it was a lot of work um it was a long process um macquarie had been through some experiences on other projects where he

33:49 felt like the final score was overly reminiscent of the temp score shall we say you know when they when you cut a film you and there's no score written for the movie yet you the director and the editor will often put temporary music from other movies in and then the danger is that the filmmakers fall in love with how that music makes the movie feel and when the composer comes in he or she has to ends up having to imitate that as closely as possible without getting sued and they often feel sort of straightjacketed by what we call the temp score so the way the gun was the effort was made to have as little temp score as possible in instead for me to be scoring it

34:36 from the very beginning so it was a long process i was on the film for 11 months and yeah it was and there was a lot of rewriting there was a lot of back and forth there was a lot of what some people might call micromanaging of the score um but you know it was a learning process for everyone involved and i don't you know i i don't regret that or have any misunderstanding about what we were all trying to do but yeah it was big it was it was interesting you know it was for a studio which isn't around anymore called artisan and they weren't exactly sort of you know disney when it came to deep pockets they were definitely interested in maintaining you know financial responsibility in terms of the budget and that extended to the score and the resources that we had to achieve the

35:22 score including where where we recorded it and how big our orchestra orchestra could be and those kind of things and that was a lot of learning as well in terms of you know the difference between having 90 players at abbey road studio one and 45 players in a rock and roll studio in seattle you know and i had to adjust a lot personally and professionally to to get something that would work for the finished film in that regard if that makes sense yeah you come across in your big finish interviews on the extra cds as a huge huge doctor who fan so we've talked about some of your influences through through your growing up

36:07 uh where did your doctor who fandom come from yeah so i am i'm a giant nerd you know you can see over my shoulder my little you know shelf of figures and things like that i'm a big genre nerd i love sci-fi i love television like serialized television and long-form storytelling um i love comic books uh it's a huge trekkie huge star wars fan and yeah in albany there was a tv station that would show 30 minute episodes of doctor who on saturday mornings at 6 30 a.m and the british television paradigm if you will of shooting all the interiors on video and the exteriors on film

36:54 with such a different look to anything on 16 millimeter film in fact it was such a different look to anything in america which was at that time still being done like on 35 millimeter film for television or video for sitcoms but they were all they would never like mix the two and it created such a strange for as an american it was so different that that in and of itself created a strange otherworldly quality to the show um the ones that they were running were like the first few seasons of tom baker so like basically the liz sladen sarah jane smith tom baker stories and i would see you know arc and space and with that sort of chroma key csv or

37:40 whatever they call it cso chroma key visual effects which again were just so different from the way they did visual effects on star trek with film or you know um that i became fascinated with it and being a beatles fan of of course i had a somewhat oh it was already something of an anglophile the vernacular that the beatles would write their lyrics in was very common speech of like liverpool and and england and slang and to america to the american ear it sounded exotic i mean the same things with australian slang that sounds exotic to us here in the states you know um and those things all combined it was just fascinating to me this show and so i

38:25 would i started setting my alarm so i could get up on saturday morning and watch it and then i discovered that like local public television in america was showing episodes as um movies you know they would take a whole story and cut it into a movie and i was really thrown off because my mom loved the james harriette books and so we would watch all creatures great small and you know my dad showed me a picture from the newspaper that said you know the new doctor who and it was peter davison in that cricket outfit i was like what is going on this looks you know i mean i just didn't understand that you would replace the lead actor in a show you know i had no idea that there had been three doctors before tom baker i just knew it was the show of the guy with the scarf you know so

39:12 finding that out it was around that time that a local group in albany started having like a fan club like a doctor who fan club and so i joined that would go to their their monthly meetings and they would show they would get like a somehow they would get a copy of like a pertwee episode and and show it um which was like insane you know to be able to see that and yeah because before any of it was coming out on vhs even these were like they would have been coming from australia i'd say because they're being shown here and then sent to the uk sent to the sen everywhere exactly and you know they were like clearly they had been you know taped off the air and then copied four times you know um and i remember going to some

39:57 convention at a hotel in albany where they actually showed an unearthly child which you know i was like gobsmacked to be able to see that and i picked up there was like and it's funny it's on one of the dvds as like a pdf but it was like a radio times 20th anniversary magazine of doctor who that you know had like a a list of of every episode of the show and tons of pictures of all the doctors and all their companions and then a you know little thing at the end of pictures of colin baker who was going to be taking over from peter davison and it was just this whole universe fascinated me that there was you know at that point 20 years of backstory and then the target novel started being published in america and i started buying those or not being published but

40:43 imported in america and i started buying those and i followed the show as much as i could but then during the sort of baker era episodes wouldn't come over to america for years and so i sort of fell off the show for a couple years and then when i finished high school um the local public television station was or when i finished college i mean and i was back home before i moved to la the local public television station was running all the baker episodes and then one day i tuned in and some other guy was doctor who named sylvester mccoy and i didn't know any of this so i was like wait there's more you know and then after that as the internet started to bloom in the late 90s then i you know was able to keep track of more things in the mcgann movie and then

41:29 scream of the shalka and uh you know the big finish shota remake and all that kind of stuff and then when the show so you had your finger on the doctor who pulse all this time yeah i was following it you know all this time there was a book i can't remember who it may have been the lofisiers who wrote it i can't remember now but it was a whole book about all the times they tried to make doctor who movies after [Music] mccoy's era ended and it had like about about leonard nimoy i think being involved at one point and the tom baker idea that he was like pals with ulysses or he was he was one of the greek gods or something i can't remember now off the top of my head but yeah i was oh and in fact i would talk to like macquarie about like you know wouldn't it be cool to do like a doctor

42:15 who thing you know see what we could do with that um and what was his response to that um it was sort of um [Music] there was some vague interest he's spoken at law at length about wanting to do something with the star blazers property the battleship yamamoto and that was always i think first and foremost in his mind as a science fiction thing to pursue and it was also i think during this time that singer was trying to do like something with galactica before ron moore got a hold of it and so i think you know there wasn't i was definitely the loudest champion of doctor who in the room you know in those conversations

43:00 it's some interesting what you say about the video and film because i've even been talking to my family and saying oh this is filmed this video and people in my family not having any idea what i'm talking about like they couldn't even see the change and for me it was so dramatic and all these things i learned about film technique from those early shows it was interesting do you have any reflections on the music were you paying much attention to music and doctor who early on or it was just again it was yeah sorry to mean interrupt it's it's another part of the sort of other other worldliness because it was so different from like the star wars scores that i loved or indiana jones you know williams who was you know and the beatles are very melodic and relatively tonal composers you know they don't generally get a tonal too much williams will

43:47 when needed but i mean you're generally like the main title to star wars is a pretty diatonic tonal piece whereas like what dudley simpson was doing was like 12-tone serial composing of a con and and also being realized with a small chamber group of eclectic instruments it wasn't a symphony orchestra so yeah that was definitely something that i was sort of another thing that seemed utterly alien to me and i remember i got the when i was part of that fan club in albany probably around eighth grade i remember i got a cassette of like doctor who music that had like the original ron grainer uh delia derbyshire version of the theme and then it had i think was peter howell did the remake was it

44:32 um and then it had like a sea devil suite and an earth shock suite and music from um snake dance or kinder you know uh leisure hive all that stuff and that was like on constant rotation on my walkman i was always listening to that what did you think would it change from the dudley simpson music the small live orchestra to the um there you go twins got us i'm listening okay i can go get mine too if we're going to play this game i want to join i want to joe to say it that's that's the album you're talking about doctor who music yeah now i had it on cassette originally but i managed to get it on disc eventually i've got i've got on vinyl two

45:18 but i'm not gonna go get mine i haven't had cd too actually you said i don't know yeah so no wonder i can't get a good price for it on ebay it's everywhere it's everywhere now in terms of when the music changed from w simpson to the electronics course what what was your view of that i think it really under you know i have to be honest i didn't really how do i put this i knew it was different but sort of like you were saying about the difference between film and video didn't necessarily perceive like oh it's a different composer and it's a different way of doing the music i just thought well the show's changed you know same way that the music has changed you know sorry inverse the music has changed the same way this show has changed everything felt so different when jnt

46:04 took over to me yeah it did you know it just looked different just the color was in your face too right yeah yeah i mean the leisure hive feels like a like a different like a reboot almost yeah in a lot of ways same way like when barry let's took over for pertwee that it felt like a reboot you know yes yeah um just back to your other compositions first because i mean you're what you have done is just a huge in terms of different scores and things um in terms of popularity i guess the two really big films you did was jack reacher and uh mission impossible broken nation those are schools and they yeah both are amazing scores that just make the action drive um so you're doing these massive massive scores massively huge stuff how did you come to work for big finish

46:50 a little company in england well again being a doctor who fan i was aware of big finish as a listener and i remember when season one of the reboot came out the eccleston dvds and watching the special features and seeing nick briggs doing the dalek voice on set and knowing that from reading the liner notes that he was part of the big finish team um i don't know just sort of keeps like making a mental note of keeping an eye on that you know and um and then what happened was that around 2012 when i did jack reacher um by that point i've been buying everything that came out on dvd of

47:36 doctor who and watching all the special features and i got an e uh an email or a dm or something on social media one day from this guy andrew cartmell who was a fan of the score to reach her and i was like that can't be the same guy that's on the doctor who dvds but and i'm such a nerd i recognize the name you know what i mean so well i looked it up and sure enough it was the same guy and so we became friends remotely which you know in the coveted world doesn't seem so weird but at the time it was a little more strange um he was a huge film music fan and we sort of bonded over that and i was a huge doctor who fan and he sort of reluctantly bonded with me over that you know um and then at some point i

48:21 muscled up the courage to say to him hey because i there was a special thing on a dvd one one of the dvds about how they were taking stories that had never been filmed and making big fish big finish audios out of them and andrew had written one or two or some amount of those as well so i thought well he knows big finish he's worked with them so i muscled up the courage and asked him if he would mind talking to nick briggs on my behalf and now this part i only know second hand through andrew and nick who both told me about it but both of the nick was really like does he understand like we are you know this tiny relatively i mean we're not tom cruise and paramount pictures we're this sort of relatively small company with limited resources compared to paramount

49:09 pictures in terms of salaries or whatever and you know i had told andrew when you talked to him tell him i love that i love doctor who i would love to be part of it and it's not about the money for me you know and i think maybe there was justifiably some concern that it would be smaller than i was used to and then i would take the gig and then blow it off and do a crappy job because it turned out to be smaller than jack reacher um you know i'll also add to this that when i was a young when i was a kid npr in america had done a radio adaptation of star wars that was six and a half hours long of the first movie and it was one of my favorite things ever and it was never

49:56 released on audio to buy while i was a kid so i had like these cassettes i'd taped off the air and it was and i didn't even have like the first episode or the first two episodes so i would listen to this thing and i like treasured it and it was like magic to me that it had so much storytelling and so much evocative imagery from the sound in the music so i was fascinated with that being able to make like a radio drama and then in high school i discovered the monty python records with sound effects and music and drama and then i or our comedy i mean you know and then i discovered um the hitchhiker's guide audio cassettes all that stuff fed into this whole and i had the vinyl of uh genesis of the daleks where you could listen to it so this whole thing of like listening to

50:42 stories really fascinated me too so i knew what i was getting into what i was asking to be part of i didn't expect it to be you know a million dollar thing that was going to make me famous it was something that i could work on and be part of something you know be part of something that meant something to me as a fan i remember after uh i did mission i had lunch with a comic book writer named jerry dugan and we were talking and i was sort of talking about doing the doctor who stuff at that point because i had done my first one with doctor who at that point and with big finish and you know he was like i'm sort of explaining i qualifying i guess my interest and he was like no man you're canon now you're canon and i thought that's exactly what it is i'm canon you know and now i'm on tardis wiki so you know i just find it

51:30 astounding though at the same time you're making a multi-million dollar film soundtrack with tom cruise in mission impossible you're working on the defectors for big finish at the same time yeah yeah but it meant something to me you know in fact i was in um [Music] england i was in london at leavesden on set supervising all of the opera sequence from rogue nation and i would come outside and call nick on the phone to organize what was happening with defectors and some music i was doing for an earl the first very first project i did with them which was a vienna uh it's a spin-off with oh yeah yeah yeah okay yeah and i did an episode of vienna and

52:15 so yeah i worked for i lived in where they test were they testing you out making sure you were good enough i think so a little bit you know um i think we were both testing each other out you know to make sure that also that i was that i was happy doing it that i wasn't like oh this is you know whatever cheesy or small time or you know whatever low budget and so then i came back from england having been on the set with tom and alec baldwin and jeremy renner and simon pegg and all the guys and rebecca ferguson and everybody and sat down and started score doing all the sound design and scoring for the defectors while i waited for them to finish shooting mission impossible so i could move back to england and write write and

53:00 record the score so defectors happened in the middle of that movie so yeah you're right i was literally going from like one to the other this is greyhound leader are you receiving me over coming soon from big finish productions whoever you are you still haven't explained yourself captain yates has been relieved of his duties miss grant i have orders to take you and the doctor to a secure location immediately you're not serious deadly miss grant doctor who the defectors doctor doctor hello joe i'm guessing i'm not quite the doctor you were expecting all security protocols are still active

53:46 there shouldn't be any trouble before we're ready now your room is there doctor and this is your room here miss grant you know our names do i i've spent the last few hours here trying to get answers but all i get in return is blank faces and lectures on national security i can't even get in touch with the brigadier you're new you two knew not like us you haven't defected yet what exactly is going on captain cornelius hold tight going down

54:33 come on we've got work to do young lady big finish we love stories you could have spoken with simon pegg about uh big finish because he's done done quite a few yeah you know it was it was interesting i i i didn't really nerd out too much with peg until the score had already funnily enough what really opened up i guess my comfort with him uh was that he came to one of our recording sessions at abbey road and after that i felt more comfortable because i felt like you know he'd seen me on the podium conducting a 90 piece orchestra i i felt a little more qualified to be to fanboy out with him a

55:19 little bit because i was also kind of legit and then i nerded out with him and tried to sort of squeeze him for some star wars information you know because he had shot force awakens but it hadn't come out yet you know and to his credit he was very tight-lipped so the defectors is an interesting story because uh not only do you do the music on that but you also do the sound design so i've noticed that often someone will come in and do the music someone else will come in and do the sound design what dictates someone to come in and and do both or the other right well the original brief from nick was you know when i first reached out to him i said i'm interested in doing the music then he said well you know because the budgets of these things and

56:05 the schedules usually the music and sound are done by the same person and that way you can sort of amortize the the full audio budget for music and sound design if we split it up it isn't always enough for each anybody to want to do one or the other does that make sense so um i justifiably i think another element of nick's caution rather than just jumping in head first and working with me was am i up to scratch as a sound designer you know now i had worked on the simpsons i worked on the x-files i'd worked on independence day the mask dumb and dumber i had a i had spent five or six years working in post-production

56:51 sound while i waited for composing opportunities to make a living but i don't really at the time i kept that very quiet because i didn't want to get pigeonholed in the sound world i wanted to be known as a composer but i shared with nick that i had this experience so he sent me like one i think he sent me two scenes from a dalek story the dialogue and said go to it and let me hear what you do so i did all the sound and then i did all the music and then sent it back to him and he was like oh yeah okay great no gotcha and that reassured him that i was you know that i wasn't going to just sort of put some drones under the studio dialogue and and a background effect and that was it you know i really i tried to make it sound like a movie you had to audition for him

57:37 yeah but again you know i didn't begrudge that because i love they're things i would not audition for you know what i mean there are things that i would audition for because it's a it's something i want to be a part of you know and that was one and you know what they were asking they didn't say oh here's a whole box set do it for free and if we like it we'll hire you they gave me two scenes and said you know take a day or two and show us what you do you know however long it was and show us what you would do with these two scenes so it wasn't a massive imposition the amount of things now with a lot of the sound design you do your son doesn't put a lot of the um audio stuff together yes so what happened was you know after defectors you know the sound design is the major time commitment of these projects funnily

58:24 enough um because you have to edit all the dialogue which involves being something of a picture editor on a movie or tv show i'm i i get a script that indicates in certain spots which take the director would like to use but in other spots there is no indication so it's up to me to pick what i think is the one the director is going to want and then to control the pacing of the scene editorially you know and especially now with covid and remote recording there are often sort of these pregnant pauses between lines and unnatural gaps because of bandwidth and zoom delay and things like that uh whatever software they're using so it's even more critical now for the

59:09 sound editor to be able to have a sense of rhythm about the performances so that takes some time to get right then i approach the sound from the disciplines i learned in the film world the world of film sound so i do like a backgrounds pass where i just do all the room tones and ambiences and then i do like a footsteps pass and then i do a fully pass sometimes i record the foley myself and sometimes i cut it using foley libraries and then i do the specific sort of sound design stuff of doors and tardis controls and lasers and all that kind of stuff and that process is very involved for a one-hour show it might take me it might take me a week to do the dial it's a week to do the dialogue and then two or three weeks to do the sound and then on top of that then another

59:54 week to do the music for that hour so that's what one two five hours five weeks of work right there and if i need to get it if i've also got a movie that's happening it's helpful to have somebody do the sound so i hired a friend from berkeley to help me with the sound name josh and we worked together for quite a while but then you know it can be grueling work and it can be people get burned out you know of the day in day out of doing nothing but sound editing and sound design and so he took a break and i hired a an up-and-coming composer and sound designer named kristen simpson who worked with me and then she got some music opportunities and and some employment i think teaching and composing so then i my son at that point had graduated high school and we were talking and he

1:00:40 was a doctor who fan you know we went to see that is the bells of saint john's at a comic-con in whatever year that was and we sat in the audience together and watched it like nerds and you know he's expressed through high school he expressed an interest in music production and engineering and so i asked him if you if he'd be interested in being trained in this discipline and learning it and he said yes so that's how that happened so yeah now he's doing the sound design for me and i'm teaching and supervising and refining as we go along and every project he does more and more and i do less and less in the sound what a nice nerdy activity to do with your son it is nice and you know i'm aware of nepotism and things like that i will say he was my third choice you know i had josh and kristen first so you know i hope no one out there who's trying to

1:01:26 break into sound feels too offended by that and you know if you're really desperate to get into sound find me on social media and let me know because i can always use help do you find on the fact that you're in another country or another continent is an issue or just because of modern technology now it makes no difference makes no difference anymore the the biggest issue literally is just synchronizing uh real-time interaction like this with us you know we had to find a time that worked for me and you with the what is it 19 hour time difference you know um in a weird way the the time difference between here in london being eight hours the other way is beneficial because i can work and then send them the stuff and then they can listen to it and review it while i sleep and then i wake up the next day

1:02:12 and they've got notes for me already whereas if we were both on the same schedule there might actually be an additional day so sometimes things can actually happen faster because of that because at some point during the day one of us is always working on it now in terms of music composition what are you using to compose with and i guess orchestra no i don't i have a virtual one you know i work with uh computers um and i work with sample libraries and then on occasion if i need something live i'll i'll perform it myself i have guitars and where i have friends who play cello and and trumpet and things like that um and fortunately the genre of doctor who is flexible

1:02:58 enough that i can do what sort of sounds like an orchestra and it's it's it's adequate for the show it works for the show it's appropriate it's a better word than adequate um and then like in the case of defectors i actually endeavored to sort of do a dudley simpson's score you know the concept of the show was that sylvester mccoy's doctor lands in [Music] john pertwee's laboratory at unit and he's interacting with joe grant and you know mike yates and uh he's sort of a fish out of water a man out of time so to speak he's in the wrong era so i thought it would be fun to start the score out as a very dudley simpson score

1:03:43 and then rather than morph into like something dominic would have done or mark would have done during um sills era i morphed into more like what murray was doing in modern who or what i was doing with mission or reacher john williams is doing you know that orchestral palette and i sort of transitioned from the music of the era to that and that ended up being sort of a a productive approach for a bunch of the things i did because i later did like a colin baker story and i would do the music like the episode would start with music similar to that era's music and then morph into a more orchestral approach do directors give you much feedback in terms of what they want before you start or do you just compose and then they

1:04:29 listen take give you notes yeah i mean in fact with with with um vienna the original plan had been for me to score all three episodes of the series two box set so i wrote the theme and then i scored the first episode and then there was some creative difference that happens it wasn't a problem uh between what i wanted to do with the score and what the kind of score they wanted and it was decided with amicably on all sides that you know i would adapt the score i'd written for episode one to what the director uh was looking for and then somebody else would do the other two episodes while i went off and did was on set for mission impossible so it worked out for everybody uh i was

1:05:16 of course at the time worried like well i blew it you know but then nick was like we've got this other thing we want you to do anyway so and that was defectors uh i made sure when i did defectors to to talk with nick about what he wanted for the music and then to actually send him some demos of what i intended to do and he was fully on board with it um i remember i did i did a show a story called static and um if i recall correctly jamie was the director of that um i hope i'm remembering that correctly and i apologize if i'm not but the director definitely wanted more of like a modern sound design drone sort of score than like an orchestral

1:06:01 adventure score and so that was definitely something that i remember being directed to do and then for like the first ep for the first series of jenny the doctor's daughter barnaby edwards the director was you know thinking i want this to feel sort of like guardians of the galaxy or like hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy like a sort of space comedy a little bit and so you know those were influences for those [Music] okay news flash this isn't my wedding and this isn't 1944 doctor you said you

1:06:50 were taking me home coming soon from big finish productions don't answer that phone doctor who static don't answer it leave it alone hello please somebody help this help [Applause] stop where are you big finish we love stories uh come on constance breathe breathe she's freaking on doctor

1:07:37 she's dead no i can bring her back i can save her it's too late doctor oh constance never giving up never giving in never give him [Music] jamie robinson was the director of static and it is interesting you mentioned that because um we did a review of static a few months back it was actually doing that review and discussing the music which is why we said we have to try and talk to joe creamer because we were just you know so blown away by what you've done with that score and it was so different to other things that was ahead of the time so it took us yeah really yeah we wanted to

1:08:24 talk to you um now in terms of um main theme so jenny you did the main theme song for what's it like when you're giving the task of a theme to write for boxes that make over ease yeah i mean i love it i mean talk about feeling like i'm canon you know that that is a that's prob that may be my favorite aspect of of what's developed in my

…