Film score

A film score (also sometimes called background score, background music, film music or incidental music) is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score forms part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects, and comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to enhance the dramatic narrative and the emotional impact of the scene in question. Scores are written by one or more composers, under the guidance of, or in collaboration with, the film's director or producer and are then usually performed by an ensemble of musicians – most often comprising an orchestra or band, instrumental soloists, and choir or vocalists – and recorded by a sound engineer.

Film scores encompass an enormous variety of styles of music, depending on the nature of the films they accompany. The majority of scores are orchestral works rooted in Western classical music, but many scores are also influenced by jazz, rock, pop, blues, new-age and ambient music, and a wide range of ethnic and world music styles. Since the 1950s, a growing number of scores have also included electronic elements as part of the score, and many scores written today feature a hybrid of orchestral and electronic instruments.

Hans Zimmer

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Hans Florian Zimmer (German pronunciation: [hans ˌfloːʁi̯aːn ˈtsɪmɐ]; born 12 September 1957) is a German composer and record producer. Since the 1980s, he has composed music for over 150 films. His works include The Lion King, for which he won Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1994, the Pirates of the Caribbean series, The Thin Red Line, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar.

Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He is the head of the film music division at DreamWorks studios and works with other composers through the company that he founded, Remote Control Productions.

Zimmer's works are notable for integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. He has received four Grammy Awards, three Classical BRIT Awards, two Golden Globes, and an Academy Award. He was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph.

John Williams

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John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning over six decades, Williams has composed some of the most popular and recognizable film scores in cinematic history, including Jaws, the Star Wars series, Superman, the Indiana Jones series, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, and the first three Harry Potter films. He has been associated with director Steven Spielberg since 1974, composing music for all save five of Spielberg's feature films.

Other notable works by Williams include theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, the 2011 Tintin movie, the television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants, and the original, not-as-well-known, calypso-based theme song to Gilligan's Island. He has composed numerous classical concerti and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments, and he served as the Boston Pops' principal conductor (1980–93), and is now the orchestra's laureate conductor.

James Horner

James Roy Horner (August 14, 1953 – June 22, 2015) was an Oscar-winning American composer, conductor and orchestrator of film scores. He was known for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for his frequent use of motifs associated with Celtic music.

His first major film score was for the 1979 film The Lady in Red, but did not establish himself as a mainstream composer until he worked on the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Horner's score for Titanic is the best-selling orchestral film soundtrack of all time, with his work on Titanic and Avatar, both directed by James Cameron, contributing to the first two films to achieve a $2 billion box office.

Horner collaborated on multiple projects with directors including Don Bluth, James Cameron, Joe Johnston, Walter Hill and Ron Howard; producers including David Kirschner, Jon Landau, Brian Grazer and Steven Spielberg; and songwriters including Will Jennings, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Horner composed music for over 100 films; he won two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three Satellite Awards, and three Saturn Awards, and was nominated for three British Academy Film Awards.

Alexandre Desplat

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Alexandre Michel Gérard Desplat (French pronunciation: ​[a.lɛk.'sɑ̃dʁ dɛs.'pla]; born 23 August 1961) is a Greek-French film composer. He has won one Academy Award for his soundtrack to the film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and received seven additional Academy Award nominations, seven BAFTA nominations (winning two), seven Golden Globe Award nominations (winning one), and six Grammy nominations (winning two).

Desplat has worked on a variety of Hollywood films, including independent and commercial successes like The Queen, The Golden Compass, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2, The King's Speech, Moonrise Kingdom, Argo, Rise of the Guardians, Zero Dark Thirty, Godzilla, The Imitation Game, and Unbroken.

Early life

Desplat was born in Paris, to a French father and a Greek mother who met at the University of California, Berkeley. After their marriage, they moved back to France, where Alexandre was born. Alexandre is the younger brother of Marie-Christine, also known as Kiki, who is leading jazz band "Certains l'Aiment Chaud", and of Rosalinda Desplat.