Soundtrack

A soundtrack, also written sound track, can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded sound.

Origin of the term

In movie industry terminology usage, a sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production. Initially the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own separate track (dialogue track, sound effects track, and music track), and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track, which is heard in the film. A dubbing track is often later created when films are dubbed into another language. This is also known as a M & E track (music and effects) containing all sound elements minus dialogue which is then supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory.

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.

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.

Howard Shore

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Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is a Canadian composer who is notable for his film scores. He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies. He won three Academy Awards for his work on the first trilogy, with one being for the original song "Into the West", an award he shared with Eurythmics lead vocalist Annie Lennox. He is also a consistent collaborator with director David Cronenberg, having scored all but one of his films since 1979.

Shore has also composed a few concert works including one opera, The Fly, based on the plot (though not his score) of Cronenberg's 1986 film premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on July 2, 2008, a short piece Fanfare for the Wanamaker Organ and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a short overture for the Swiss 21st Century Symphony Orchestra. Shore also scored for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, the third film of the five-film series.