Report: Nathan Barr at MIMICon

Nathan Barr was a panelist at the Music in Media Interactive Conference (MIMICon) panel “The Gig of a Lifetime- Scoring for TV & Film.” The panel was a Q&A session led by Ray Costa that featured a number of other composers from Television and Film. Panel questions ranged from the difference between composing for film as compared to composing for television to what these composers find the most gratifying about their jobs.

Nathan Barr plays cello in the music video for "Take Me Home".

For Nathan Barr, being a composer is “not just about the music ever, it’s always in service of picture.” He goes on to say that he got in to this business because of his love of movies and the fact that he always wanted to be in the movie business, no matter what – “music was my way in and my contribution to the storytelling process.”

Nathan, who has a regular working relationship with the production company, Broken Lizard, commented on what it is to find people that you can work with on a regular basis. He says it’s just basically about being able to handle the people you are working with, and being able to interpret what it is that they want for their film. “I think it’s about finding the balance between holding on to what you believe is best for their movie or their show and at the same time giving them enough that they also feel like it’s best.” On his relationship with Broken Lizard he said “we’ve just worked together enough, we have a language, we understand each other, we have a dialogue going on, we also socialize together and I think it’s really about that.”

Nathan talked about how he got the meeting for True Blood because his score from Hostel was used as temp music. He watched the pilot before going in for the meeting and was completely honest, saying that he was flattered that they liked his music, but it didn’t work for the show. Of Alan Ball he says he’s “the kind of guy who is open to lots of suggestion.” Because of this, Nathan was able to start fresh with a completely different sound for the show and it really worked in his favor.

When asked what he found the most gratifying about his job, he had this to say, “I just love movies so much. And I love music so much. I’ll spend all day writing and then what do I want to do more than anything else at night? Go and see a movie. So, I get to actually work and create in the thing I love the most in my life.” With passion like this, it’s no wonder the True Blood score is award winning.

By True-Blood.net Reporter Stacey S.