How the soundtrack was made

It’s no secret that the Avatar films are massive technical achievements that push the boundaries of cinematography, animation, and performance capture.

However, you may not realize that the same applies to music.

Composer Simon Franglen says the third installment, Avatar: Fire and Ash, took seven years to complete.

Meanwhile, he wrote 1,907 pages of orchestral music; and even invented new instruments for the inhabitants of the alien planet Pandora to play.

And with director James Cameron handling the editing until the last minute, the British musician completed the final score just five days before the film was to be printed and delivered.

In total, Avatar contains “four times as much” music as a standard Hollywood movie, and almost all of its 195-minute running time requires music, Franglen says.

“But I got 10 minutes off for good behavior,” he laughs.

Fire and Ash is the third installment in the record-breaking series, continuing the saga of the blue Na’vi population who defend their planet from human invaders and are determined to destroy their natural resources.

The new film, released December 19, transports viewers to the stunningly vibrant landscapes of Pandora, but also sends them on a visceral emotional journey.

At the beginning of the film, the two main characters, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), are mourning the death of their teenage son, Neteyam.

Unable to meet their eyes, grief threatens to tear the couple apart.

Franglen was tasked with creating music that could reflect the depth of their despair.

“I wanted to make sure you felt the sense of distance growing between them,” he says.

“So I’d do it this way, I’d take two lines [of music] and I would push them away from each other or lead them astray, so they felt hard and cold and disconnected.”

“Grief is never a subject addressed in movies like this,” he continues, “but for any family, the loss of a child is the worst thing that can happen.

“It’s often the quiet moments that matter musically.”

By contrast, Franglen could let his imagination run wild when he composed music for the Wind Merchants, a nomadic clan of salesmen who traveled by airship.

Its flashy themes are inspired by action movies of the 1930s and ’40s, but they also feature brand-new instruments unique to Pandora.

“When we met the wind merchants [they’re having] a journey towards their massive Galleon,” says Franglen.

“The problem is, if you’re having a Pandoran party, what do they play? I can’t give them guitars and bass and drums. I can’t give them banjos.”

“You need to have a real instrument designed for ten-foot-tall, four-fingered blue people.

“Because Avatar is not animated, when there are instruments on screen you have to have the real thing,” he says, citing Cameron’s rule that everything on screen has to be grounded in reality, even though the film’s imagery is largely computer-generated.

“So I sketched some instruments and gave them to the art department, which created these beautiful designs.”

Among Franglen’s artifacts was a long-necked lute resembling a Turkish saz, with strings representing the rigging of the Wind Merchants’ ship.

A percussion instrument was also designed in which the drum head used the same material as the ship’s sails.

The art department’s renderings were then given to prop master Brad Elliott, who produced the instruments on 3D printers, and the actors played them for real on set.

However, for now, these inventions do not have an official name.

“They’re called ‘string things’ and ‘drum things’ now,” laughs Franglen.

“I’m sure there’s a better name. Someone said we should have a contest.”

Franglen’s musical career began when he was just 13 years old; He wrote a letter to the BBC asking how someone could become a record producer.

Mistakenly assuming he was asking about radio production, the company advised him to study electronics, which led him to a course at the University of Manchester in the early 1980s.

He arrived just as the Hacienda Club was opening (“I was the 347th member”) and spent his free time booking bands for the university’s concert hall.

“I remember booking Tears for Fears and 11 people showed up,” he says.

After graduation, he was hired to work as a synth programmer and met Trevor Horn; This led him to work on the most important albums of the 80s by Yes and Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

He eventually decided to try his luck in America, where he became a sought-after session musician and programmer “after doing next to nothing for six months”.

Hits like Toni Braxton’s Unbreak My Heart, All 4 One’s I Swear, and Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing began to pile up; and eventually found himself programming drums for Michael Jackson’s HIStory album.

“The pressure was to make it perfect,” he says. “Having that sense of harmony that we call ‘pocket’.

“And a big part of my career comes from having a good budget. I understood where things should feel and how they should sound. And that’s just as important for film scoring as it is when you’re making a Michael Jackson record.”

Franglen’s first experience with film scoring came when Bond composer John Barry asked him to assist on Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning film Dances with Wolves. He was later hired to do “dark and nasty stuff” in David Fincher’s Se7en.

“My job was to provide the dystopian edge that this score had, so I would take the squeaking brakes, sample them, and then play all the violin lines with the squeaking brakes underneath.

“There was a lot of experimental stuff that was incredibly fun.”

Franglen first met Avatar director James Cameron after he was hired by legendary film composer James Horner to work on “a movie he didn’t have money for.”

The film was Titanic, an infamous white elephant that was dismissed as a vanity project and was predicted to lead to the downfall of the Fox and Paramount film studios.

The composer had seen the headlines, but when Cameron showed him the scene where the Titanic breaks in half and begins to sink, he realized the press had gotten it wrong.

“It was so surprising compared to anything you’ve seen before. I knew it was special.”

Still running out of money for the music, Franglen had to borrow equipment and instruments from producers, and the majority of the score was recorded on synthesizers in a rented flat.

“Part of the reason the Titanic looked the way it did was because there wasn’t enough money to build it. [an] “There are orchestras everywhere,” he says.

In Avatar, the situation is exactly the opposite.

“Jim [Cameron] He still believes that good things take time. And as a composer, having that ability to refine and make something special is a rare thing these days.”

The director also went out of his way to make sure his latest movie doesn’t involve artificial intelligence.

“He asked me very specifically: ‘So we’re not using any AI? We’re not putting real musicians out of work,'” Franglen recalls.

“It’s fair to say that if you give most filmmakers the option to save money, they’ll take it.

“Jim is in a position where he won’t compromise, and that’s as important when it comes to the music as it is to the live performances of the actors.”

As the film prepares to open, Franglen celebrates her Golden Globe nomination with her theme song, Dream As One, performed by Miley Cyrus.

But he is also thinking about what comes next. Cameron has already completed the scripts for Avatar Four and Five; It is planned to be released in 2029 and 2031.

“Four… I think it’s surprising,” says Franglen. “It goes into completely new territory and I love it.”

The first images have already been shot, but Cameron says the completion of the film will depend on the box office performance of Fire and Ash.

“I really hope we can break even so we can make it happen,” Franglen says.

“I think after Avatar Two they said the breakeven point was $1.4bn (£1bn).

“I have no way of knowing, but I’m guessing it’s a similar number for this one.

“So if the audience tells us they want an Avatar Four, I look forward to doing it.”