The morning’s first panel was Michael Giacchino’s; after a detailed introduction, he basically just opened up the floor to questions – and a few of his upcoming projects were briefly discussed, most notably two of the live-action films that are to be helmed by Pixar directors: Mission: Impossible 4 (Brad Bird) and John Carter of Mars (Andrew Stanton). Very cool! To demonstrate the value of music in “Lost”, Giacchino live-scored on piano, where he had two guests from the audience act out an emotional role-playing scene in which one of them has just lost his best friend. It was quite funny and yet effective in showing the importance of music.
The next panel was composer Dave Grusin, who talked about his lengthy career with Sidney Pollack, his jazz background, and more. It was all quite straightforward, and was followed up by Mikael Carlsson and the MovieScore Media panel, where composers Zacarias M. de la Riva, James Peterson and Christopher Lennertz joined him. Like my panel, he played music clips to showcase the titles he discussed, and it was all very well received.