Marco Beltrami talks World War Z (2013)

Wow, I haven’t done one of these in the longest time (would you believe I have about ten interviews in draft form that I’ve been sitting on for the last four months?), so hopefully I still remember how to do this 🙂

This film (in brief), follows a retired UN investigator (Brad Pitt) as he seeks to keep his family safe from a global zombie outbreak. Along the way he works to find a cure (if any) and stop the zombie hordes from overwhelming the human survivors.

World War Z was never on my list of “must see movies” because I can’t watch zombie films (they’re too real for me), but when I saw that Marco Beltrami had score the picture, I decided it was at least worth investigating to see what the composer had to say. This brief interview I found, while all too short, is enlightening nonetheless. The part that really jumped out at me is when Beltrami describes how he incorporated the tonal sounds of the Emergency Broadcast System (you know, that annoying buzzer/screech that comes on the TV every six months or so when they test the system) into the harmonies of the film score. I haven’t heard it for myself, but it sounds very clever, and would certainly be a great way to heighten the tension in a film like this.

Beltrami also discusses the need for the film to have a main theme, something to ground the story in. And let’s face it, a good theme (or the lack thereof) can make or break a film. If you watched (and liked) World War Z, then you will definitely find this brief video interesting. I only wish I could find a longer interview.