Where the Wild Things Are | Film Music Central

I was surprised when Where the Wild Things Are became a motion picture in 2009. As a kid, I remember having this book read to me and I enjoyed it very much, but it didn’t seem like the best story to adapt into a movie (after all, it isn’t very long). But to my surprise, the movie actually turned out to be very good. If you haven’t read the book before, the story in brief is about a young boy named Max who sails to a magical island inhabited by oversized monsters. Max makes himself their king and happily rules over them for a while until he becomes homesick and returns to where he came from. The film expands on this story quite a bit by giving names and distinct personalities to the different “wild things” on the island, but the basic elements of the story remain the same.

While Carter Burwell might not be a name as familiar as, say, John Williams, James Horner or Brian Tyler, he has done a fair share of great film scores. He composed several scores for the Twilight series (Twilight; Breaking Dawn parts 1 and 2) and collaborated six times with director Bill Condon. Burwell has certainly done some interesting work over the years.

And the composer has some interesting thoughts to share on the story’s musical score, as seen in the video above. For instance, once Max arrives on the island “where the wild things are”, the composer thought it appropriate to completely change the music from something familiar to something more exotic (like using non-traditional instrumentation).

One part involves literally banging on pots and pans to create a musical effect. The idea is that these are things you might literally find on the forest floor on the island. Using non-traditional items to create music is always exciting and I had no idea that Burwell and his fellow musicians had done this to create the music for Where the Wild Things Are.