The Film Scorer

As the title gives away, this is one of my rare repeat-guest interviews, this time with Laura Karpman. Coincidentally, the last time Laura and I talked was almost three years to the day. Then, we discussed her scores for The Marvels and for American Fiction, and this time we're talking about East of Eden, her new short film Cosmic Symphony, and Unsung: A Symphonic Suite for the Superhero Women of...

After a teeny tiny little break (completely unintentional), the show is back on the road. Joining me in this welcome back party is Tim Kasher. Tim is probably best known as the frontman for bands like Cursive and Good Life, but he also has a parallel career as a director and film composer, primarily scoring the films he's directed. His latest is the film/score Who's Watching. The film follows a st...

Olivier Deriviere (Plague Tale, Dying Late, Streets of Rage) joins me on The Film Scorer. Olivier has had two big projects come out within the last year or so, the third entries to the Dying Light (Dying Light: The Beast) and Plague Tale (Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy) franchises. As such, we dig into the music of both games, which are strikingly different from one another, the latter having ple...

This week, Lorne Balfe joins me on The Film Scorer. Lorne has about two-hundred credits to his name across film, TV, and video games, including projects like Top Gun: Maverick, a couple Mission: Impossible films, The Crown, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, and a whole load more. Not a bad resume... Now, although he normally releases about ten scores a year, 2026 has been a much quieter year for him...

Today, Takeshi Furukawa (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) joins the show! Takeshi's latest projects have been scoring the both seasons of Netflix's live action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender as well as Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf, the sequel to the hit indie platformer Planet of Lana. It's no surprise, then, that we planned on talking about both Avatar and...

Hard to believe that we're already about a quarter of the way through season 6 - feels like we've only just started. To commemorate this occasion, I'm joined by Kara Talve. Kara has been the principal composer of The Simpsons for the last few years, serves as the principal composer at Bleeding Fingers Music (the Hans Zimmer-founded composer collective), and has scored projects like Prehistoric Pla...

Gavin Brivik is the latest guest on The Film Scorer! I've been familiar with Gavin's work for quite a while, probably dating back to his score for the 2021 film Wild Indian, which was one of those situations where I hear someone making great music on under the radar indie films and wonder when they're going to break out. How to Blow Up a Pipeline helped put Gavin on the map while scoring seasons o...

One of the great pleasures of this show is talking to people whose work I really enjoy. Although I'd known Keegan Dewitt's music for a number of years (probably first taking notice with 2018's Gemini), his score for last year's The Chair Company really floored me, with the distinct and ever-changing palette and approaches intriguing me almost as much as the show's labyrinthine plot. So with all th...

On the latest episode of The Film Scorer podcast, I'm joined by John Paesano (Daredevil, Marvel's Spider-Man)! I've been a fan of John's for a while, with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes being a recent favorite, so it was an extra pleasure chatting with him. His latest score is for the Netflix series The Boroughs, in which he channels an 80s/early-90s big, symphonic, melodic adventure style of s...

Here we are, season 6, episode 2, things are in motion, momentum is building, and I'm joined by one of my favorite composers: Cristobal Tapia de Veer (The White Lotus, Smile)! Cristo's latest project is the 2026 BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies, featuring some incredible child actor performances and an increasingly psychedelic and psychotic score. We focus our conversation around that score, bu...

After a long wait and seemingly unending anticipation, Season 6 of The Film Scorer Podcast is here! To kick off the new season, I'm joined by the very rare repeat guest, the great Colin Stetson! Colin and I talked several years back (much longer ago than it feels), right around when The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out, really digging into the weirdness of his score. This time, our focus is techni...

Season Six of The Film Scorer Podcast is almost here! The new season launches on Sunday, May 31st, with new episodes continuing every other Sunday after that (more or less). Season five had some huge interviews, like Oscar winner Daniel Blumberg, Max Richter, Oneohtrix Point Never, Thomas Newman, and even the noise rock band Chat Pile, so you never who will show up this time around. But I'll give...

Although we're now a couple months into 2026, I finally present you with the "best" film scores of 2025. As usual, there are some very mainstream scores in here that most observers would agree with and there are a few left field choices. If you're a longtime listener, that shouldn't surprise you. As with all of these lists, although I say they're the "best", what I really mean is these are my favo...

Awards season is nearing its end, with the BAFTAs later today, February 22, and the Oscars coming on March 15. I'll always say that, although I'm by no means a massive fan (or detractor) of film awards, I'm always happy that it's the one time of year where film music gets to be widely celebrated. The nominee slates also provide great peaks into the state of modern, mainstream film music, and this...

You poor fools - imagine thinking that The Film Scorer was actually on hiatus? Far, far from the truth. Ending the fifteen second break I took after interviewing Daniel Lopatin is Simon Franglen! For those that don't know, Simon is fresh off of scoring Avatar: Fire and Ash, having already scored Avatar: The Way of Water and working with longtime collaborator James Horner on the first film. This is...

Here we are, in the dead zone between seasons, where all should be silent. But a voice calls out from the darkness. Who could it be...? Well my friends, that voice belongs to one Daniel Lopatin, also known as Oneohtrix Point Never (alongside your humble host, of course). Daniel has just scored Marty Supreme, and I can vouch that both film and score are great, certainly landing upon my top tens of...

The end is here! Well, the end of season 5 at least. That's right, after over twelve months the season is finally over (making it, I think, the longest season of The Film Scorer yet), and what better wait to celebrate than to chat with Max Richter? Max's (Ad Astra, The Leftovers) latest (Oscar nominated) score is for the incredible historical drama Hamnet, a fictionalized account of the death of W...

There are a few perks to running every aspect of this site and podcast, the biggest being picking who I want to interview (and avoiding whomever I don't). Part of that, sometimes, is using film music as an excuse to interview bands that I just broadly like. Enter: Chat Pile. The Oklahoma noise rock band has one score under their belt, the 2022 indie crime flick Tenkiller, which they released as a...

Although this podcast is called "The Film Scorer", every so often it's nice to chat with someone who does significant work in another medium instead. Today, that someone is Jesper Kyd (Hitman, Assassin's Creed). Jesper has been scoring for games for over thirty years, working on some of the biggest video game franchises around. But he's also worked on a number of films (like the Indian films Tumbb...

I know I keep saying that the end of this season is imminent. And it is, but it seems like every time I think it's about dead it springs back to life for a little while longer. Reviving it this week is Jeremiah Fraites. Jeremiah is going to be best known as being one of the founding members of the hit alternative folk band The Lumineers, but lately he's expanded his horizons a bit. Specifically, J...

Composer Jeff Danna (The Good Dinosaur, The Boondock Saints) joins me on The Film Scorer podcast just before we wrap up season 5! Oddly enough, I've listened to quite a bit of music from the Silent Hill franchise over the last 15 months or so, and it turns out that Jeff "scored" the two film adaptations from earlier in the 2000s (I used "scored" in quotes because the real story is a bit more compl...

In a Film Scorer first, a repeat guest joins the show! Daniel Pemberton (the Spider-Verse films, King Arthur) comes onto the show for a second time, after chatting with me back in 2023 about his score for Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. Even though we're just over halfway through the year, Daniel's already scored about a half dozen projects, so we had plenty of things to talk about. With so m...

Today I'm joined by Electric Youth! Well, one half of the electronic/synth pop duo - Austin Garrick - without his co-member Bronwyn Griffin. Their latest project is the score for North of Normal, a true coming-of-age drama that jumps between timelines in a forest commune in the 70s and city life in the 80s. Some of you may think that the band's sound would be anachronistic for a film with this set...

Carlos Rafael Rivera (The Queen's Gambit, Hacks) is one of the few composers my mom has asked me about, so I'm extra excited to have him join the show! Carlos's latest project is Department Q, his fourth series with writer-director Scott Frank (joining Godless, The Queen's Gambit, and Monsieur Spade, as well as the film A Walk Among The Tombstones). Normally this is where I'd say something like "u...

What a surreal moment - getting to chat with Thomas Newman and Julia Newman! Whether you're a big film music fan or a casual film goer, I'll guess that you're familiar with Tom, having been nominated for fifteen Academy Awards (I accidentally say fourteen...) and scoring projects like The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, Finding Nemo & Finding Dory, 1917, and loads more. Now, Julia is pi...