DANNY ELFMAN MAKES ANIMATED MUSIC

Musical composer Danny Elfman makes his debut in the world of feature animation with Meet The Robinsons. Elfman has scored hundreds of fantasy films including his collaboration with director Tim Burton on Big Fish, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Sleepy Hollow and Edward Scissorhands to name a few.

Scoring to the stop motion animation of The Nightmare Before Christmas was a pre-cursor to a full fledged animated score. Danny says he had his doubts that he’d be able to make Meet The Robinson’s music.

“I met with them and they showed me the pictures and the illustrations and I saw the future retro look and I think that kind of hooked me. I’d always been apprehensive about doing animation. I’d never done it before other than stop motion like I’d done for Tim Burton and I was a little afraid of it. But I said if I’m gonna try one, I’ll try this.”

Composing a musical score is not without it’s pressures. Danny says he’s always facing a personal deadline to bring the score in under six weeks.

“Every movie where I have extra time I have writers block up until the day when I don’t have extra time and then the writers block goes away. We can’t have the luxury of writers block. When you hit a mark I’ll have predetermined that I can not do the score unless its in six weeks. And I get that six week mark, it’s like if I feel I’ve got writers block I basically have to get a frying pan in the kitchen and bang myself in the head and go to work. There’s no such luxury. You have to finish.”

Elfman was a late musical bloomer. He didn’t pick up his first instrument until he was 18 which was a violin he strapped to his back and learned how to play while traveling through Africa.