WAMG Talks To THE MAZE RUNNER Composer John Paesano

On September 19th, 20th Century Fox will unveil the highly anticipated THE MAZE RUNNER and according to early numbers, director Wes Ball’s movie is on track for a $30 million opening when it bows next weekend.

Based upon the best-selling novel by James Dashner, when Thomas wakes up trapped in a massive maze with a group of other boys, he has no memory of the outside world other than strange dreams about a mysterious organization known as W.C.K.D.  Only by piecing together fragments of his past with clues he discovers in the maze can Thomas hope to uncover his true purpose and a way to escape.

One of the most popular soundtracks Sony Music has released this year, the original movie score is from American film composer and conductor John Paesano.

Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Paesano initially studied classical music with composition professor Sally Dow Miller of Conservatoire de Paris.  In 1996 he traveled to Boston, where he continued his studies in musical composition and film scoring at prestigious Berklee College Of Music.

After graduating, John headed to Los Angeles where he was able to serve minor roles along side some of the industries most prestigious composers, including Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, and Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions.

Since then, Paesano has written a range of film and television scores on his own. In 2012 he was honored with an Annie Award for Best Score for the award winning television series Dreamworks Dragons: Riders Of Berk, which is based off of the Academy Awarding winning film HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON.

THE MAZE RUNNER was recorded in Los Angeles with 80 players and during our recent phone conversation, Mr. Paesano and I discussed his stirring score for the movie, the use of orchestral instruments vs natural acoustic sound and his favorite film composers.

WAMG: Those looking forward to the film can listen to samples of your score on Sound Cloud.

John Paesano: It’s been one of the most previewed soundtracks on Sony’s Sound Cloud page. It’s beat X-MEN. It’s beat DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. A lot of people are listening to it, which is awesome.

WAMG: Very impressive considering its just snippets.

JP: I think Fox will try to release a free preview track early for fans. What’s really interesting with THE MAZE RUNNER is that it’s had such a heavy social media presence. Even from the inception of the film – even before I met director Wes Ball – I remember a big buzz about the movie because of everyone involved with the film and the fan base on social media.

It’s been great that the fans can follow the movie’s progress on social media from the beginning and it’s been really exciting as we approach the release date.

WAMG: Fans are really looking forward to the movie.

JP: I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. You work on a film for so long and you get so close to it, so by the end, you don’t know if it’s good or bad. But I did have a break from it for about a month and I saw a preview of it, so I was able to sit back and say, “this is a really good film.” It has tested really well. It’s been tracking really well and I think the fans are really excited to see it. Wes did a great job with it.

WAMG: What originally drew you to this project?

JP: Initially I saw Wes’s work, a short he did called RUIN, where he did everything himself, including the visual effects.

Again social media – it caught fire and a lot of people saw it and loved it… including me. I had done some smaller projects with Fox, so when I found out they were doing the movie, I got involved in the mix and the film.

We’re almost the same age and we come from that era where we both grew up with Spielberg and John Williams. Those are the kind of films we were inspired by. James Cameron’s movies like THE ABYSS. We grew up liking STAR WARS, JURASSIC PARK, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. When I met Wes, we were both cut from the same cinematic cloth, so it seemed like a very natural fit.

I went through the process of composing some music and my agent submitted it to the producers. I was part of a very short list of candidates. I think Wes and I creatively were aligned, had the same interests and ultimately the same vision for the film. It just worked out to where he picked me to compose the music for his film. I was very fortunate.

WAMG: When you watch the clips or trailers, along with your score underneath, it sounds very massive – like a big Jerry Goldsmith film or an epic John Williams score.

JP: We’re both big fans of Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. When Wes and I first sat down to work on the film, even before a single frame of film was shot, we had this vision to do a big JURASSIC PARK-like score for the movie. When Wes started shooting and I started trying to put music up against it, we soon realized, as much as we loved their scores, it didn’t quite fit to the footage we received. We almost had to use that as inspiration, but we really had to mold the score to fit our picture. The music really goes with the spirit of the film.

WAMG: I like how it sounds Old Hollywood.

JP: In a way it’s a throw-back score. It’s modern but sounds like old cinema. Scores are different now and this wasn’t a huge budget film. Wes didn’t have the budget like some of the $90M movies, but it was amazing what he was able to squeeze in and it stands up with all those other films. The score was another portion of it. When we first got into it, we had to make sure the footage worked with the music. It all worked out in the end and it looks amazing.

WAMG: Had you read the book beforehand?

JP: I read the book once I was officially on the project. Then I started composing off the script that Fox had sent over. The main title of the movie was my first sketch. What I usually do when I start to write a 10 minute suite is sit down with no pictures and just with the story in mind, before I have anything in my head. Once the pictures are there, then you’re locked in what you can and can’t do. But when I compose with no pictures, I can freely write whatever I want. You’re uninhibited by any visual structures. You’re not handcuffed by the picture.

Once that’s done, you take all that music and try to fit it into the film. You have a lot from which to work from. The first draft from the soundtrack “Maze Runner” was part of the initial suite that I wrote. Everything was born from that. After reading the script, it was the first thing I wrote.

WAMG: You get an idea of your theme from these clips on Sound Cloud.

JP: Without seeing the script, a lot of it stemmed from my imagination. 20 or 30 years ago, people had more time to write film scores. Now we have all this technology which allows to do it in a quicker fashion. When Jerry Goldsmith wrote ALIEN and John Williams wrote STAR WARS, the process used to take a lot longer because they didn’t have all this technology that we do today.  They had much more time to work on these films scores. What happens now is we don’t have time to write suites. Composers have to write scene to scene during eight weeks and try to get it done before the film comes out.

You lose the ability to sit and live with the score and the story for awhile. Sometimes you have to figure out what doesn’t work before you know what works. There’s an experimentation process where you have to try out a bunch of different things before you know what’s working and that takes time.

Fox hired me for this film, even before it was shot – that’s very unusual. Usually a composer is hired two to three months before they’re ready to mix. I was on the film very early on. I was able to visit the set, spend some time there. I was able to absorb the story – where they were shooting, what the characters were going through. They filmed in New Orleans, so I made a second trip to the set.

During my visit to the set, which basically was a hot, muggy swamp, I remember thinking how much environmental sound there was – Cicadas and birds and all the wind blowing through the leaves. The crew built this village and I thought there is so much acoustic, environmental sound out here it would be great to capture some of it, bring it back and incorporate it into the score.

We went out there and recorded all the natural sounds from the area and the moving sets as well as beating against big oil drums with sticks and we used it along with brass and percussive instruments and then incorporated all of it into the score. When you have the time to work on the music and a longer schedule to visit the set, creatively it really enriches the score.

Plus you have to take into account what happens afterwards with a big movie – the orchestrations, mixing, recording with the orchestra. There are so many different stages. Writing is only part of it. The process is relatively quick once you figure out what works. We recorded the score for 8 or 9 days in Los Angeles at the Fox Scoring Stage.

WAMG: Do you have a favorite genre that you like to compose for?

JP: I grew up with drama, adventure movies. Big movies like STAR WARS and RAIDERS were very inspirational to me as a kid. I grew up loving John Barry’s score for DANCES WITH WOLVES and OUT OF AFRICA. The movie that got me into film scoring in the first place was Steven Spielberg’s EMPIRE OF THE SUN. That was the place where I figured out I wanted to write music for films when I got older.

I also love to write for animated movies too.

WAMG: Speaking of animation, you wrote the music for Dreamworks Dragons: Riders Of Berk, which is based off of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON.

JP: Animation is one of those genres where you can still be extremely musical, still be extremely thematic. It’s a very unencumbered space for a composer. A lot of scores for animated films these days are very, very musical. When you’re doing live actions films, you try to work the music to scene. You want it to be felt and not heard. With animation music, you’re right up there with the characters. It’s walking hand in hand. I love the challenges of all the different genres.

WAMG: I love HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, especially John Powell’s score. How did you take someone else’s film score and make it your own?

JP: John Powell is a hero of mine. There’s no one better in animation than John. I got the job after a long audition process, consisting of demos and meetings. It’s DreamWorks first produced television series. They took their time with it. DRAGON was nominated for 2 Oscars and when it came time for the TV show, they wanted to stay true to the movie and what John accomplished with the music.

When I initially got it, my first thought was, “I’m so excited. I get to be like John Powell. I get to work with all this music that I love.” The next, immediate thought after was, “oh man, I have to deliver music like John Powell.” (laughs) It was one of those things – be careful what you wish for. John is such a talent and so amazing, and I wondered how I was going to live up to this?

The thing with DRAGONS: Riders Of Berk, we used John’s music as much as we possibly could, but with episodic TV, you have to be careful not to keep bashing people over the head with the same theme on a weekly basis. We used a score that was in the spirit of John’s music. The trick was to use those themes that were the fabric of the movie – Hiccup, Toothless, all the characters – and at the same time take the score in another direction and to different places. I think we did a good job in doing that. I’m very proud of that and we’re going into a third & fourth season right now. It’s moving to NetFlix and the next season looks absolutely amazing.

It just keeps getting better and better. It’s a lot of work, but I’m excited to be on it and it’s a fun challenge every week.

WAMG: Do you prefer the standard orchestra instruments like woodwinds and strings and percussion, over the “natural sounding” techniques you used in THE MAZE RUNNER?

JP: As much I love using a full orchestra, I use everything. I grew up with the classical, orchestral guys like John Barry, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams and then as I progressed, I started listening to the modern predecessors such as Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman. They started incorporating more hybrid sounds and the more modern elements of music with the orchestra. To me, the orchestra is another color of the score, another tool to use to convey the story.

I don’t consider myself a purist by any means, but I do think the orchestra is an essential and major component of a film score. There’s no better group of instruments to convey human emotions than the orchestral instruments. It has such range, warmth and variety. Plus it’s a sound that’s so ingrained in people’s minds of what film scores sound like because it is such an intregal part of the score.

WAMG: Thanks for talking to us and best of luck with THE MAZE RUNNER and the third season of DRAGONS: Riders Of Berk.

Pre-order the CD soundtrack HERE

Directed by Wes Ball, THE MAZE RUNNER stars Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Will Poulter.

themazerunnermovie.com