Composer Heitor Pereira Discusses The Music, Sounds And Rhythms For His MINIONS Score

Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI

How does a composer create musical voices for a population of yellow creatures who speak their own language? If you’re Grammy Award-winning musician/composer/songwriter Heitor Pereira, it’s one groovy journey.

Playing in theaters now, MINIONS begins at the dawn of time. Starting as single-celled yellow organisms, Minions evolve through the ages, perpetually serving the most despicable of masters. Continuously unsuccessful at keeping these masters—from T. rex to Napoleon—the Minions find themselves without someone to serve and fall into a deep depression.

But one Minion named Kevin has a plan, and he – alongside teenage rebel Stuart and lovable little Bob – ventures out into the world to find a new evil boss for his brethren to follow.

The trio embarks upon a thrilling journey that ultimately leads them to their next potential master, Scarlet Overkill (Academy Award winner Sandra Bullock), the world’s first-ever female super-villain. They travel from frigid Antarctica to 1960s New York City, ending in mod London, where they must face their biggest challenge to date: saving all of Minionkind…from annihilation.

When it came time to creating the signature sounds and score for MINIONS, producer Chris Meledandri and directors Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda knew that setting the film in the ’60s would allow the opportunity to feature a soundtrack of music that continues to inspire and influence today’s culture.

Meledandri says, “When we realized that we were effectively making a prequel and we started to talk about a decade where the film would land and settle, we were all drawn to the ’60s. We all love it for its music, and the film is just packed with classic 1960s music throughout—ranging from The Doors, to the Stones, to The Beatles, to The Who. What I’ve found as a parent is that the music itself is so timeless that my sons have found that decade as they grow up. The music plays wonderfully for audience members who experience the music as nostalgia, but there are generations who have grown to love the music even though they weren’t alive in the 1960s.”

To take Kevin, Stuart and Bob on their trip, the film is chock full of the best of the ’60s, including The Beatles’ “Got to Get You Into My Life,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” The Turtles’ “Happy Together,” The Spencer Davis Group’s “I’m a Man,” The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” The Who’s “My Generation” and Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow,” bringing key scenes in the film to vibrant life.

The filmmakers looked to returning composer Heitor Pereira of DESPICABLE ME and DESPICABLE ME 2, a man whom writer Brian Lynch refers to as “a tornado of emotion.” The Grammy Award-winning musician has written and produced music for films ranging from blockbuster family hits to acclaimed dramas. Of working with Pereira for the third time, Coffin commends, “Who could orchestrate a movie better than the one who worked on the DESPICABLE ME movies?”

Meledandri says,“Heitor composed the score for Despicable Me in partnership with Pharrell Williams. With Despicable Me 2, he went on and did the whole score again by integrating some of Pharrell’s themes. And once again, he’s composing the score for Minions. His score not only has these wonderful melodies, but he adds scale to the third act of the film, where it actually gets very big, from a perspective of the sweep of the action. Heitor has a wonderful range, from the most intimate moments to sweetness. He also understands comedy, which is elusive for a lot of composers.”

Composer Heitor Pereira and I recently discussed his score for MINIONS and how experimenting with sounds and manipulating them into ‘instruments’ is what gives the little yellow dudes their rhythm and soul.

WAMG: What made you want to return to the Minion world?

Heitor Pereira:  When we worked on the DESPICABLE ME movies, I was sitting in the audience and looking at everyone reacting to the Minions. It made me feel like, ‘Wow, this is now a part of their lives, and I want to do justice to this dedication from the audience.’ Along these same lines, it was fun to generate the variety of personalities with the MINIONS through more colorful music.

WAMG: This one was even more interesting because it’s a prequel and it’s primarily set in the 60’s. What was it like scoring for the film wrapped around songs from The Beatles, The Who and The Rolling Stones?

HP: A lot of pressure, but it was a lot of fun. I really wanted to pay homage to musicians of the period. I wrote the score with Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin and John Barry in the back of my mind. They are composers I grew up listening to, even before I knew what film music was. To me it’s all about the melodies even when lots of crazy things were going on. To me, MINIONS was an opportunity to do that.

It’s like writing music for the Three Stooges, only difference is the Minions don’t speak English. To write around the songs of the 60’s, I used some of the techniques from that time period like recording with mics and using vintage amps.

I’m from Brazil, but the first time I heard The Beatles, I didn’t have a clue what they were singing about. But the rhythm and the waves of the sounds that the language created somehow already put me in a certain frame of mind. I find that the same goes with the Minions’ language.

WAMG: The score is such a big part of the DESPICABLE ME films. With your new score, it really gives the Minions a voice. The music is really funny. What kind of orchestra did you put together?

HP: The orchestra had 24 violins, 12 violas, eight cellos, five basses, five saxophones, including a bass sax, five trumpets, two trombones, a tuba, a choir, a rhythm section and a drummer.

Additionally, to create the British jazz sound of ’60s London, I invited a jazz ensemble made up of woodwinds, clarinets and piccolos and put everybody in the same room with a drummer and bass player. We put everyone together, unlike today where we tend to separate the sections, and recorded the cues altogether.

We also had a great group of percussion players for the big cues.

WAMG:  Audiences really wanted a MINION film. What sounds were you going for?

HP: I took the music from their travel through time and acquired all the personalities. For example, if they are in Egypt, then we have this pharaonic-like music; if they’re in the Stone Age, we have rock ’n’ roll, ‘ooga-ooga, toomb-tah, toomb-tah,’ the most basic, primal kind of sound.

Plus it was fun to go back to Prehistoric times and write dinosaur music as well.

WAMG: Did you purposefully give the film’s heroes Kevin, Stuart and Bob a theme?

HP: They each have their own themes. Kevin is the most fatherly in this group of three. He’s always the more responsible one. Bob is the sweet and loving part of it. And Stuart is the crazy one. The music for Bob, it’s more of almost like a childlike melody, and Stuart is the one who allows the music to go anywhere it wants to go. It’s also a very physical score.

Illumination, Universal and the filmmakers gave me the freedom to look for a sound that is the sound of the Minions. I had suggested to Pierre and Kyle, ‘Why don’t we use the Minions’ language, and get the choir to sing throughout the whole movie in that language?’ We ended up using a 40-50 piece choir. Overall it was great opportunity.

WAMG: Even Sandra Bullock’s Scarlett Overkill has her own theme.

HP: Scarlet is the true villain in this movie. There’s something about a woman being the villain in which she never loses her charm; the music had to capture that. So we wrote something for Scarlet that, in itself, has hidden a lot of charm.

Overall, the best part was that I got to play a lot of guitar with both themes, so it was a lot of fun.

WAMG: Do you feel more at home with the guitar?

HP: I do. That’s how music came to me. It’s the one instrument I pick out and it’s become an official extension of me.

I also write from the piano, but I’m very interested in technology and am always looking out for new equipment and instruments for different sounds. You can manipulate what you want the music to sound like and that’s what I love about animation. There’s a lot of playfulness that you can add to the score – it opens a lot of doors to many surprises. Intricate rhythms may not sound complicated but I’m usually writing crazy time signatures. It winds up sounding very natural.

Animation is a great playground for me because of my love of film.

WAMG: What music influenced you growing up?

HP: I come from a family, from my mother’s side, with a lot of musicians. I was around it all the time. Then I went for formal education at the Villa Lobos Conservatory in Rio de Janeiro where I studied composition and orchestration. I got to know the “whys” of notes. I wish there was more music in the schools these days and a part of the curriculum

In Brazil, I played guitar with some of my idols, including Ivan Lins. As a guitarist, I became a member of Simply Red throughout the early ’90s. I love world music. I’ve collaborated with Jack Johnson, Bryan Adams, Elton John, and Willie Nelson. I love the internationality of it all. Music is my religion. I guess that’s why I really love animation – it’s very worldly.

Upcoming releases for Pereira include the indie crime thriller The Jesuit; family favorite Curious George 3: Back to the Jungle; and the drama The Moon and the Sun, starring Pierce Brosnan and William Hurt.

The MINIONS soundtrack album is available now on Back Lot Music.

Order the soundtrack here: http://www.amazon.com/Minions-Heitor-Pereira/dp/B00XYA5UJ4/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1437437264&sr=1-1&keywords=minions+cd&pebp=1437437390550&perid=15EDNNS88BC11CXFH100

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/minions-original-motion-picture/id1004731199?app=itunes