Peter Jackson's King Kong

Meet Chance Thomas, game music composer for Peter Jackson's King Kong.

Chance Thomas is a multiple award-winning composer who creates music of stunning imagery and passion. His trademark approach balances the range, richness, and drama of a modern film orchestra with rare acoustic instruments and human voices. Electronic elements add supporting layers of intensity and distinctiveness to the sound. Chance is one of the premier composers in interactive entertainment. He also composes for film and television. His California based company www.HUGEsound.com, offers a full range of audio services to creative directors and producers worldwide.

Download behind the scenes footage and spectacular action scoring in these exclusive video clips:

We've asked Chance to share his behind the scenes experience with us of creating the music score for Peter Jackson's King Kong, the official game of the movie!

"I first caught wind of the King Kong game development in the Fall of 2004. I saw a picture online of Peter Jackson standing with Michel Ancel and thought, "Now there's a pair I would LOVE to team up with." You can imagine how thrilled I was when, many months later, I was selected to be their game composer.

I was tasked with delivering 90 minutes of original music in just over 90 days. This included all anticipated revisions, orchestrations, contracting, music preparation, recording, mixing, editing and format conversions. Music Supervisor Aurelien Baguerre, working under the supervision of Sound Manager Yoan Fanise, Producer Xavier Poix, and Creative Director Michel Ancel, game me a wonderful music design to work from. These guys deserve much of the credit for the success of this score. I couldn't have done it without their outstanding direction.

Even so, it was a marathon endeavor, often requiring 120 hours in my 6 day work week. The guys in France joked that I just didn't sleep for three months. They could call or email the studio any time day or night and (sad but true) I was typically there to answer them. It was very consuming for a while.

I never miss a deadline. And yet my creative process has always been unpredictable. Sometimes it's like a flash of lighting. Other times it's like watching granite erode. The main theme of the game, which I call Kong's Tragic Hero Theme, was literally given to me. It formed spontaneously in my mind. Hearing it was like stumbling across a chunk of diamond. My job then became like that of a jeweler - to cut and polish it, then craft appropriate settings in which to place and showcase it. Several other pieces in the score came the same way.

Ann's Theme, on the other hand, was more like trying to find a cure for cancer. I experimented, theorized, studied, brainstormed and plunked out clam after clam on the keyboard trying to find something that worked. I hated it all. My agent Bob Rice likes to remind me that even Michael Jordan missed over 9,000 shots in his career. That thought can be oddly encouraging at 3:00 am. With a tremendous outpouring of energy, Ann's Theme finally came together. Many other tracks followed the same sleepless pattern.

Composing the music is the first step to a complete score. Orchestration is the next one. Orchestration is the art and science of distributing a composition across the various instruments in the orchestra. Art because there is a tremendous amount of personal taste involved. Science because each instrument has specific physical limitations. Most composers hire third-party orchestrators to do this work. I've always done my own. I like painting in color, not just making sketches.

The score was recorded at Studio X in Seattle, Washington by Reed Ruddy and Sam Hofstedt. It was a beautiful studio and they were consummate professionals. They earned my highest possible praise by being transparent to the process. Music Director Aurelien Baguerre flew over from France to help produce the sessions from the control room. We hired the Northwest Sinfonia featuring Simon James to perform the score. The orchestra was recorded in sections to provide us with maximum flexibility in mixing and editing the music.

The 50-piece string section was first and they were fabulous. Most composers hire third-party conductors to conduct their scores. I like to do my own conducting. Conducting the strings of the Northwest Sinfonia was like a woman tasting chocolate. Pure bliss followed by a rush of energy. The musicians were so very attentive, fast, responsive, accurate, expressive... just name any positive adjective and it fits. The sheet music had been flawlessly prepared by Paul Taylor Co. and the sessions just flew. With things going so well we decided to record two passes of strings on every cue thus approximating the sound of 100 musicians. We still managed to finish ahead of schedule.

The brass also turned out well, but less blissfully so. The musicians came to the sessions sporting a schizophrenic three-sided personality. The low brass were cool, down-to-earth guys who, in spite of being the most talented of the lot, were also the most eager to work hard and get it right. The trumpets were a bit like red sports car drivers with half a chip on their shoulder. They were repeatedly surprised when I asked them to do another take, like a star NBA player getting called for a foul. The horns were aloof but very professional. All three personalities seemed to join at the lips, and we came away with some great sounding brass tracks.

Woodwinds, percussion and harp came together surprisingly well considering the isolated and fragmented way in which their parts were added in. With an English Horn part here, a Bass Flute part there, a smattering of harp in this measure, a timpani roll in that measure. It was like numbering words in a paragraph and then rebuilding the paragraph a word at a time in random, computer-generated order!

We hired the Seattle Choral Company led by Fred Coleman to perform the choir parts. They were 40 voices strong and were recorded in 4 passes, approximating the sound of a 160-voice choir. Fred and I shared the conducting duties with the choir, but he took the lion's share and was imminently more fun to watch!

Solo voice was performed by my long-time vocal teammate Jenny Jordan. Jenny and I have done so many great projects together — King Kong, The Lord of the Rings, Middle-earth Online, going all the way back to Quest for Glory V. Jenny always delivers the magic. She was in another state so we had to FTP the background tracks and FAX the sheet music to her at Soularium Recording Studio in Utah. We produced her sessions long distance by phone and had all the tracks FTP'd back to Studio X for the final mix.

The score was mixed primarily at Studio X by Reed Ruddy and Sam Hofstedt. With so much music to mix, we would work long into the night until we all got that glazed look on our faces where we couldn't tell a Taiko drum from a Tyco train. Sleep has a wonderful way of pushing the RESET button on your ears. The score was mixed on Pro Tools in stereo and 5.1 formats, at 44.1 kHz, and a resolution of 24 bits. I did some additional mixing and editing on my Pro Tools system at HUGEsound near Yosemite National Park in central California.

I finally completed the project on September 1st. I was able to deliver the full 90 minutes required by the contract, plus an additional 30 minutes of bonus material for the game. The score is rich and varied with thundering tribal rhythms, unsettling tension, romance and thrilling action. The team in France has done a terrific job integrating the score in the game.

We all hope you will enjoy the free, full-length downloadable music tracks available on this website. We also hope you will love the game playing experience we have created for you. As you can tell from this tip-of-the-iceberg account, we have poured an absurdly enormous amount of work, inspiration, energy, talent, technology, money and more work into making Peter Jackson's King Kong the best game experience of the year."