The Reel Rejects - X-MEN 97: BEHIND THE MUSIC - Exclusive Interview w/ Composers on Characters, New Songs, & Opening

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Starting point is 00:01:30 Hi, I'm Coy Jondra with The Real Rejects. I am sitting down with the Newton Brothers, the composers of X-Men 97, as well as a bunch of other stuff you might love. I love both your backgrounds. I'm such a sucker for, like, people, Zoom setups post-2020 to, like, see into the homes of creatives. Mine's just a green screen. I'm actually on the beach in Hawaii right now. You actually don't play instruments. You're like, this just looks good for the brain.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Yeah, there's no instruments. This is all fake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I want to dive right in. I really appreciate what you guys have done for this property. This might be the most iconic sound in Marvel. And it's insane to think about that. Like, Marvel's become this force.

Starting point is 00:02:09 But when you think of Marvel, X-Men has maybe the most iconic sound design. What was it like for the pair of you to come into something that already has so much behind it? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, uh, it was a big, it was a big jump, you know? Like, not a big jump, but it's just like there's a lot to take on. And I think that like, from the guess, echo it starts with terror and then that terror like moves into excitement and then the excitement yields more terror and and the terror fuels like more exploration and and all of those things come together I think in a very like fruitful way that sort of yield where we landed with just this sort of like you know there's so many things from you know eight bit to shredding guitars to orchestra and choir to analog sense plug in sense digital sense it's just like it's just like it's just like everything um and that that's you know that was sort of a tricky process because

Starting point is 00:03:03 usually a film or a tv show is like a sound and you get the sound and it's like okay we're featuring like a cellist within an orchestra and a bass synthesizer and then some other things like and it's like that's the palette and go this is just like everything literally everything all the time and it's like if at any moment like we were you know we can never get stale because the story's not stale the animation's not stale so for us it was about i mean it's partially why i have my setup the way i have it set up so it's just like there's no i don't have to set something up to go for a new sound it's just like what happens while i'm sitting here on the phone playing that like oh that's a sound i should use that and that and it all sort of comes together in in what you have

Starting point is 00:03:47 you know heard in these first four episodes and you mentioned terror and i love your work with one of my favorite voices in terror flan again i see a doctor sleep in the back background. You guys work with Flanagan a lot in the genre content space of horror, but also in the genre content space of comic books. You did work on Avengers, and I got to know, is there love for comics to you personally that you're bringing to this world of X-Men? I mean, I got into comics from the actual original series. So I actually didn't get in, I didn't, yeah, I started out. So the original show got me into comics, which is funny because it's reverse for Andy. And I just, because I wanted to know more, I was starting.

Starting point is 00:04:26 and it died deep because the show ended and I was like, well, now what? And then I started to just get more into these characters. And then I just started to fall in love with that. And it led to more characters like Daredevil and all these other kind of MCU characters. And that's kind of how it started for us, or at least for me. And Andy, when did you get into comics? What year was, what was that? Yeah, mine was the very first comic I was into was Elfquest.

Starting point is 00:04:52 And then I got into the first episode of X Factor. before X-Men, episode one of X-Factor came out. And I was like, this is amazing. But there was a lot of backstory that I didn't know or understand, but it was just in for like the X-Factor story. And then I started exploring X-Men. And then it was just like a whole world. And then from there, when the show came out, it was like, awesome.

Starting point is 00:05:17 I don't have to read anymore. Let's watch the TV series. So that was sort of my progression into it. I love the Oroboros of the X-Men animated series leading to Infinity War, leading to X-Men again for one of you and for the other, the X-Factor being the thing that they made to have the original fans feel like they got the team and then go into X-Men. You both have different circles of comic, and that's the magic at comics. Speaking of circles and that progression, the soundtrack to this has this amazing crescendo, but there's also this kind of loop to it. And I've always heard the different instruments kind of building in my head as different X-Men teaming up. To me, it's this sound represents an X-Man, this one, this one, and then it comes to that crescendo.

Starting point is 00:06:01 And the visual looks like that as well. Are there certain sounds that you cue for a certain X-Men? Do you have like a favorite X-Men that sounds like blank to you? Good question. Yeah. What do you think, Taylor? What's the, what would that? I think, well, I agree with you, though, definitely with the theme song.

Starting point is 00:06:19 I think that is the sort of like the team coming together, whoever is the team, whoever's around, because, you know, things are always changing, things are always happening. So it's more of like the icon, it's the theme of of the X-Men coming to fight or to win or, you know, for humanity or whatever it may be. And I think we ended up using definitely certain motifs and in some cases sounds that turn into themes for certain characters. Like we used like some bending metal for Magneto that we'd hear a little bit of it. And then all of a sudden his theme would start. And so we did some things, but not so much from the point of the theme song into the show. Yeah, but it's a great idea, though. I also love that you played around with the score and made it your own.

Starting point is 00:07:08 Like there's reverence for the score, but you've clearly modified and enhanced. And I love when you sneak in pieces of composition to other scenes that are really subtle and then this week in particular was a little less subtle which i enjoyed the 16 bitification of this sound design and the eight eight bitification of the sound design what was it like to play with uh someone else's composure and then to make it your own but using old school sound design we talked in a little at the beginning but like what tools did you use to make that eight bit i mean we used the tools that we would normally get fired for using in that episode like it was all the things that like the sounds that are really fun like the eight bit all of that

Starting point is 00:07:45 like to be able to use those things and like play the main title with like it was almost like hilarious i remember the first time we were working on like the little bit where the main theme plays like but la la la la let you know and it plays real fast and kind of like it was like oh wow that feels really fun but are we like is this wrong like you know and then everyone's reaction when we uh when we played it uh for everyone was just everyone was really pumped on it because it just, it takes you back. Like, you know, we deep dove sort of back into the games that we used to play. And it's like, oh, those games are as if you've just slammed a Red Bull and a Celsius.

Starting point is 00:08:25 And you're just like, the music is just very like, strangely, not strangely, that, not strangely, that music is really well written for those video games back in the day. But it's also like, it's like on speed, you know, everything's moving real quick. So for this episode, it was like, let's cram a lot of writing and eight-bit interesting sounds into this whole score and use a lot of weird sounds and bebops and boobs that we can usually not use. So it was a lot of fun. I work with the bleeding fingers guys over at Hans Zimmer and they play with really inordinate machines and instruments and they've got like the craziest things they just make sound of. And they always talk about translating the visual to a sound. And that's

Starting point is 00:09:07 always been like alchemy to me. Like you guys making music, I can't even read it, much less just make a sound. When you have a visual medium like an animated series or a comic, how does that translate from like, I see this, now let's make this. I know I have these things at my disposal and then reaching outside of the normal things. How do you translate? What's the, what's the math for you? I think, I think what works well is having a good, already some, a good pieces and a good palette of sound that's working well for the characters. So early on, you just tackle the characters based off script or in this case also early animatics and obviously conversations with the creatives and the showrunner and you sort of figure out what it is that character is and that sound or the

Starting point is 00:09:50 team is and then from there you can start sprinkling extra things or unique sounds that might be odd or not heard before or that's accustomed to that particular character and then when you get to a sequence like the video game episode, then like, cool, now you have something you can work with. You have the Magneto theme that's in that episode. And then now we're doing an 8-bit version of that so we can take all the notes and the melodies and run it through things. And so I think it allows a good building blocks to start. And that's kind of how we approach it. Well, it is a magic, magic show. You may have gotten to play with the most nostalgic sound of all time and enhanced and made it your own. So I really, really appreciate all the work you've done. And

Starting point is 00:10:34 I love to know that you love these characters as much as we do when it shows. So thank you so much, guys. Oh, thank you, boy. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Have a great one, guys. Keep up the great work. Thanks a lot.

Starting point is 00:10:44 Cheers.

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The Reel Rejects - X-MEN 97: BEHIND THE MUSIC - Exclusive Interview w/ Composers on Characters, New Songs, & Opening

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