[00:00:00] Speaker A: A lot of my job is looking at visuals and responding through music and writing something that feels cohesive and complimentary to what you're seeing. And so when you have visuals that are galaxies or you know, the microcosm of the cell or it's just so inspiring, it's hard not to want to write the best, most complimentary music to that.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent
[00:00:33] Speaker C: welcome to I D the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today my guest is composer, producer and arranger Hannah Parrott to discuss her musical score for the new film the Story of Everything. The movie is a cinematic exploration of the cosmos that unpacks three scientific discoveries of the last century that reveal mind and purpose behind the universe.
A rising force in the industry, Hannah has partnered with studios such as such as DreamWorks, HBO, Amazon, Netflix, National Geographic and the BBC. Some of Hannah's most notable work includes Amazon's Shelter, DreamWorks, the Crood's Family Tree, National Geographic's the Flood, and Cypher Studios record breaking theatrical documentary After Death.
Hannah also works extensively with independent filmmakers, debuting work at the Cannes Film Festival, American Pavilion, south by Southwest and the Los Angeles Film Festival. Anna, it's a pleasure to have you on. I do the Future.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: Absolutely. Welcome. Well, before we chat, there may be some watching or listening who don't know about this Story of Everything movie that's about to hit theaters. So I'm going to play the 60 second trailer just to give you a little taste of what's to come. Here's that. Now,
[00:01:51] Speaker D: today I'm going to tell you a story which may seem very strange to you.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: How in the world, how did this start?
Has the universe always been here or is it finite? We want to take our metaphysical hypotheses
[00:02:03] Speaker C: and see what they point to. Here is evidence for what can only
[00:02:08] Speaker D: be described as a supernatural event turned
[00:02:13] Speaker B: out to be the tip of the iceberg. Without guidance, we would get a life unfriendly universe.
[00:02:18] Speaker E: We're dealing with a system of manifold complex design.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: We associate information with a rational intelligence.
The universe, it bears everywhere the fingerprints of its creator.
[00:02:35] Speaker D: The concept of life as a cosmic phenomenon should have many consequences.
The question then was, what does one do about it?
[00:02:49] Speaker C: Well, that was the short trailer for the Story of Everything which opens in theaters April 30th. Right around the corner, we'll tell you how to get tickets and learn more about the movie, the filmmakers, the cast, the experts that are in it at the end of today's show.
So Hannah, how did you get into the world of musical composition and film scoring.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: It's great question.
I actually didn't know it existed for a long time when I was growing up and thinking about what. What I wanted to do. But I fell in love with film scores soon after I found out about them. I started listening to the Chronicles of Narnia soundtrack when it came out for the movie that came out in the early 2000s.
And I had read the books growing up and loved them, and I loved the movie. And then the score was a different way to experience a story that I loved. And I could take it with me on road trips or in my room or wherever. And the music allowed me to get into that world, into Narnia, and it wasn't close enough anymore just to listen to these types of soundtracks. I wanted to participate in writing stories musically.
[00:04:02] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: What instruments did you grow up around?
[00:04:08] Speaker A: I play piano. I played mainly here. I only took a little bit of lessons growing up, and then I sing as well.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: Oh, okay, cool. Have you had a chance to use vocals in a project?
Yeah.
Okay. I personally love movie scores. You know, kind of like you, I've enjoyed film, but that score is just a special part of movies, and I've been collecting it for a long time.
What is it about movie music that you think is. Is appealing to you and that moves people?
[00:04:45] Speaker A: I think there's something about music that can bypass a lot of the analytical parts of yourself and shoot straight to the emotional core of someone.
And that can be the case in concert music as well, or going to an opera. There's. You don't even have to know the language, but you can listen to the singer and the orchestra and you can feel what you should be feeling.
And so I think when you pair music, which has this inherent ability to do that, with the multifaceted storytelling of a film and TV and whatever media. You have all these different art forms telling the same story, and it's just this overload of experiencing the story on every visceral level you can. And I think music is a huge part of that and works in tandem as, like, this choir of voices telling the same story. And I love that.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Yeah, that's. That's a beautiful way to put it. Yeah. I mean, I go back to James Horner's Braveheart. You know, being from Scotland, I saw this story of. Of Scottish freedom on the big screen, and James Horner did a lot to. To make that ever more beautiful.
The Lord of the Rings movies, you know, Howard Shore's music, Alexander Desplat's music and the King's Speech was one that stood out to me.
And I don't know if you've ever seen the 2010 movie True Grit, but Carter Burwell's arrangements of old hymns were really, really special for that film. And then there's Hans Zimmer's music for Gladiator. I mean, there's just so many wonderful composers out there. We're kind of spoiled for it these days. Do you have a favorite film score or film composer?
[00:06:31] Speaker A: It's hard to choose a favorite.
[00:06:33] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: But I'll list a few. I think some of the people that got me into it, got me into the love of film scoring are Thomas Newman. He did Finding Nemo, which was a huge impactful film for me.
There's also Elmer Bernstein. He did To Kill a Mockingbird and the Magnificent Seven and just had this very varied career and what he was able to write, obviously, Hans Zimmer was a huge influence.
All of the Nolan films he did, like Dark Knight are so James Newton Howard's incredible. He did a ton of romantic comedies that have beautiful scores. And there's just this monster orchestral composer that I'm impressed by.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Did you ever catch his score for the Village?
[00:07:24] Speaker A: I have listened to it. I actually haven't seen the movie, which is.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, bad on my question. Beautiful.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah, he's an incredible composer.
And then there's really old ones like Nicholas Roja had it. Ben Hur.
Oh, yeah, really beautiful stuff. And then James Horner. Between Thomas Newman and James Horner, they're probably my, like, go tos of who have influenced my. My dialect, I'll say, musically and.
Yeah. Braveheart, Titanic, Fifel goes west. Honestly, that's a. That's a sleeper one of his. But it's so good.
Yeah. A Beautiful Mind. Great. A great score.
[00:08:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Well, those are all. Those are all great influences to have. And it's good to hear that they've made an influence on your tone and style and, you know, just musical voice. Well, how did the Story of Everything project come across your radar?
[00:08:25] Speaker A: I had worked with Cypher Studios on After Death, which was their document theatrical documentary in 2022, probably 2021 through 22.
And then that same team was working on. Had been working on this scientific documentary and they were pitching it to me, like, what do you think? Would you be interested?
And I was like, actually, I have.
I have been familiar with a lot of these people's work for a while, so this is pretty intriguing to me.
And I'd Love to be part.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: Okay, yeah, that was my next question. Had you come across Dr. Stephen Meyer's work or some of the other scientists and scholars in the film?
[00:09:11] Speaker A: I had, yeah. So I've been familiar with the Discovery Institute since I was fairly young, actually.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: And thinking through these different discoveries and lines of thinking.
And there were some people in the in documentary that were new to me, and that was exciting because I'd heard some before and it was fun to. To.
I mean, I don't know them personally, but engage with them musically and. And underscore what they were saying and detailing these arguments and.
Yeah. In a way I had never.
[00:09:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And that is what's great about, you know, a documentary assembling experts, is that, you know, you can then go down rabbit trails with each of their works, you know, and just get a richer perspective.
And, of course, we have no shortage of scholars and scientists who are working in the intelligent design research community.
You could spend a lifetime, you know, reading their work and learning more about it. Well, the Story of Everything is a visual feast with stunning footage ranging from the vastness of the universe all the way down to the wonders inside the cell. So what was it like working with such a palette to create the music that you did?
[00:10:30] Speaker A: It was incredible. Honestly, it being a visual feast makes music very fun to write because a lot of my job is looking at visuals and responding through music and writing something that feels cohesive and complimentary to what you're seeing. And so when you have visuals that are galaxies or, you know, the microcosm of the cell or it's just so inspiring, it's hard not to want to write the best, most complementary music to that.
And, yeah, it was wonderful. It was wonderful to watch.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: I mean, I'm sure you're going to do a lot of fun, engaging projects, but you'll probably have a soft spot for looking back and seeing what you did with this palette. You know, I mean, how often do you get to go into galaxies but also shrink right down to cellular life and be able to paint that musically? It's quite an experience you've had. Well, I want to treat our audience to a few clips from the movie that highlight your work.
This first one is called the Bellies of Stars. We'll listen to it. Now.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Hoyle was trying to show, as part of his work on the steady state cosmology, where carbon could have come from.
[00:11:48] Speaker D: And certainly it would have seemed strange to me some 20 years ago when the path which led to. To this work began to be followed.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: When he himself made a discovery that shook his personal philosophy.
[00:12:08] Speaker D: So let me begin then, without more ado.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: So Hoyle was trying to explain the abundance of carbon in the universe because he recognized that you needed carbon to build life. But he can't figure out for the life of him how it could have been built. Hoyle reasoned that the big bang couldn't do it, the quasi steady state universe couldn't do it, and the only other laboratories for doing so were in the bellies of stars.
The understanding now is that all of the elements that we have, carbon, oxygen, so on, were synthesized inside of stars.
And when that star exploded, goes supernova, then that gets spread throughout the universe, then that gets to be reaccumulated back into new stars and planets.
He developed numerous ideas about how carbon might form from simpler atoms inside stars, but for various reasons, none of them would work.
But then he comes up with a theory that works with the physics. His theory envisions two elements.
Beryllium with an atomic weight of 8 and helium with an atomic weight of 4, combining to make carbon with an atomic weight of 12.
But there's a catch.
When he did the math, the resulting carbon would have a higher energy state than the ordinary carbon that we have around us in our solar system.
And this higher energy version of carbon would have to exist for beryllium and helium to come together to form carbon in the first place.
[00:13:48] Speaker C: Your score for the movie is rousing, I thought, without being obvious or even overpowering. It helps to build momentum without drawing too much attention to itself. Was that your goal and how difficult was it to make it big or small, according to what you thought the movie needed?
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Great question.
I think. I don't necessarily think about if it's going to be obvious or not or in the forefront.
A test for me is if I can score something and then watch the scene and get lost in what is happening in the scene and stop paying attention to my music, then it's great, like ready to move on.
This is doing its job. I think ultimately the music isn't in this medium, isn't about itself. If it's not serving the story in some way, then it's not doing its job. So if it becomes distracting, then that's a really big home like marker to me that I'm doing something off here.
Yeah, but, yeah, that being said, I think with this sort of documentary there is a lot of talking and a lot of explaining and a lot of exposition about what's happening.
So that can, that drives the music in a certain direction. It can't be has to keep momentum going and have the pacing to. To move with the tempo of the dialogue, but it can't be too busy or else you can't hear what someone's saying and understand these complicated things they're saying. So.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Found that most of the time I tried to be aligned with the visuals in inspiring wonder and gravity to what was being said and communicated and complimenting whatever was on screen. And the scope where you have these people talking about the grandeur, but it's the music can help in giving you this sense of scale, whether it's big or small.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I like that. Inspiring wonder and gravity because you know, the musical score is not going to do everything, but if you hone in on certain emotions you. You want to emphasize and encourage, I think you'll. You'll have really a good experience with it all. And it seems like you did. Now, there's a lot of science in this movie. I don't know if you've worked on other projects with. With lots of signs, but was. Was that difficult as it was being explained and visualized?
What difficult difficulties did you have to work through in order to succeed with this project?
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah, very unique in how much science is talked about and just the complexity of what's being communicated. That is relatively unique. And what I've scored before.
So the.
I think what I would sometimes do is, okay, this is a complicated topic they're talking about, but where's the story? Where is like if I were to map this out in a. Either a diagram or sort of three acts play, like, what are we taking away here? And then have that inform how I build through the scene.
And then I also think sometimes I needed clarification. So I would talk to the director and be like, okay, what do you. What is the main takeaway here? What do you want people to walk away with as like, this is the point that I need that musically I need to underline. So I would talk with the director a fair amount so I could help.
Help land the plane of whatever they were talking about and then in the scene building up to that landing.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: Well, okay, now can you give us, just for those who are not in the music composing world, just a little glimpse of your process? How would you do it? Would you watch a little bit, you know, the interviews and the visuals and then give yourself time to. To ponder a tune or did. Did tunes come to you as you worked through the material?
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Both I.
How I usually work is I'm very visually motivated, so I'll watch through something And I pretty much get into it straight away. I'll start like throwing things against the wall and, and see what sticks.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: Uh huh.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: And there, I think there are some melodies where I did in that process, stumble upon them and then a light bulb went off like, ooh, this can be recurring. Or I would write something maybe not thinking too much of the phrase and then the director would be like, hey, that, that needs to come back. That's now this theme. And I'd be like, well, great, that's, it's already there.
I think maybe the main theme I can't quite recall, but the main theme I may have had away from my writing desk and just thought about it and then recorded it into my phone.
So it happens all sorts of ways. You don't question it, you just. When it comes, you write it down.
[00:18:57] Speaker C: Always gotta be ready when the muse strikes.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:00] Speaker C: Okay, well, let's take a moment to hear a little bit more of your score for the Story of Everything. This is another moment in the film where the topic is gratuitous beauty in nature. Speaking of an awesome palette for a memorable scorecute. Let's watch and listen. Now.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Beauty.
Many organisms have beauty beyond anything that's relevant for their survival.
[00:19:31] Speaker E: This deserves an explanation.
Many people have tried to give a utilitarian explanation. Oh yeah, well, it's some adaptive reason or there's some sexual selection, but I think the answer requires something more.
The one who realized the answer requires something more was Aristotle. He said, no, it's the result of some kind of rational structure to the universe, dare say even an intelligence.
So the exuberance is one that appears to be designed to elicit our attention.
It's one that seems to be reaching out to us.
Now here I am waxing. It would seem to be mystical.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: I must say that these are observations, they're appeals to intuition, but not to be dismissed for that reason, not to be dismissed. There's something interesting going on.
There's something interesting science called the beauty principle that says true theories often convey a mathematical beauty or structural harmony.
Upon looking at their model of the DNA molecule, Francis Crick was quoted as saying, it's so beautiful, it's gotta be right.
You find all the time in the literature today people saying beauty is truth and truth beauty. If we find a set of equations that is just beautiful, then it must be true.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: Sometimes the path toward the truth leads through beauty.
And that is an important window while just a beautiful moment in the film, to be sure.
So now that you've scored the Story of Everything What's. What's next for you?
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Working on a few more projects. Definitely not quite as cosmic as the Story of Everything, but I'm writing a documentary series for hbo and that'll come out next month. And then I have a film going to Tribeca Film Festival in June.
[00:22:06] Speaker C: Oh, nice.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So keep busy.
[00:22:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that's great.
So is there a way to enjoy the Story of Everything score as a
[00:22:14] Speaker A: separate album for the time being? The film is the way to go, but I'm working hard at getting the album released because I'm really part of the music and I really would love people to be able to listen to it. So stay tuned. It's coming.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: Okay, good. Because, you know, there was a time where the film composer wouldn't really get a whole album, at least put out commercially. I remember when it was just the soundtrack, you know, with all the songs and then maybe the main theme or a couple, you know, from the. The composer would. Would make it onto that album. But nowadays there are. There's a big business for just the scores, isn't it?
[00:22:51] Speaker A: I'm very grateful for it.
Validating of all the work that goes in. So it's a wonderful.
[00:22:57] Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah. It's a lot of hard work, but it's a really beautiful part of. Of the cinematic experience.
So thank you for what you've done for the Story of Everything and for taking the time to talk today.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: Well, to learn more about the Story of Everything and get tickets, we're going to point to the website. It's the StoryOfEverything film. That's the StoryOfEverything film. And if you're interested in taking a group to the movie or buying out a theater to have a special event, we've got a place you can learn details for that. It's discovery.org discovery.org story. Well, Hannah, thanks again. I'm Andrew McDermott for ID the Future. Thanks for joining us today.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
