Hans Zimmer

1. Hans Zimmer American Movie Composer

2. Can you guess these movies? • Example #1 • Example #2 • Example #3 • Example #4 • Example #5 • Example #6 • Example #7

3. Answers • Example #1 = Batman- The Dark Knight • Example #2 = The Lion King • Example #3 = Man of Steel (Superman) • Example #4 = Pearl Harbor • Example #5 = Pirates of the Caribbean • Example #6 = Spiderman 2 • Example #7 = Madagascar

4. Who composed the music for these films?

5. Hans Zimmer

6. Basic Facts about Hans Zimmer • Born in Germany, September 12, 1957 • Moved to London as a teenager • Used to write jingles for some adverts • Was in a band called Buggles, playing the keyboard • Famous for using traditional orchestra instruments with electronic sounds

7. Basic Facts continued: • Composed over 100 film scores • 7 Academy Awards • 7 Grammy Awards • 9 Golden Globe Awards

8. The life of Hans Zimmer Zimmer was born in Frankfurt, Germany. As a young child, he lived in Konigstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home, but had piano lessons only briefly as he disliked the discipline of formal lessons. His family moved to London when he was a teenager. He said this about his parents, “My mother was very musical, basically a musician, and my father was an engineer and an inventor. So I grew up modifying the piano, shall we say, which made my mother gasp in horror, and my father would think it was fantastic when I would attach chainsaws and stuff like that to the piano because he thought is was an evolution in technology.”

9. He later stated that when his father died, “I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend.” Zimmer began his career playing keyboards and synthesizers in the 1970s, with the band Krakatoa. He also played with The Buggles, a New Wave band formed in 1977. Zimmer can be seen briefly in The Buggles’ music video for the 1979 song “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

10. While living in London, Zimmer wrote advertising jingles for Air-Edel Associates. In the 1980s, he partnered with Stanley Myers, a prolific film composer and they co-founded the London based Lillie Yard recording studio. Together, they worked on fusing the traditional orchestral sound with electronic instruments. Zimmer’s first solo score was a movie called “Terminal Exposure” in 1987. One of his most durable works from his time in the United Kingdom is the theme song for the television game show “Going for Gold”. He said, “Going for Gold was a lot of fun. It’s the stuff you do when you don’t have a career yet. God, I just felt so lucky because this thing paid my rent for the longest time.”

11. In 1988, Zimmer was hired to write the film score for a movie called Rain Man. He was hired by director Barry Levinson because his wife had heard music Zimmer had written for another movie, and she liked it. So her husband/director hired Zimmer to write the music for his movie. • Zimmer’s film score for Rain Man was nominated for an Academy Award in 1989, and the film won four Academy Awards including Best Picture. • A year after Rain Man, Zimmer was asked to compose the score for another movie Driving Miss Daisy, which also won an Academy Award.

12. Zimmer continued to write film music for many well-known movies including Thelma and Louise, K2, Drop Zone, and The Power of One. For the film The Power of One, Zimmer traveled to Africa in order to use African choirs and drums in the recording of the score. Because of this, in 1992, Walt Disney Animation Studios approached Zimmer to compose the score for the 1994 film, The Lion King. This was his first score for an animated movie.

13. Zimmer wanted to go back to South Africa to record parts of the soundtrack for The Lion King but was unable to visit the country because he had a police record there from his last visit for “doing subversive movies” after his work on The Power of One. Disney studio bosses expressed fears that Zimmer would be killed if he went back to South Africa. Zimmer won numerous awards for his work on The Lion King, including an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, and two Grammys. In 1997, the score was adapted into a Broadway musical version which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1998.

14. In the 2000s, Zimmer has composed scores for Hollywood blockbuster films including Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, The Last Samurai, The Da Vinci Code, The Simpsons Movie, and Angels and Demons. He also worked on all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. While writing the score for The Last Samurai, Zimmer felt that his knowledge of Japanese music was extremely limited. He began doing extensive research, but the more he studied, the less he felt he knew. Finally, Zimmer took what he had written to Japan for feedback and was shocked when he was asked how he knew so much about Japanese music.

15. For the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, “The Daily Variety” reported that Zimmer purchased an out-of-tune piano for $200 and used it throughout the scoring process because of its “quirkiness”. Zimmer is also known for his work on the scores of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, on which he collaborated with James Newton Howard. Zimmer also composed the score for the newest Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises, the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

16. Hans Zimmer also composed music for the video games Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Crysis 2. Currently, Zimmer is the head of the film music division at DreamWorks studios, and works with other composers through the company which he founded, Remote Control Productions. In 2010, Zimmer received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Zimmer lives in Los Angeles with his wife Suzanne and has four children.

17. What I like about his music. What I really like about Zimmer’s music is that it is really complex and original. He mixes classical and fold instruments with synthesized sounds to create truly original themes. And every theme for every film is unique and recognizable. His music has character and is extremely suitable for the plot. The music he writes creates an atmosphere and when you watch the film, you really feel the mood of the moment.

18. Here are some of my favorites: Sherlock Holmes “Panic, Sheer Bloody Panic” Inception “Dream is Collapsing” Pirates of the Caribbean “Up is Down” Dark Knight “Aggressive Expansion” Angels & Demons “160 BPM”

19. Hans Zimmer Top 50 Moments from his Top 50 songs