Why the ‘Rise of the Beasts’ Composer Spent Two Years Scoring the Revved-Up Return of ‘Transformers’
variety.comJon Burlingame On the scoring stage at 20th Century-Fox studios in Burbank, composer Jongnic Bontemps is walking around in a “Transformers: The Movie” T-shirt – that’s the animated cartoon from 1986, not the $200-million summer blockbuster he’s just scored. “Violins, play a little softer,” he tells the musicians via intercom from the glass booth behind the stage. “It has to be emotional.” Later, after a rehearsal on a different cue, he tells the string players, “It needs to feel like a warm blanket.” Bontemps is making movie history.
He has just spent two years writing the music for “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” the seventh in the big-screen franchise, and he’s supervising the recording of the final pieces of the score with a 74-piece orchestra.
The film opens Friday. Bontemps is believed to be the first African-American composer to score such an expensive studio movie.
Yet he’s been working with director Steven Caple Jr. since they met at USC students in 2011 – Caple in the cinema school, Bontemps in the scoring program – and Caple argued for Bontemps as a composer when he took over the seventh film in the “Transformers” franchise.
Read more on variety.com