Who are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer? A great film or TV score is most potent as an artform when it reinforces the emotion on screen, but it also knows when music is not needed. What strategies do you employ to get this balance right? These were some of the topics discussed by four top TV composers when they joined Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2024 awards contenders: Julia Newman (“Feud: Capote vs. the Swans“), Sherri Chung (“Based on a True Story“), David Fleming (“Mr. and Mrs. Smith“) and Nami Melumad (“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds“). Watch our fascinating full group roundtable panel above, and click on each name above to view each nominee’s individual interview.
SEE Watch our lively chats with over 300 of 2024 Emmy contenders
“I used to go to sleep when I was a kid and there was a piano in the living room and then I would hear my dad hit a tape recorder. I would fall asleep listening to him play the piano,” Newman reveals when asked about the most significant influences on her life and career as a composer, referring to her acclaimed composer father Thomas Newman. “I’m fiercely proud of my dad as a man and particularly as a composer. It’s so amazing to me watching him 40 years into his career still maintain just a profound open mindedness” she says. “I worked in a video store and it was just thousands and thousands of hours of watching films that I shouldn’t have been watching in a public video store, just watching rated R movies when there’s kids running around,” Fleming shares. “It’s always been a storytelling thing for me, first and foremost, and it’s not bad to get to play around with music for a living as well,” he laughs.
“Michael Kamen was the composer; he’s the one that made me want to be a film composer,” Chung says about her first influence as a composer. “It was his score to ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.’ I had heard scores before, I’d watched movies before, but there was just something about the magic of his score to that film that just made me want to dial in and do whatever wizardry that was,” she reveals. “Well, I like to discover things on Spotify. Wherever that takes me, it’s really interesting because sometimes it would not be the usual film scores, it would be a lot of songs, a lot of artists, a lot of bands,” Melumad says. “I actually do think that most of the inspiration and most of the ideas come from picture. As David mentioned, I also grew up watching so many films and I’ve done it as a habit, even in the most busy week, I’ll still try to watch a film at least once, or a show, so that I stay connected with everything that’s going on,” she adds about what ultimately inspires her work.
Newman’s career has included “Coupled,” “At the Gates,” “Woman Meets Girl” and “Freak Bikes.” Chung’s career has included “The Lost Husband,” “Batwoman,” “Riverdale” and “Found.” Fleming’s career has included “Blue Planet II,” “Hillbilly Elegy,” “The Last of Us” and “Americana.” Melumad’s career has included “Star Trek: Short Treks,” “Before the Dawn,” “Anastasia” and “Thor: Love and Thunder.”
PREDICT the 2024 Emmy nominees through July 17
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
