Michael Giacchino

Real world article
(written from a Production point of view)

Michael Giacchino
Birth name:	Michael Giacchino
Date of birth:	10 October 1967
Place of birth:	Riverside, New Jersey, USA
Awards for Trek:	Grammy Award nomination Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award Online Film Critics Society Award nomination
Roles:	Composer; Director; Cameo Actor
Character(s):	2 News weatherman

Michael Giacchino (born 10 October 1967; age 56) is the Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-winning, and Grammy Award-winning composer who scored the music for Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond. Giacchino has received a Grammy Award nomination for his score to Star Trek. [1] He also won a Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award and was nominated by the Online Film Critics Society of America for Star Trek.

He also scored the video game Star Trek D-A-C and contributed to the music of the 2013 Star Trek video game, scored by frequent collaborator Chad Seiter[2] He cameoed in Into Darkness as a 2 News weatherman on the powerwalls at Starfleet Headquarters. (Star Trek Into Darkness iTunes commentary) Giacchino also worked as supervising composer for the second season of Star Trek: Short Treks; he also directed the animated episode "Ephraim and Dot". [3] Giacchino also composed the theme music for Star Trek: Prodigy.

Giacchino has worked with Star Trek director-producer J.J. Abrams for many years. He wrote music for Abrams' Alias, Lost, What About Brian, Six Degrees, and Fringe, as well as the 2006 Paramount film Mission: Impossible III, which Abrams directed and co-wrote.

Early life

Michael Giacchino was born in Riverside, New Jersey, on 10 October 1967. He attended New York City's School of Visual Arts, where he majored in film production.

After graduating from the School of Visual Arts, Giacchino began studying music composition at the Julliard School. During this time, he worked at Disney's New York publicity office which ultimately led him to a job in the feature film publicity department at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, working as an assistant producer for the company's video game division, Disney Interactive. He continued studying and practicing music, however, and by 1998, he was working as a composer at the video game company DreamWorks Interactive.

Career

Video games and theme attractions

Among Giacchino's earliest scoring work was DreamWorks Interactive's video game adaptation of the 1997 film The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the first PlayStation console title to feature an original live orchestral score. His subsequent video game scores include the Medal of Honor series (also from DreamWorks Interactive) and titles for the Call of Duty franchise.

In 2005, Giacchino composed the on-board soundtrack, referred to as "SOBAT" by Walt Disney Imagineering, for Space Mountain: Mission 2, located at Disneyland Paris. Giacchino composed one more SOBAT for both Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland's versions of Space Mountain which both re-opened and opened respectively in the same year.

Television

Giacchino began his collaboration with J.J. Abrams when the producers of Alias, who were fans of Giacchino's video game soundtrack work, contacted Giacchino to compose the music for their series. When Abrams and Damon Lindelof co-created Lost, they once again hired Giacchino to compose their show's music. For his work on Lost, Giacchino won the 2005 Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore). Giacchino continued his collaboration with Abrams on the short-lived series What About Brian and Six Degrees, and wrote music for Fringe, created by Abrams and Star Trek writers/executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

In addition to his 2005 Emmy win, Giacchino earned another Emmy nomination that year for his work on the song "I'm With You" from the 2005 television special The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. He was again nominated for an Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Music Composition For A Series (original Dramatic Score) for the episode of Lost entitled "The Constant." [4] This was his third Emmy nomination and his second for Lost.

Giacchino served as music director for the 81st Annual Academy Awards ceremony, which was held at the Kodak Theatre on 22 February 2009. The event was the first live telecast Giacchino has conducted. [5]

Film

In 2004, Giacchino scored the music for Pixar Animation Studios's hit animated film The Incredibles. He earned numerous awards and nominations for this score, including two Grammy Award nominations (for Best Score Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media, and Best Instrumental Composition). In 2006, he composed the music for J.J. Abrams' feature directorial debut, Mission: Impossible III.

Giacchino again collaborated with Pixar Studios on the 2007 film Ratatouille. Giacchino was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Score category for his work on this film. He also won an Annie for Best Music in an Animated Feature Production and a Grammy Award for Best Score – Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media for his Ratatouille score. [6] [7]

Other films for which Giacchino has composed music include the 2005 films Sky High and The Family Stone. He also wrote the brief musical cue in Abrams' Cloverfield. In 2008, Giacchino composed the music for Speed Racer.

He returned to Pixar to compose the music for Up (2009), and the same year, he scored Land of the Lost. He received three Grammy Award nominations for Up, winning two of them. His work on Up also earned Giacchino a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score – Motion Picture, an Academy Award for Best Original Score, and a Saturn Award for Best Music. [8]

On April 12, 13 and 14, 2013, Giacchino attened a performance of the Star Trek score in sync with the film by the 21st Century Orchestra and the 21st Century Choir, in Lucerne, Switzerland. [9] New themes from Star Trek Into Darkness were also played. [10] A touring series of screenings with live orchestra, called Star Trek: Live in Concert, began the following year.

In 2011, Giacchino composed the score for Super 8, written, produced and directed by J.J. Abrams, and featuring Bruce Greenwood and Greg Grunberg in the cast,Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, co-starring Simon Pegg, 50/50, with Matt Frewer and Stephanie Belding, Monte Carlo, with Brett Cullen, and Cars 2. In 2012, he scored John Carter.

Giacchino provided the scores for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). In 2015, he scored Jupiter Ascending, again working with the Wachowskis, Tomorrowland, Jurassic World, and Pixar's Inside Out.

In 2016, Giacchino composed the score for the Disney animated film Zootopia, as well as the Star Wars film Rogue One, making him the first composer to score both a Star Trek and Star Wars film, and the second to have worked in both franchises after Kevin Kiner. Still in 2016, he also composed the score for a Marvel superhero film, Doctor Strange, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. He continued with Spider-Man: Homecoming, (2017) Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), followed by 2022's Thor: Love and Thunder, starring Chris Hemsworth.

External links

• MichaelGiacchino.com – official site
• Michael Giacchino at Wikipedia
• Michael Giacchino at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Giacchino at StarTrek.com