The Safe House - Expositions

During the recording session for the season finale, we had a chance to sit down with Alias creator J.J. Abrams to learn what he saw in Michael that made him the right choice for the show. Over the course of our discussion we discovered Abrams himself is a gear and music junkie. Here's what he had to say:

What was it about Michael that closed the deal?
Part of it was I wanted to find someone who felt like one of us, who would the same instincts and sense of humor I have; Michael and I have that in common. Also, I was looking for someone who was equally effective at writing for an orchestra and with synthesizers. I knew that doing the score for Alias would require someone who was really flexible and fast, because music is so important to me. There's almost nothing more important than the music for a movie or show.

The music has become heavier, more serious and orchestral, as the show has unfolded into this web of interrelated stories. Is this by design?
I think that's part of Michael's genius. He's responding to what's happening in the show. The music needed to get more complex and richer, which in a way means using more orchestral colors. There's no one more a fan of synthesizers and samplers than myself. I am, sadly, an addict. But I realize that, dramatically for this particular show, the emotions of the characters necessitated a more organic and less electronic approach to the music. It makes sense how things have progressed, because at the beginning of the season the show was more technical and maybe a bit more energetic. As the year has gone on, we've kept the mystery and adventure, but there's been an increase in complexity and the relationships between the characters.

You obviously put a lot of trust in Michael to come up with the scores.
The great thing about Alias, and Michael is the quintessential example of this, is that we have the most incredible crew. There's nothing I enjoy more than handing someone the responsibility of doing their job, then letting them do it, knowing that what they're going to do is far beyond what I could ever imagine. When I give a cut of the show to Michael, I can't wait to hear what he's going to do with it.
Now, what he comes up with might not be exactly how I saw it, but Michael approaches the music from a well-thought-out perspective. Maybe I'll say to him, "I was thinking it would be more drawn out and dark here," and he might say, "Well, yeah, but think about this kind of approach," then I get where he's coming from and say OK. It's the same kind of conversation I might have with a writer about a story for an episode. There's nothing better than to have someone come at something from a different perspective and tell me what they were thinking, because good things can come out of that. With Michael, sometimes he'll simply say that the approach he used for a cue "felt right." And I have to trust him on that as well, because his instincts are sharp. The show is infinitely better because of him. If you need proof of that, just watch a scene without the music and you'll get it.

Michael is the show's composer, but you actually composed the main theme. Tell us about that.
People who know me say that I create TV shows to write the themes for them. I've always done music, and I've been an avid Keyboard reader forever. (Ed. Note: In the early '80s, J.J. won an ATA stereo tap delay unit in a Keyboard giveaway: "I was probably the only one who wrote in!")
Because of my love for this stuff, I've tried just about everything. Back in '91 when I did Regarding Henry (starring Harrison Ford), Hans Zimmer introduced me to Cubase. I later got hooked on Logic Audio, which is what I use now. But when I was doing the pilot for Alias I knew I wanted a theme that felt a little bit like old-school spy movie music, but also was more loop-based. We had no time to put the theme together. I hadn't yet met Michael, and we needed the theme in two days. I was at the lab to oversee the color corrections for the show and I had a portable MIDI controller and a Powerbook. While we were doing the color corrections, which is a very lengthy process, I did the theme using Reason. I burned the bounced audio files from Reason to a CD-ROM and turned that in. I only used Reason. It was cool too, because there was this fight scene in the pilot that needed to be scored, so I downloaded Pro Tools Free, brought in the scene as a QuickTime movie, and output six to eight different tracks from Reason as AIFF files. I brought those into Pro Tools and cut the music to the QuickTime scene. Again, I bounced the music down and burned a CD of that, then gave it to the sound guy. He threw it up to picture and it fit perfectly. That was it. I did all that while they were mixing another scene at the dub, and I did it all using some free software and Reason.

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