Gustavo Santaolalla arrived at making music for The Last Of Us for two reasons: one, that his son really resonated with the video game, and two, he wanted to do something different after winning back-to-back Oscars for his scores to Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Babel (2006).
“I’m a terrible gamer, horrendous. But we have a son that at the time that I started working on the game, he was in his mid-teen years, and he was an avid player, and a really good player, and I really enjoyed watching him play,” Santaolalla said during a conversation at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Television. “I always thought, ‘Well, if someday someone connects in an emotional level with a player, is going to really make a revolution.’ ”
At Sound & Screen, Santaolalla and his production partner David Fleming played a rousing rendition of the main theme and other music from the hit HBO | Max series.
“After the Oscars I got several offers, some, you know, important projects, with big brand relevance. They could have big relevance. They did, but it was more of the same,” Santaolalla said. “So I, I sort of, you know, waited for the right moment. I always say that whatever achievements I got had to do with the things that I did, but also with the things that I said no to, you know, so I didn’t want to do that. I knew what I was looking for.”
Upon meeting Neil Druckmann, who created the video game, Santaolalla heard “the magic words” from the creator and executive producer on the television series: “I want to connect on an emotional level.” Then learning that “people were crying playing the game,” the pair knew they had struck something.
“I always felt I was writing music for a story, not really thinking about a video game, but more thinking about the story,” Santaolalla said. “When you know the story, it’s impossible not to connect to an emotion. And the fans, I know they have a devotion for the music, I’ve been blessed that I always sort of connected with certain people, with whatever I’ve done, but the fans of of the music of The Last of Us are really something special.”
Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla performing at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Television
JC Olivera/Deadline
Fleming and Santaolalla also discussed how Santaolalla’s original score is “part of the DNA” of the game, as Druckmann and The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin have said, as well as the use of minimalism, negative space and silence in their compositions. Santaolalla praised Fleming’s electronic contributions as “organic.”
Fleming, meanwhile, revealed that he and Santaolalla didn’t meet until after they had finished their work on the first season.
“I like to think the character of my portion of the score and the character of [Santaolalla’s] portions — we stumbled upon the same pawn shop in the post-apocalypse,” Fleming said. “It’s like the same beat up banjos and guitars, but his character, there’s this emotional core to it. His character is like a guitar master, there’s an emotion to embracing his instruments again. And my character is more like an electronic musician who’s never touched a guitar. But it’s like, okay, how am I going to make music with this stuff?”
As for that devastating moment in the second episode of Season 2 when Pedro Pascal’s Joel Miller is killed at the hands of Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby Anderson?
“Part of the way we have dealt in the game in series two of this crucial, fragile moment is to keep that use of silence, the use of space,” Santaolalla said. “It’s as beautiful as it is — because I love to play and especially, like the scene with an orchestra, it’s great — but part of the music of The Last of Us is that [it’s] very few instruments and, it’s just there. We never want to sound melodramatic. We never want to overpower the scene. If the scene is happening, the music should be delicate, the balance between what’s happening on the screen and where you intervene.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
