ABSTRACT
It is a rare thing for a film director to allow music to “take over everything.”1 Yet this is exactly what Christopher Nolan expresses a willingness to do when it comes to the contributions of his five-time collaborator, Hans Zimmer. In a sense, Zimmer has already taken over large swathes of American film scoring practice. He has arguably been the most influential composer in Hollywood since the 1990s, being in near constant demand for blockbuster tent-poles and prestige pictures alike. Zimmer’s role as producer has allowed his reach to extend exceptionally far. The music production company he co-founded in 1989 and now leads, Remote Control Pictures (or RCP, formerly Media Ventures) is a powerful industry institution, drawing in a tremendous amount of musical talent to work under and alongside Zimmer. This collaborative atmosphere-often unabashedly friendly to ghostwriting-allows the composer and his associates to take on a staggering number of projects.2 With RCP, Zimmer has been able to dictate the direction taken by a considerable amount of music for multimedia. The trends he has spearheaded range widely, from the accommodation of new scoring idioms and styles to innovations in the way music is edited and recorded. Zimmer is particularly influential by having championed the sweeping embrace of electronic technology in film music. Synthesizers in his scores routinely supplement-and in more than a few cases completely supplant-the symphonic orchestra as the primary performance force for contemporary movie scores.
