Your mom may hate Dead Space 2, but gamers and critics alike are raving about the second installment of this survival horror game. According to VGChartz, the game debuted last week at the top of the sales charts with 655,873 total units sold for XBox360 and PS3 – nearly doubling the first week sales of the original. This week I spoke to award-winning composer Jason Graves about his experience delving into the dark world of Dead Space 2 to create the haunting musical backdrop. The full interview is now featured on The Comet:http://thecomet.com/posts/composer_jason_graves_beathes_musical_life_into_dead_space_two
Jason was also kind enough to answer some questions from Full Sail University students:
Q: How do you submit score as a new composer? – Kevin Green, MBBS Graduate
A: The Catch-22 of any industry is that if you haven’t worked on anything, no one wants to work with you. No one wants to hire an unproven talent. There’s not really a “submission process” – go to local game networking meetings. Find people in town – developers with small projects and small budgets are more willing to work with new composers. Get your foot in the door and establish relationships – that’s what it’s all about. We’ve all heard it before – it’s not what you know, it’s who you know – it’s the same in games. Obviously you have to write good music, and be patient – you may need to knock on doors for a year. When I first started 8 years ago, there were a lot less people going for these jobs. I’d suggest – and I did this too – to have a website with music examples. Please don’t put 20 different styles of music. Anyone can pull up a drum loop and put a guitar loop over it. Find what you love to do, whether you think it’s commercially viable or not. For me, it happened to be orchestral music for action/sci-fi. Unless you’re creating a music library, you don’t want to have “Comedy,” “Action,” “Drama” – everyone wants to show that they’re a well-rounded composer, but then you become a musical “jack of all trades” and master of none. Go for your strengths – go for less pieces that sound more original than more pieces that sound like everyone else.
Q: What was it like working on score for a game as iconic as “Star Trek”? - Eric Perkins, MBBS graduate
A: Star Trek was one of the few instances where I knew it was a brand name, a franchise, before I got involved. It was a great excuse for me to buy as many Star Trek toys, DVDs and soundtracks as I could, and study and analyze everything. I totally immersed myself in it – I picked apart the Goldsmith and Horner scores. My first reaction to a new job is always, what toys can I buy? What music can I listen to? What can I analyze and study this week? Getting to do big space themes was really fun – everything I’d hoped it would be.
