There is a man in Hollywood who’s quite the big shot, with his collection of movies racking in $9,000,000,000, but you probably don’t have a clue who he is.
With 192 titles to his name, he’s got to be doing something right.
Who is this mystery man who rubs elbows with A-listers, I hear you ask. Well, you’ll have to keep reading, won’t you?
He’s got Mission: Impossible, Megamind, Lego Batman, Dungeons & Dragons, Black Widow, The Crown, and many more on his roster, and you know they’ve all done well financially.
Advert
But you’ll have never seen him on screen.
That’s because what he’s famous for is all in the post-production portion of creating TV and film.
It’s Lorne Balfe - a Scottish composer and record producer with a catalogue of epic tunes he’s created for audiences across the globe.
The 48-year-old has had an incredible career, beginning when he worked with Hans Zimmer.
Never one to want to be in front of the screen, he began taking on drama projects during his GCSE, and then realised that he wanted to be a composer and wrote to famed Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stuart Copeland and Zimmer.
Each of the composers went on to respond to him and by 16, he was writing jingles for adverts before moving to Los Angeles to pursue his career at 21.
But years later he realised that Zimmer had set up an amazing path for him to follow.
"A [soundtrack] underscores the emotion," Balfe told Metro. "It helps you relate to these characters.
"The original term was 'underscoring' and that’s what it’s there to do. [Music] is to help the audience feel connected and not always stand out too much, but simply be there for support."
He shared that he keeps his career fresh and alive by switching up the genres, which is why you’ll see that there are dramas, thrillers, action and romance on his credit list.
Balfe explained: "As a composer, if you keep doing the same genre, you get into a rut and you just start following the same path. So I think it’s important to be varied with what you’re doing."
Speaking about the upcoming Wallace and Gromit flick (which will be released on Christmas Day), that he's worked on, he said ‘it’s so quintessentially British’.
The composer added that ‘it’s part of our folklore’.
Balfe praised: “For such a small island, we do extraordinarily well in the arts - whether it’s paintings or music or acting - that’s what makes it so special because it is part of our family. The world of Wallace has been there for a long time, 30 years, so you want to be part of that history.”
Clearly, he’s a fan of the projects he works on.
Although you’d be hard-pressed to get him watching the film more than once, as if he goes at it for a second time, he’ll find that ‘there’s always going to be something’ that he wishes he could have changed.
Balfe noted: “To achieve perfection is impossible.
“A composer always runs out of time, and we run over a budget, and that’s just the nature of it so there’s always a regret somehow.”
For the Wallace and Gromit film, Balfe revealed that the end credits feature a ‘proper piece of music’ written specifically to celebrate the franchise.
He said: “Normally you either put a song at the end or a montage so being able to do this as a kind of thank you was a very special thing.”
Britt Jones