Orchestrating THE OTHERS: Composer Shirley Walker

The Queen of Science Fiction Film and TV Music

By Randall D. Larson     April 08, 2000

During the last twenty years, conducting and composing a fistful of splendid TV and movie scores in the realm of science fiction and fantasy music, Shirley Walker has stood quietly by without a lot of widespread recognition outside of music or genre aficionados. Well, perhaps not so quietly. With action-packed orchestral scores to such animated shows as BATMAN and SUPERMAN, some terrifically creative electronic textures and tonalities for HBO's SPAWN series, she's also composed ball-busting orchestral thunderings for TURBULENCE. She scored a few uncredited portions of MYSTERY MEN, and she continues to produce music for a continual flurry of network and cable TV movies like IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE II, CAPTION ZOOM, Disney's Sunday night TV-movie HERBIE: THE LOVE BUG II, and plenty of others. Shirley also provided the eloquent underscore for television's SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND for its lamentably short one season run.
Shirley was recently reunited with her SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND producers Glen Morgan and James Wang when their hit new NBC series, THE OTHERS, debuted last January. Shirley has given the showone part X-FILES, one part MILLENNIUM, and several parts STIR OF ECHOESan effective and spooky musical underpinning. The music started out quite subdued, but as the series has developed, Shirley has had more opportunities to expand the score's range and complexity.
'Glen Morgan originally was interested in a small acoustic performance group,' Walker said. 'We talked about a string quartet plus a few other instruments that would be classical in nature. We were both interested in the concept of the music having an identity of its own.' As the pilot and first few episodes were finalized, however, and temporary music was edited into them for studio demos, it became clear that Shirley's marching order from Dreamworks was to score with full orchestra and choir.
Originally bound to follow the dictates of the temporary scores (culled from existing soundtrack CDs and other sources), Shirley is gradually moving the music into more original concepts as the series moves forward. 'The 'Eyes' episode, which aired third, was our first 'small orchestra and synths' sounding score,' Walker said. 'The musical sound design elements work well for the atmospheric sequences. I think the mystical qualities of the storytelling are well-served by sounds that have just a hint of musical emotion without the overwhelming 'piece of music' effect you have with tonal creation.'
Shirley has gradually introduced motifs that are becoming linked to specific characters. Albert, the disgruntled blind Vietnam vet, has been given a distinctive theme. Elmer, the patriarch of The Others, is associated with a deep dijeridou, low voice, and garbled guitar motif that 'emulates his primal power,' as Walker puts it. 'Some of the stories are more stand-alone than others. In that case, I do a score which serves the episode itself and don't try to work in everyone's theme.'
Shirley writes between 22 and 32 minutes of music for each weekly, hour-long episode. Music tracks are not re-used between episodes, as was common in shows like the original STAR TREK. Shirley writes an original score for each new episode, using an orchestra of between three and fifteen musicians, depending on the musical needs of the episode. The majority of the music is scored electronically, with synthesizers simulating real instruments (Shirley would rather use the real orchestra, but budget dictates otherwise at present).
The series' title theme is not Shirley's composition, however. The producers, including Steven Spielberg, opted for a livelier, more immediately persuasive theme, which was composed by Klaus Badelt, an alumnus of the Hans Zimmer's Media Ventures film music factory. It was, in fact, Zimmer and Media Ventures who let Shirley step out from behind the conductor's podium into film scoring. She'd conducted a number of film scores for Carter Burwell, Brad Fiedel, and Danny Elfman when Zimmer hired her as an orchestrator and conductor for Media Ventures. After conducting for a few years, Shirley began to get shared credits with Zimmer as new composers were developed and given opportunities to score the company's movie assignments themselves.
An association with actor Chevy Chase brought Shirley aboard MEMOIRS OF THE INVISIBLE MAN, which featured Walker's first major studio score. Working on that film with director John Carpenter, who has scored most of his own films electronically in his own studio, was a challenge and an adventure for Shirley. Worried that the director may wield a heavy hand toward the music, Shirley was pleased to find that, after hearing some initial presentations her themes, he left her completely alone to score the film without interference.
The film was not only her first big film score; it also validated her ability to join the ranks of Hollywood film composers, which was then a male-dominated field. 'The biggest thrill for me was the old timers who worked on the motion picture lots who heard about this scorethat there was one woman in Hollywood who was doing a score 'just like the guys did,' Walker said. 'That I'd actually written all the music myself, that I was going to conduct the orchestra, and that I was given the same level of support by the studio that a man's score would be given with no kind of 'special treatment,' no orchestrator guy who was going to 'help me out' like Suzanne Ciani had when she did THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN. The first two days of that score, there were a lot of people who had come to visit the scoring stage because they were here to witness the event. It was their honor to be there and support me in that. I was just incredibly touched by that.'
Shirley was among the first women to attain the ranks of film composition, a position happily no longer so solitary, with such composers as Anne Dudley and Oscar-winner Rachel Portman regularly scoring films. But Walker remains one of the few doing the heavy-hitting action films that seem to call for testosterone-laced music. 'There are more women working as composers now than there were when I was starting, and that's a good thing,' said Walker. 'The fact that Rachel is succeeding in the way that she is that makes those of us who aren't writing 'feminine' music I mean, quirky, feminine, sweet stuff push a little harder. It's unfortunate that there are people who see women as being so frail that they couldn't carry the stress of a score and, particularly, of a major score.'
The forceful fury of her compositional ability belies her kindly, almost grandmotherly appearance and demeanor, as Walker is well aware. Even more at odds with her appearance is the niche she has found as a composer for science fiction and fantasy. SF Universe magazine included her as one of the 'Most Intriguing Women in Science Fiction' in 1997, and her musical output in the genre has remained constant. 'Science fiction was where I happened to get started, and I love it because it's so fantastical. I get to write things that are so much bigger than life, or they're creepy and weird. That is so much fun, especially for somebody who looks like I do, to get to do this weird stuff; it's quite funny!'
For Shirley Walker, it doesn't get much weirder than SPAWN, HBO's unearthly weekly drama of a hell-spawned hero battling against the devils of the underworld while struggling to remember his human past. Conceived and created completely in her studio, Walker's sound design for the series, and its subsequent trio of video and DVD compilations, contains some of the most otherworldly and tantalizing electronic music the genre has ever heard. 'It's as very integral sound,' said Walker. 'The music is very sound-oriented. When you watch the finished show, you can't tell what's music and what's sound effect.'
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE II is a cable-TV film that Walker would rather forget. Instead of a nostalgic throwback to the classic Universal science fiction heyday of the '50s, this homage-gone-wrong had a measly music budget that didn't let Shirley do the subject the justice it needed. 'The basis of the score was totally electronic, and then we did one session with maybe eight instruments. Some of it was very synthy, and I had a lot of fun with that part. As a sequel, I don't think the film was able to do justice to the original. It just didn't have the economic support that it needed.'
On the other hand, another Universal cable-TV movie of a few years ago, CAPTAIN ZOOM, about an actor playing a TV science fiction superhero who, mistaken for a real hero, is transported to another world to battle an evil villain (gee, can you say GALAXY QUEST?), was a happier experience. 'I did half of it with a simulated orchestra, and then we went in with a small ensemble, 36 players or so, and we did 30 minutes of additional music. We really tried to go back in style to the FLASH GORDON series, with that kind of energetic music. Harmonically it was a real PERILS OF PAULINE score, and the sense of humor was so broad. I'm really proud of that one.'
Called in to co-compose ESCAPE FROM L.A. John Carpenter's vigorous sequel to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, Shirley brought in her own musical sensibilities to enhance Carpenter's electronic textures and rhythms. It was Walker's suggestion to score many of the Snake Plisskin scenes with Western styled music. 'John looked at me and said 'I don't know about this!'' Shirley said. 'But by the time we added got harmonica, dulcimer and electric guitarsand then for the climactic moment where the satellite beams down on earth to take away all electronic power we did this Western rock and roll thinghe just loved it. Space movies have huge orchestras, so doing that was a very counterculture idea that he really embraced.'
Actor Kurt Russell was less enthusiastic about the oddball musical approach. 'Kurt came in when we were doing the electronics, and we played the music for a motorcycle chase that's in the film, which was kind of a rap-sounding with grungy sampled stuff, and he was beside himself,' Walker recalled. He was asking, 'I just want to know what drugs you guys are on?!' John just let him talk and my knees were shaking and I was thinking, 'Here it goes; I'm off this picture right here!'' Carpenter eventually won Russell over, and the music stayed in the scene. 'It's one of John's favorite moments in the score,' said Walker. 'He even cleared out a lot of the sound effects so we could use the music!'
In the science fiction genre, music has to do much more than simply support the drama of the characters who are involved in a given story; it must also collaborate with the visual effects and directorial style to breathe life into the fantastic worlds and alien characteristics created by a the film, which can be both a challenge and an inspiration to a composer. 'Film music tends to be an exaggerated cliché,' said Walker. 'We all try to find as way to soften that tendency and bring in personal sound. Science fiction and fantasy has so much more latitude in what's permissible there.'
SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND gave Shirley a good opportunity to support character as much as otherworldly setting. 'Jim Wong and Glen Morgan wanted to portray an attitude that was last seen in America around the time of World War II, when the whole country put its differences aside and got on with the task at hand,' Walker said. 'I really wanted to embody that quality in the music. It has a lot of military drums and things. The nature of the melody is such that it's coming down and going back up, as the show always puts them out into space and brings hen back to their home planetthis continual returning to home and replenishing and then going out to fight the bad guys. Fox let me have an orchestra on that show, which in today's prime time television is something that is very hard for any studio to do. It's twice as expensive, and it has an unpredictable expense levelit costs more if there's more action music, because there's more music preparation, but they really hung in there for the whole season. That was a good show. We were all pretty heartbroken when that show bit the dust.'
Shirley Walker continues to enjoy the challenges and rewards of scoring music for fantasy and science fiction, whether it's the brooding spookiness of THE OTHERS, the fantastic bombast of cartoon superhero shows like BATMAN or SUPERMAN, the diabolical electronic schisms of SPAWN, or the large-scale orchestral approach of her latest effort, which premiered on March 17, for James Wong's directorial debut, FINAL DESTINATION.