Avatar: Fire and Ash: how the soundtrack was made

It’s no secret that the Avatar films are a mammoth technical feat: they push the boundaries of cinematography, animation, and performance capture.

But you may not know that the same applies to music.

Composer Simon Franglen says work on the third installment, Avatar: Fire and Ash, took an epic seven years to complete.

Along the way, he wrote 1,907 pages of orchestral score; and even invented new instruments for the residents of the alien planet Pandora to play.

And, while director James Cameron tinkered with the edit until the last minute, the British musician only finished his last piece of music five days before the film was printed and delivered.

In total, Avatar contains “four times as much” music as a standard Hollywood film, Franglen says, and almost all of its 195-minute running time requires music.

“But they gave me a 10-minute break for good behavior,” he laughs.

Fire and Ash is the third installment in the record-breaking series and continues the saga of the blue Na’vi population, who protect their planet from human invaders, intent on stripping them of their natural resources.

The new film, released December 19, takes audiences into the strikingly vivid landscapes of Pandora, but also sends them on a visceral emotional journey.

At the beginning of the film, the two main characters Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) are mourning the death of their teenage son, Neteyam.

Unable to see each other face to face, the pain threatens to tear the couple apart.

Franglen was tasked with creating a score that could reflect the depth of his despair.

“I wanted to make sure he felt that sense of distance that was growing between them,” he says.

“Then what I would do is take two lines [of music] and it would make them separate, or make them go wrong, so that they would feel austere and cold and disconnected.”

“Grief is never something that is addressed in these types of films,” he continues, “but for any family, the loss of a child is the worst thing that can happen.

“Musically, it’s usually the quiet moments that are important.”

By contrast, when Franglen composed the music for the Wind Traders, a nomadic clan of salesmen who travel by airships, he was able to let his imagination run wild.

Their swashbuckling themes are inspired by action movies from the 1930s and ’40s, but they also feature new instruments exclusive to Pandora.

“When we meet wind energy traders [they’re having] a party on his enormous galleon,” says Franglen.

“The problem was, if you’re having a party at Pandora, what do they play? I can’t give them guitar, bass and drums. I can’t give them a banjo.

“It is necessary to have a real instrument, one that is designed for blue people who are three meters tall and have four fingers.

“And because Avatar is not animation, when there are instruments on the screen, you have to have something real,” he says, referring to Cameron’s rule that everything on the screen has to be based in reality, even though the film’s images are largely computer-generated.

“So I sketched out some instruments and gave them to the art department, who made these beautiful designs.”

Franglen’s creations included a long-necked lute, similar to a Turkish saz, with strings representing the rig of the Wind Traders’ ship.

A percussion instrument was also designed whose head is made of the same material as the ship’s sails.

The art department’s renders were then given to prop master Brad Elliott, who built the instruments on a 3D printer, and the actors played them for real on set.

However, for now these inventions do not have an official name.

“These days they’re called ‘the stringy things’ and ‘the drumming things,'” Franglen laughs.

“I’m sure there’s a better name. Someone said we should have a competition.”

Franglen’s music career began when he was just 13 years old: he wrote a letter to the BBC asking how someone could become a record producer.

Wrongly assuming he was asking about radio production, the corporation advised him to study electronics, which led to a course at the University of Manchester in the early 1980s.

He arrived just as the Hacienda Club opened (“I was member 347”) and spent his free time booking bands for the university’s concert hall.

“I remember booking Tears for Fears and 11 people came,” he says.

After graduating, he was hired to work as a synthesizer programmer and introduced to Trevor Horn, who put him to work on seminal ’80s albums by Yes and Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

Finally, he decided to try his luck in the United States where, “after six months of doing almost nothing,” he became a highly sought-after session musician and programmer.

Credits began to pile up on hits like Toni Braxton’s Unbreak My Heart, All 4 One’s I Swear, and Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing; and eventually found himself programming drums for Michael Jackson’s HIStory album.

“The pressure was to make it great,” he says. “Having that sense of rhythm, what we call ‘the pocket.’

“And a big part of my career is that I had a deep pocket. I understood where things should feel and how they should impact. And that’s as important in movie soundtracks as it is when you’re making a Michael Jackson record.”

Franglen’s first experience as a film composer came when Bond composer John Barry asked him to help on Kevin Costner’s Oscar-winning film Dances With Wolves. He was later hired to do the “dark and nasty stuff” for David Fincher’s Se7en.

“My job was to provide the dystopian feel of that score. So I would take squeaky brakes, sample them, and then play all the violin lines with squeaky brakes underneath.

“There was a lot of experimental stuff, which was incredibly fun.”

Franglen met Avatar director James Cameron after being hired by legendary film composer James Horner to work “on a movie he had no money for.”

The film was Titanic, a famous white elephant, dismissed as a vanity project and predicted to cause the collapse of the Fox and Paramount film studios.

The composer had seen the headlines, but when Cameron showed him the scene in which the Titanic broke in half and began to sink, he realized that the press had been wrong.

“It was just amazing, compared to anything you’d ever seen before. I knew it was special.”

Still, there was no budget for the music, Franglen had to borrow equipment and instruments from manufacturers, and most of the score was recorded on synthesizers in a rented apartment.

“Part of the reason Titanic sounds like that is because there wasn’t enough money to [an] orchestra everywhere,” he says.

In Avatar the opposite happens.

“Jim [Cameron] He still believes that good things take time. And as a songwriter, having that ability to refine and make something special is rare these days.”

The director also went to great lengths to ensure that his latest film was free of artificial intelligence.

“He asked me very specifically, ‘So we’re not going to use any AI? We’re not going to put any real musicians out of work,'” Franglen recalls.

“It’s fair to say that if you gave many film producers the option of saving money, they would choose that option.

“Jim is in a position where he will not compromise, and that is as important when it comes to the music as it is to the actors’ live performances.”

As the film prepares for release, Franglen is celebrating a Golden Globe nomination for the theme song, Dream As One, sung by Miley Cyrus.

But he’s also thinking about what comes next. Cameron has already completed the scripts for Avatar Four and Five; It is scheduled to come out in 2029 and 2031.

“Four is… I think it’s surprising,” Franglen says. “It goes into completely new territory and I love it.”

Initial footage has already been filmed, but Cameron says completing the film will depend on Fire and Ash’s box office performance.

“I really hope we break even so we can do that,” Franglen says.

“I think they said after Avatar Two that the break-even point was $1.4bn (£1bn).

“I have no way of knowing, but I’m guessing it’s a similar number for this one.

“So if the public tells us they want an Avatar Four, I really want to do it.”