Composer Andrew Lockington scored Warner Bros.’ epic disaster thriller “San Andreas” which just enjoyed a box office-topping weekend. Directed by Brad Peyton, the film follows a search and rescue pilot (Dwayne Johnson) and his estranged wife (Carla Gugino) as they make their way from Los Angeles to San Francisco to save their only daughter after the infamous San Andreas Fault gives, triggering a magnitude 9-plus earthquake in California. Peyton turned to Lockington, his frequent collaborator, at the earliest possible point in the film’s production.
Peyton explained, “The way I like to build the world is to look at the tone and the music. For ‘San Andreas,’ the question was how to create an original, epic and very emotional score, so we just dove in and started playing around to find the themes and the vibe of this movie.”
Lockington incorporated sounds derived from actual waveform data collected from the San Andreas Fault to capture the intensity of the destruction. “Using real-time seismic event data collected from the U.S. Geological Survey, we found seismic elements that could be manipulated to create these incredible sounds,” said Lockington. To capture a sense of discord inspired by the collapsing Golden Gate Bridge, Lockington related, “I got an old piano and spent two days destroying it with sledge hammers and wire cutters. We had only planned to record hitting it with the hammers, and those sounds are blended in with the orchestral elements in the film. After that, I sat down to play this broken instrument that was hanging on by a thread, and I could play notes, but they didn’t sound like they were supposed to, and it no longer even sounded like a piano. So suddenly we had this whole new instrument–and some of those sounds figure prominently in certain scenes as well. It’s an interesting rhythmic element.”
Lockington then worked with a programmer to synthesize portions of the damaged piano notes into a raw, terrifying noise that he describes as feeling like “fist dropping down on the rest of the score.” Transitioning from fear and destruction to perseverance and hope, Lockington also introduced portions of a boys’ choir “to cut through everything else that’s going on and get into the depths of emotion of these characters and their will to overcome. We also have a very beautiful theme that transcends the disaster, with a lot of strings.”
As for his alluded to earlier collaborations with Peyton, Lockington scored the director’s “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” for which the composer backpacked through the remote jungles of Papua, New Guinea, to research and record ancient tribal drumming. The work earned Lockington his second BMI and SOCAN Awards. He re-teamed with Peyton again, on the upcoming thriller “Incarnate.”
Lockington also wrote and performed the song “Stalking Stars” for Ben Affleck’s acclaimed 2012 drama “Argo.” Previously, Lockington composed the eclectic score for the Golden Globe Award-nominated “Frankie and Alice” starring Halle Berry and Stellan Skarsgaard, and Rob Adetuyi’s Inner City parkour dance film “Beat the World.”
