Interview: Composer Stephanie Economou's Dreamy Score for "Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken"
Grammy-winning composer, Stephanie Economou, sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to talk about her score for the new Dreamworks film, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. Releasing June 30, Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken marks Dreamworks’ first female-led animated feature. It follows Ruby (Lana Condor), a regular, awkward teenager who learns that she is a descendant of warrior kraken queens.
Ecnomou talks about her dream pop inspiration, her eclectic taste in music, and her next project, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.
(The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.)
Beyond the Cinerama Dome: Okay, so take me back to the first instrument that you started playing and why you were interested in picking up music.
Stephanie Economou: So the first instrument I started playing was piano, and my parents bought me this very small, one octave keyboard, and I really liked it. So they decided to give me piano lessons and I took piano lessons probably for, I don't know, many years, at least a decade. And it just was never my instrument. I was never very good at it. But along the way, I picked up a violin a couple of years after I started on piano, and that was my instrument. So my sister played viola and kind of taught me a lot about string instruments and that was like my first love. And I still play and record on violin today.
Was film also this longtime love of yours, or did that kind of come later when you were experimenting with what kind of career in life you could have in music?
Yeah, I always loved film. I loved film. I love TV. All of these video games growing up. It was a big part, I would say like equal part. That was like a hobby of mine, which watching movies is not necessarily a hobby, but it kind of is. Video games and music were like my two great loves. So when I went to college, I was like, wait, I think I can marry these together. I went to a music conservatory for college and started scoring some short films from director buddies of mine from high school. And I was like, yeah, this feels this feels right. I like the collaboration a lot. And it was exciting to find this thing that really ignited my imagination.
Did you have a score growing up of a movie where the score really jumped out at you?
I always loved the music of Forrest Gump, Shawshank Redemption, which I watched like when I was a teenager. That stuff still really stuck with me. And I would listen to those soundtracks a lot. And then also like a bunch of video games that I played growing up, like I played the first Halo because I had the first generation Xbox. Then a lot of the stuff, like the silly games that I played with my sister on Sega Genesis like a bunch of punk music. I love that stuff. I can still hear it and all of it in my head now. I think it all has a greater influence, which you don't really realize until you're older and you take a step back and you're like, oh yeah, that was important to me.
What does the scoring process look like for you? Do you start with a specific instrument? Walk me through how you get started.
I usually start the same way, which is trying to figure out a theme or a melody or a tune that can follow a character around, or it might be like an overarching theme for the whole movie. Just something that I know that I can kind of explore and develop and put through all different lenses. I'll go into my computer and my sequences and build a template of sounds. Maybe it's a bunch of synths, maybe it's like some dulcimer, or maybe it's all this other stuff. Just so I have tools at my fingertips to kind of start experimenting and honing in on what is going to be like the unique sound of that particular score.
I’ve talked to other composers who watch the scene that they're going to be composing and then they immediately record their brainstorming. Is that something similar for you, or do you separate yourself from the visuals and compose on your own first?
I've done it both ways. I think it's become pretty common for me now to write a theme suite just away from any sort of visual stuff. It gives me a chance to solidify some ideas, have that exploratory phase without being like, okay, I need to shape it specifically to tailor it to the scene. I can kind of get to the center of the crux of what I want to accomplish, set the tone of the whole score. Sometimes you just have to dive in. And I usually like diving into a thick, like a meaty scene in the project so I can really get in there and figure it out.
Photo Credit: Pamela Springsteen
I've always kind of been curious about the decision to score a scene. Is it a conversation between you and the director about which scenes are going to be scored, or is that something that you get a little more freedom in?
For the most part in film and television, a composer will sit down with the director, maybe a producer, maybe the showrunner on a TV show and you have what's called a spotting session. You look at the latest cut of either the episode or the film and you stop in moments and say, maybe I'll come in with music here. More often than not, they'll have the editor put in something called temp music. It's preexisting music, preexisting scores, so that they can cut to that because music is so crucial as far as setting pace. Oftentimes the temp music will help in the spotting sessions as a starting point communication wise with the director to be like, how do you feel about that piece of music? Is it not fast enough? Do you hate the clarinet? Whether or not you follow that guide is a whole other story. Oftentimes I'll just be like, no, actually I wouldn't bring in music there at all. I would try it here instead. It's up to a composer to be able to zoom out and see the possibility of how do we tell this story from a unique perspective and how do we pace it the way that we want? How do we tell it through a certain lens? And that's that's the fun of it.
So how did you get involved with Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken?
I took a meeting for Ruby Gillman about a year ago last summer when it was still pretty early on, but about the time where I feel like most composers get hired on animations. I've found that in video games and animation, they like to hire composers pretty early, which is really nice because you're sort of part of the worldbuilding, the sound, and you can help shape the story a lot. So that's really nice and a great luxury. So I just had a meeting with the creative team and I said that I hear elements of dream pop and synth pop that I would want to bring into the score because that stuff really reminds me of what it's like to be near the water. It has this dreamy, ethereal quality, and they really liked that. I wrote the theme suite, which was exploring that world of dream pop. And it stuck. And it's still in the movie now like that. It doesn't always work out that way. Usually my first shot is pretty shit and then I find something after that. But this is the one time I think I wrote it and it stuck.
dreamworks animation
It's interesting that you say pop, because when I was listening to the score, it was actually the on land music that stood out as a kind of boy band pop to me. So I was curious where your inspiration for both the above ground and the underwater section came from?
What I loved about dream pop and synth pop, is that these genres have spanned decades. So I was coming to the studio every morning and just listening to a ton of music. I was listening to a lot of Beach House and like Cocteau Twins. Even The Cure, which is not really dream pop at all, but all of that stuff had its influence. I definitely think a lot of The Cure seeped in there for like some of the earlier tracks, for her life on Land. I wanted it to feel like she's an ordinary teenager. There was something about putting synth pop and indie pop where it's like, oh shit, this feels like a John Hughes movie now. That was really fun to hone in on. This is what it's like to be an ordinary teen. Then, when she goes in the water, I was leaning more into the dream pop and it was like a little bit more cinematic dream pop, I would say. So more dreamy, lots of guitar effects, vocal effects, and synth. I found an electroacoustic harp player that ran her harp through a bunch of effects pedals and stuff. That ended up being the sound of her coming into her own as a giant kraken versus the indie pop stuff on land, which is a little bit more grounded, literally. So the dreamy stuff came underwater and that was a really fun place to explore.
Something that kind of stood out to me is like the full orchestral score, like underwater. I played sousaphone in high school…
Oh my God, you did? That’s amazing.
Yeah! So I loved the fullness of the underwater section of the score. I loved all the percussion. I can't wait for my sister to hear because she kept on with music and I did not.
Oh, what does she play?
She's gotten really into accordions recently. Really into just like all the auxiliary percussion. I loved my sousaphone time and the underwater selections really spoke to me as that kid who used to play sousaphone because it's just so big and so bold. Do you enjoy the flexibility of these huge orchestra scores where you can add a harp that's been put through pedals? Or do you find it can be overwhelming and you prefer a more minimalist style of composing?
That's a great question. It's kind of my thing. I grew up playing in orchestras. I played violin, right? So that sort of repertoire, orchestral, symphonic repertoire, choir music, all that stuff is like a big part of who I am as a musician and a composer. I also just have a really eclectic taste of music. I grew up listening to a bunch of Pink Floyd, classic rock, System of a Down, and like a bunch of shit that really excites me about music. I think that's sort of who I am as a composer. It's like a marriage of the classical style of composing music with more rock pop elements. I've never written dream pop before, but this was such a wonderful opportunity for me to kind of explore that and figure out how to meld the two of them together because the film itself needed the scope. I wanted there to be a way where I could create this underwater majesty for the kingdom and for Ruby's grandmother because she's royalty. It had to have that element with it. The dream pop and synth pop needed to grow with Ruby as she found her place as a giant kraken and came into her own. So that's married with lots of guitars and synths through the whole thing, and then you hear it on French horns with the whole orchestra and choir. For me, that's where I really find a lot of joy in writing music. In incorporating all of these non orchestral elements into the orchestra and see how I can find those blends and where to find these unique relationships.
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The minimalism, I find, is the hardest thing about music, and that's something that I would love to just do. Every single element needs to be so carefully curated and I feel like I try to do that in everything that I do. I always struggle with minimalism. I always kind of want to widen all of it. I want to do a score that's really close miked, two elements and just see how I can tell a story with that because I think having those kinds of boundaries are really crucial for any kind of artist. Just to see what you can do within those parameters. It was fun being able to do a huge score and expand and contract with that. But I do find minimalism is probably the hardest way of kind of seeing what you can accomplish creatively.
My last question, I have to ask because my Greek family will disown me if I don't; what has it been like scoring My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3?
Amazing. Right? So I was really excited just to take a meeting for that. Nia Vardalos, who's obviously the creator and lead actor in the films, she directed this one. She specifically sought out a female Greek composer. And so I may have been the only one to take a meeting. I'm not totally sure. There are many excellent Greek composers who are women, but I was lucky to just get in a room with Nia, and yeah, it was a blast. We just wrapped on that a couple of weeks ago. It was an opportunity for me to explore my Greek heritage and culturally what Greek music has been like. Greek island music versus Greek mainland music. Authenticity was the most important thing for me. I found a couple amazing Greek soloists. One of them was in Crete. One of them is actually living in Paris now, and they were my main collaborators on the score. I was recording them remotely and I'm learning all these amazing Greek instruments. That's a big part of the sound of the score. And I'm really lucky that I got to explore that because it's, you know, it's who we are, right? But I've never gotten a chance to write music before. I've heard it for so long, but getting to really study it and understand the nuances of the instruments was really fun. And they go to Greece in the movie, so it's so beautiful and I think everybody's really going to enjoy it.
My family is going to rent out a theater to get everyone together to see it.
Oh my God, It's going to be so fun. It's such a good time.
This was a blast. And congrats on Ruby. And congrats on My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Thank you. Thanks, Tina. You're the best. Let's do this. Let's do this again soon.
Yeah, for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3!
Let's do it. Yeah, let's dive in. I love it. All right. Thanks, take care!
Check out the trailer below for Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken:
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