Film Composer James Michael Dooley Discusses SOCOM 3; Breathes New Life Into Warfare Combat

by Louis Bedigian

 

“The music is highly dependent upon your actions. If you are a slow gamer, there will be more random music to give you the sense that it's being scored on-the-fly.” 

 

SOCOM 3: U.S. Navy SEALs affected me in a way that I hadn’t been affected in three years. The gameplay, the graphics, and most of all the sound. SOCOM 3 is accompanied by some of the most incredible sound effects I have ever heard. It enveloped my ears so completely it was almost like being in a trance. It’s unbelievably mesmerizing and extremely satisfying to hear the sounds of war come to life in your bedroom. Not that we want to live the horrific experience of war, but from a fictitious standpoint there is really something about it.

 

That sound is quadruple-y enhanced by the work of James Michael Dooley. James wrote the score for the game, and I must say that I was awestruck the first time I heard it. Medal of Honor: Frontline was the last great war game and I didn’t expect anyone to top or even match its soundtrack for a very long time. James proved me wrong by bringing together an epic, massive sound that could have easily been sold to Hollywood for an upcoming motion picture. I guess the stars were aligned for gamers the night (a very long night that lasted for several months) the soundtrack was conceived because we got it and they didn’t. 

 

 

 

James is new to the game industry though you’d never know it. His first and only other game score was for Dead to Rights II. Prior to that he focused his attention on film and TV, writing scores for the DreamWorks animated short, A Christmas Caper (starring the penguins from Madagascar). He teamed with Hans Zimmer for Madagascar, has provided additional music for movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, and applied his technical talents to Gladiator, Mission: Impossible 2 and Pearl Harbor.

 

Recently I got the chance to talk to James about his work on the SOCOM series, where he finds inspiration, what he hoped to accomplish with the soundtrack, and more. 

 

For me music is very visual. I hear a song and I see an image. What is it like for you, the composer?

 

JD: It's funny. If you had seen the cue sheet for this game, you have to use a lot of imagination. I was walking through the game over a period of two days in Seattle and Denver. They walk you through every level of the game so I can tell what the landscapes are like, terrain, etc. At this point there were no enemies but it still took about two days to walk through it.

 

I was very inspired by the pictures. The guys in Denver had gone to Poland, Morocco, and south-east Asia to take photographs of real buildings, and terrains, mountains, gravel roads, desert, etc., [to try and create] something very realistic for the environment you'll be in. That was very inspiring.
 

 

Just the scenery, that inspired....

 

JD: That was the beginning. Also working with Seth Luisi and Clint Bajakian;.who had some ideas of how the score should feel, that helped a bit. I had to do a bit of research as well because: what is Polish music? What is Polish classical? Because of their history they don't have much traditional classical music. Their music is religious in nature, that's the one thing that stood through the development of their country.

 

Morocco – we have lots of traditional Moroccan music. I didn't want to just go in, "Oh, here's this guitar." I had to do lots of homework before I could write a note of that score. 

 

 

 

How did you go about getting the information needed to write your music?

 

JD: I talked to my composer friends. I have some friends who are pretty heavy in the classical world. So I was listening to, oddly enough Dvorak. Slavonic dances were a big thing. I had a bit of familiarity with Morocco having worked on Black Hawk Down. As far as the south east/Asian part of it I did have to do a little bit more research for that.

 

I found pop albums and classic albums. There are a lot of CDs samplers of world music and there's a sampling of Moroccan music, so I got a bunch of those CDs just to try to get the mood.

 

Did the sounds of each region originally have that powerful, emotional backing, or was that something you brought to the music? It seemed very unique. I've played a lot of games and seen a lot of movies and these themes were much more powerful. It wasn't like a typical war game – the music pulled you into the action and made you care about what was going on.

 

JD: This is a good point. I'm glad you feel this way because this is something I made a decision about how to about this game. I didn't want it to all be what you think of traditional battle music. That can get really tiring, I'm sure especially from the player's perspective. Because the other side of war is emotional. For example, when you're in a game and you have an extraction, it doesn't play it. Normally the extractions don't play the hard side. These are emotional lifts as releases, and release that you are okay, that you've made it to this point. I definitely tried to do that when I was writing, that there would always be this emotional side that would come in in between battle elements to give a little bit of release and something refreshing. But also to show the other side of what I'm sure goes through the mind of a Navy SEAL.

 

Did you know where the music was going to appear in the game as you wrote it?

 

JD: Yes, I knew exactly where the music was going in the game. The cue sheet for the game was incredibly detailed. Each person that was designing a level, all the teams worked together to create lists of what they would want for each specific level. Towards the end of the game, in Poland, there is a lot more battle music than in the beginning of Morocco. I had to write a specific piece for about 400 instances in the game. The music is highly dependent upon your actions. If you are a slow gamer, there were will be more random music to give you the sense that it's being scored on-the-fly.

 

Whereas as a much more experienced gamer the music is designed to go in and out as seamlessly as possible without making it feel like it's going too fast. For example, as you get into a battle situation, the battles for skirmishes don't usually last that long. This is a big challenge writing music for the game – as you go into a house with enemies, you shoot them, and in a matter of seconds [it ends], you can't start a whole battle track at that point.

 

The creator of the game, Seth Luisi, was doing hybrid tracks where there's what we call an excite track, which is playing the whole time, it's just faded down. When you start getting into a skirmish this track is faded up, and as you finish it goes back down slowly, but the bed is always still there. I'm sure you've experienced games where you start a battle and the music starts raging on. The battle only lasts a few seconds, so then the music cuts out and goes to the other track. That can really take you out of the game, so we really made a strong effort to have the music come in and out as seamlessly as possible in the gameplay. 

 

 

 

It's interesting that you brought that up because I wanted to talk to you about the concept of interactive music. Besides SOCOM, have you thought about that before? Do you think there's a way to go even farther and make game music more interactive?

 

JD: I'm sure. There were some limits with the PlayStation 2 technology that prevented us from going farther with the interactive nature of the music. I'm sure when we get to games with PlayStation 3 there will be much more implementation for that.

 

I like this idea where you create music for situations where if someone enters a specific set of circumstances something else plays. This makes it very interesting for the player. If it takes you a few times, or more if you're me, to get through levels of SOCOM it would be nice to always have a slightly different music track to keep things interesting.

 

That's the biggest difference between video games and film – everybody experiences the film in one timeline. You experience games in your own timeline. You can do that over and over again, even in your own style of gameplay. Any effort that we can make to enhance interactive music I think will really make the games come to life.

 

What about interactive sound effects? Let's say you fire a weapon and each bullet makes a different sound effect, and that would relate to the music. Maybe several sound effects that create a musical sound. Have you thought about exploring any possibilities like that?

 

JD: That's interesting. I think there are some inherent limitations for the writer. For example, SOCOM was three months of work just for the PS2 version. You know, writing something like 300 pieces. And they're already contingent upon certain circumstances. The more you break it down the longer it would take, and the schedules for these games it's not allowed. It'd be like trying to write Lord of the Rings 1, 2 and 3 in a space of three months.

 

I don't know where they plan to take the interactive nature of the PS3. I'm hoping that in the future there will be lots of ways to have music cross-fading, come in and out, and be very interactive -- as fast as the player can go through the music could change just that much.

 

You did the PSP version of SOCOM.

 

JD: I did write music for SOCOM PSP, which was an additional hour of music. There are parts of the PSP version that are not in SOCOM 3. We didn't want to take the music from PS2 and throw it in the PSP. The gameplay is inherently different – there are two players on the field instead of four. So we wanted to give it a bit of a different spin, make it a little more edgy. 

 

SOCOM U.S. Navy Seals Fire Team Bravo (PSP) 

 

Is any of the music from SOCOM 3 in the PSP version?

 

JD: Yes. A very small amount, but it is.

 

Your first game was Dead to Rights II. How did you get that gig? You worked in movies for a long time. Had you been wanting to come to the game industry? Did someone pull you in?

 

JD: A good friend of mine who I met through friends of friends here in LA became the producer of the game. He was like, "Hey, I know this guy who writes for film. Let's get him to do the score." That was a really good opportunity to get in and get my feet wet, find out what music is like in games. That music is night and day compared to what SOCOM's music is. It was, "Here's the level that we have, we need a track that loops and it's three minutes long." You get to the level and that music plays over and over again until the level's done. It's not quite as sophisticated as the SOCOM track, but it's still a very good game.

 

For music I've read that you contributed additional music for a lot of flicks like Pirates of the Caribbean. What exactly does "additional music" mean?

 

JD: Additional music can mean lots of things. For me particularly it means...let's use Pirates of the Caribbean as an example. The studio fired Alan Silvestri, who used up half the time [available to compose the score]. They needed to replace the score, but have only half the time. What do you do? This seems to be happening more often than we like when a score needs to be done and have all the intricacies and emotions that a score [should have], but we have to go in and out and do it in half the time. So you get a bunch of guys together. Usually the lead composer will write all the themes and we'll get handed those to try to start working them into the movie. It's mostly for time consideration.

 

Why does that keep happening? Why is Hollywood giving less and less time to composers?

 

JD: This is interesting. The music is the last thing that holds up a movie for release. We are the one thing standing in the way of it coming through for studios and producers. People worked on Total Recall to get it in development for six or seven years. Finally they got the movie shot, edited, previewed, to the point where they were like, Okay, put the music on, gotta get it into theaters. When things go wrong in movies, you know, you're trying to make the best thing and it usually takes longer than you imagined in the first place. So music is usually the last thing before the dub and it always ends up getting crunched because they need to get the movie out but then they want to spend as much time making the movie as wonderful as possible.

 

Why do you think that is?

 

JD: It's the nature of the piece. You're working on a movie, you edit it, you preview it, the numbers aren't so good so you maybe have to re-edit it. It's like, Oh, we'll try music. If your numbers are good in the preview then you don't change things, if your numbers are not so good then you go in and change the music. It's the last thing they change and it's the cheapest. If you want to re-shoot a scene that's a huge expense; if you want to replace the score that's a relatively minimal score compared to the rest of production. So at the end of the day if your music's not working, they'll say, "Oh, let's go replace the music." 

 

 

 

Was it weird to hear your music for the first time on TV, in movies, and now in video games?

 

JD: It still gets me every time. You're working on so many projects -- the more you work on music as a composer the bigger your catalog is. I was on the scoring stage for SOCOM in London. I took a break to get a cup of coffee and a commercial came up: Pantene, with my music on it.

 

That's cool.

 

JD: I was so in the SOCOM state of mind that I was like, "That music sounds so familiar, I wonder who did it." It took me a couple of seconds and then I realized, "Oh yeah, I did that." [Laughs]

 

It's pretty amazing. It's really great to go to a theater and hear your music with the movie -- it's a really amazing feeling. It never gets old.

 

Before you got to where you are now, what was it that made you want to become a composer? What was the most significant or influential thing that led you down this path?

 

JD: People always say, "What was the model that did it for you?" For film composers they always say, "Which movie did it?" Which movie did it for you, [the moment] when you first woke up and realized, Wow, there's this music in film and it's really cool and I'd really like to be a part of the process.

 

For me it was Danny Elfman's score for Batman. A friend of mine in high school made a short movie and put the score up against it. It was just him rolling a cue ball down the hall -- we didn't have the budget to do Batmobiles or anything, we were just rolling the ball down the hallways of the school. You can throw it pretty fast so it looks pretty cool and he put the Batman score to it, and I was like, "Wow, this is the most interesting thing I've ever seen. The music is amazing." So I found out who that was. My friend also suggested I should check out Pee-wee's Big Adventure. I had never heard of it. That was the beginning of me really becoming aware of film music.

 

What was that last one?

 

JD: Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

 

That's interesting. It had a good soundtrack?

 

JD: Fantastic. Danny Elfman again.

 

He's one of your favorite composers?

 

JD: Easily. Danny's a really talented guy.

 

As a career can you talk about payment? I know some of our readers are going to want to follow in your footsteps. Does the game industry pay as well as Hollywood?

 

JD: I'll put it this way. The game industry is doing quite well. It's only getting bigger year by year. The game industry is looking to hire more A-level talent to support their A-level interactive medium. As we get closer to a point where movies and games aren't going to be so different where a game is going to be an interactive movie, they're trying to get bigger composers to be involved in the gaming process.

 

They're starting to compete with the pay scales of Hollywood films. I think they're doing a really great job. There are so many games that have orchestral budgets. It's becoming more common to add value to the gaming experience, which is visual and sonic. They are definitely willing to, like on a game like SOCOM, which is Sony's number-one online title, they want the score to sound as amazing as the investment they've put into their research, their artificial intelligence. Right now I think they're catching up.

 

Thanks James for a great interview!