Meet Marco Valerio Antonini

We were lucky to catch up with Marco Valerio Antonini recently and have shared our conversation below.

Marco Valerio, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

Every new project I am tasked to write music for is like a completely new world, with specific challenges and requirements, but also with specific points of inspiration and originality. So, in a way, my creativity is kept alive automatically as long as I put myself in an open state of mind and let the story communicate to me its needs, the characters’ inner universe, and the emotional landscape that it sets the stage for.
Media music being a deadline driven business, it can be trickier at times to naturally get into that state, so I always try to reserve a period of time at the top of the creative session, no matter if it is going to be a long session or a fast one, to just reflect on the story and try and let myself resonate with it. It can be watching the scene I am about to score, or attentively reading a video game sequence creative brief, or even just recalling a conversation with the director and reflecting on it: sometimes it clicks immediately, other times it takes a couple re-runs, but invariably there is something in there that will ignite creativity, and it’s relatively smooth sailing from there on.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am a Los Angeles-based, Italian composer of music for films, television and video games with a passion for thematic, emotion-driven scoring. I love telling stories and collaborating with like minded creatives, imagining worlds through images and musical notes.
I’ve always had a passion for music since a very young age, and when I started studying classical composition at the conservatory in Rome, I realized that my heart was in film music. At about the same time, I also decided that my career would be in Hollywood, and after a few years of work in documentaries and live action films in Rome, I made the move and relocated to Los Angeles, going back to school to attend the USC Scoring program.
My classical training naturally led me to orchestral music, and I started working with composer Gordy Haab, which gave me the unique opportunity to be a part of such video game projects as the Star Wars Jedi franchise and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a dream come true for someone who grew up listening to the great Hollywood scores and dissecting them to understand their inner workings!
Most recently, I contributed music to the Gremlins Theater world in Warner Bros. Games’ MultiVersus, and it was thrilling to have my tracks included in the Season 3 Soundtrack Album published by WaterTower Music, that can be found on all major music streaming platforms.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I would say that the three qualities that were most impactful for me were optimism, genuineness, and creativity, and the three are intertwined. Here’s what I mean by that: artistic genuineness for me is pursuing a creative idea because your gut feeling tells you it is the right one for the circumstance, even if it might look different from current trends. By allowing yourself to follow that hunch, you’re inherently allowing yourself to be creative, and doing so with confidence implies optimism towards the outcome. The three can only manifest together, you take one out, the other two cannot hold up on their own.
When talking about popular mass art forms such as cinema and videogames, trends are always a strong part of the conversation. My personal opinion is that trends can be simply defined as someone having a fresh idea which was validated by audience reception. A good reception produces success, and now you have a new trend. The thing is, it was all born with someone having a fresh idea (creativity), following though on it (genuineness) and sticking with it even if it looked somewhat riskier given the current trends (optimism).
So, my absolutely subjective advice would be to definitely pay attention to current trends, not ignoring them for the sake of it (after all this is called show *business* for a reason), but maintain the door open to the possibility of an out-of-the box approach. Whether it’s the musical style you want to express your idea through, or even the genre of your movie itself, if an idea strikes that is unconventional, boundary-pushing or otherwise “different” and you feel it’s going to carry the message in an effective way, go for it. Compare and contrast your ideas with the people you work with, be receptive of the input you’ll get back from them, incorporate it in the work, and be optimistic about the public’s ability and disposition to get it. You might be creating a future trend!

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I’m always eager to meet new creatives in visual media that want to explore a collaboration for their next project. If you have a story to tell and you think that music is the companion you need to tell it to the heart and the eye at the same time, do reach out. My website contact form goes directly to me!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

ASCAP
The Los Angeles Live Score Film Festival
Krakow Film Music Festival

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