Jupiter's Legacy: An Interview with Composer Stephanie Economou
CineConcerts was very fortunate to speak with Stephanie Economou about her score for the new Netflix original series Jupiter’s Legacy! We discussed key musical elements of the show, the genre of music for superheroes, and her approach to the score.
Composer Stephanie Economou
CineConcerts (CC): How did you get involved with Jupiter's Legacy in the first place?
Stephanie Economou (SE): Yeah, it kind of was one of those things that, just like one of many things that happen in this industry, one of the executive producers, Hameed Shaukat, we had a couple mutual friends in common but we hadn’t met at that point but he had heard my music around the time they were looking for composers and he thought that it was the right sensibility stylistically for Jupiter's Legacy.
So, he just called me up and was like, “Hey, do you want to come in for a meeting with our showrunner?” and we just all hit it off and it all felt good, just the working relationship felt good and I felt really inspired by, they had sent me the scripts for the first couple of episodes and I think at that point they had cut together the first episode so they had that for me to see. I wrote a short little demo inspired by what they had shown me and then they hired me.
It sounds faster than it was, that was probably over the course of like six months, realistically. We had the meeting and then they were still in production and simultaneously in post-production editing stuff together, but that was cool because by the time that they had actually hired me, they had really good fine cuts of all 8 episodes. So, we were super ready to dive in creatively on the music side and we got to spot all of the episodes prior to me even starting.
So, it was useful to be able to see it like a long feature film as opposed to an episodic series. That was really important to the showrunners. Thank you, Kim, because there’s so many narratives flying around, there’s lots of character, it’s nonlinear storytelling and we didn’t want it to feel like snapshots every episode. It was really kind of just how do we shape this story over the course of the season so that the score slowly unfolds each of the character's evolution as we go. So, it was really useful to be able to really see the whole season from a step back before I even wrote the music.
CC: The show is based on a graphic novel by Mark Millar, did you read the graphic novel before getting started on the project?
SE: I did not. I wish I did, but then at the same time—I’m reading them now and seeing the original comic and looking at their interpretation, they are vastly different in some ways. I mean, it’s just a different interpretation. But what I did do was, there was always this conceptual idea that I had during the spotting sessions, the penultimate episode, episode 7, is really kind of this epic journey. It's one of my favorite episodes, It's really incredible. There were so many big musical moments in that episode.
One of them being the final scene which is when our original six characters just are about to be granted their powers and I was sitting there with the producers and the showrunner and I was like, this scene is so wild and crazy and weird and wonderful. I was like I want to do something bold musically to match that. I had this idea to write a chorale, like a requiem type choir, for that moment. And because I decided to do a big musical moment there in episode 7 with vocals, I was like, okay I haven't written a note of music yet so why don't I unwind that idea and make vocals part of the tapestry of the score so that we’re teasing them along the way. So that by the time we get to episode 7, it feels like a big payoff, right? It feels like, you know, we were kind of preparing for this the whole time.
I had that idea and then I was like, okay, well the choir has to sing something, it has to sing lyrics, it has to have words. It got me thinking about Mark Millar and his original comic series and I was like, why don’t I go into those issues that have, the volume of the comics that reflect the scenes in episode 7. So, I kind of dove through some of the comics and found some text that he'd written that felt like it fit that moment and I had it translated into Latin and that's what the choir is singing in that moment.
So, while I didn't read the series prior, I liked that I was able to tie in, just have a tether to the original series because that felt more special, more purposeful.
Still from Jupiter’s Legacy
CC: I was actually going to ask you specifically about that scene. Are you able to tell us what lines you used, that they're singing?
SE: When the soundtrack comes out next week, in the liner notes, there's the translation directly. It comes from volume three but there are the exact lines that are in there—I’d have to look at the actual translation to let you know the exact lyrics but, yeah, they were pulled from volume three and it was mostly from when they’re on the island. Just a few lines of what Sheldon said. It seemed to work and sort of sounded pretty cool in Latin. So that was a fun undertaking.
CC: You’re right, I did notice that there were some vocals interspersed before you get to that moment so it does feel like it’s ramping up, like it’s all leading to this. Which is interesting because, like you said, it’s nonlinear so that moment is technically in the past.
SE: It was an interesting thing to do and then the vocals are very experimental, kind of strange multilayered but they’re not always right at the forefront, they usually come when Sheldon is sort of spiraling into this madness, essentially, and as he’s getting these little hints, these little seed along the way that bring him on this journey. That’s usually when those vocals are heard. I worked with this brilliant vocalist named Ari Mason who is a very old friend of mine. She also plays viola da gamba, she’s just super talented. She can do some vocal techniques that I just have never seen or heard or even thought were possible.
Sometimes I would get stuck on a cue and I’d go, “Listen, I don't really know exactly how to describe what I want here.” And she’ll always be like, “Don’t worry,” and give me a bunch of options for things like overtone singing, like throat singing, like rhythmic, Inuit singing, just all sorts of weird techniques that I never even knew where possible and then it opens up this dimension of experimentation with sound. It was fun to include some layers of that in score.
CC: The superhero genre has really exploded from where used to be, just, gosh, even like 10 years ago. So, we're not really in that space anymore where it's films like the original Superman and you’ve got this really big, brassy heroic theme because it's all about the heroics. This show is really more focused on the people that happen to be heroes rather than the heroics. Did that affect your, I mean, it must have affected your approach to the music and specifically the instruments you chose. But I did notice the main melody in the intro starts with brass and then fades out and I heard little brass throughout the show.
SE: Yeah, that’s very cleverly noted. My intent from the beginning was to write a theme, like the first thing I sat down to write was Sheldon’s Theme, the Utopian. On a greater scale I wanted that to kind of function as the show theme or the theme for the Union basically. Just because Sheldon’s character, as the Utopian, he really embodies those morals of the code. And there's a traditional element to how he continues to live his life despite the fact that the world has changed so much. So, the way I wrote his theme first, sometimes you’ll hear it on a solo French horn or in the brass section and that was very intentional, I wanted it to feel like this old world tropey kind of superhero thing.
That way when we see him in present day he’s broken down, he’s been through a lot. He has a difficult relationship with his children, with his brother, he has a somewhat strange relationship with his wife. So, that theme is taken and it's made more sensitive and intimate on piano or acoustic guitar or on a strange synth. I wanted to write a theme that could kind of expand and contract with where he was in his life, and how his outlook is changing.
You know, he's quite a stubborn character too. So, there was a lot of different attitudes and emotions I wanted to be able to convey through his lens. So that main theme, you will hear it on brass occasionally when you have a big superhero moment because sometimes it lends itself to being that way. Other times it'll be very dark and twisted. Like, as we get towards the end of the season with a lot of the inner drama going on within the Union.
So, yeah, that was my intentional nod to the superhero sound and Sheldon really embodies that so I liked the idea of setting him up to be this and then fragmenting it and breaking it down, using a different color palette for him in those times where he's, you know, not looking so much like a superhero anymore.
CC: What did one of the characters call him? Like, a funny looking Santa Claus?
SE: Yeah, a sexy Santa Claus.
Promotional Image of Jupiter’s Legacy
CC: How large of an orchestra did you use for the majority of the score? There are some electronic elements as well.
SE: The palette was quite wide.
Like, for Chloe's character, I wrote this kind of like industrial Rock theme for her so there’s no orchestra for her. With Raikou it’s like weird mouthpiece, trumpet sound and lots of guitars and synth. I actually didn't record an orchestra for the entire series, it's all programmed but it's filled with lots of different soloists.
So, obviously there was the choir that was main live element and, this is probably relevant to you and to CineConcerts, you know…last year it was kind of touch and go with whether or not scoring sessions were going to start up again. At the time when I was scoring episode 7, it was around August and I don't think, they still weren't recording vocals or choirs or anything in person. So, I was kind of like, okay, how's this going to work out?
It's a big choir piece and the whole season had been building to that moment. So, I called Jasper Randall who's a local contractor and he was like, “Don't worry, I have nine amazing vocalists for you. They all have home Studios. We'll get this done,” and so that whole choir is made up of nine singers, all multi-tracking themselves, six times each. They sent it back to me and I sent it to a mixer for half an hour and he sent it back to me and it sounded like this huge, lush ensemble. I mean, it was insane what they could do with just people singing by themselves in their separate spaces, just against a track.
It was unreal what they were able to do and especially singing on Latin, getting the consonances in the right place and the plosives, not being able to play off of other people and just mesh your color. I just couldn’t believe what they were able to do. So that's a little Covid, remote recording success story because I mean, truly, these musicians are incredible and I was so lucky to have that experience despite the circumstances.
But for the rest of the score, lots of soloists. So, Ari Mason, who I mentioned, sang vocals, my husband actually Jon Monroe is a brilliant composer and guitarist, so he recorded a lot of guitar on the score. Jake Baldwin recorded trumpet and brass, like weird trumpet effects-y stuff and some miscellaneous brass. There were a lot of really brilliant soloists on there. Ro Rowan recorded cello and I recorded some viola and violin throughout. So, it was just a mix of maybe 10 soloists throughout the whole thing. All the orchestral stuff was programmed.
CC: I did see that you have credits for vocals, as well as viola and violin. Is that something that you normally do on your projects, or is it specific to Jupiter’s Legacy?
SE: I definitely usually record violin on stuff. Over the years, I started recording more vocals. I am by no means a vocalist at all. Sometimes you need a little strangeness or just like something quite not live sounding there. I would not describe what I do as “vocals,” it should really just say “mouth sounds.” It’s a better characterization to be honest.
I hadn’t played too much viola before. My sister grew up as a viola player and she’s the reason why I decided to play violin. She played throughout college and stuff, she’s a doctor now, so she doesn’t play too much anymore so I stole her viola, I just kind of took it for my own. And on this one, there were just a couple of scenes in episode 6 and 7, one being the big storm scene when they're on the boat, in episode 6 where I just picked it up and started improvising some arpeggiated figures and it felt right for the scene. It was fun being able to do that, I hope to do more of it in the future. There's nothing like throwing up a mic and just playing around and seeing what comes out. Most of it is crap but sometimes it sticks.
CC: Would you say that that’s part of your go-to process? Taking the visual, the footage, and experimenting to it?
SE: Yeah, sometimes.
I don't always have a concept in mind when I sit down to write a cue in particular. I do feel like I am mostly conceptually driven but in the case of some of these characters that I wanted to write themes for, for example, Chloe and Raikou, I really didn't know what I was going to do until I really spent time with the scene, not listening up against it with any temp music or anything and something just kind of came out.
For Chloe. I just heard some sort of guitar with some synth programming so I just added a bunch of instruments in my DAW and started playing around with the programming and
then got my husband over, “Hey can you record this guitar line?” It came together but it's like slowly chipping away at it. If you start to play around with sounds and you’re like, is that standing up to picture? Sometimes it feels right, sometimes it’s just not quite there. That’s when you have to go in and scrap things and try other things.
CC: That kind of reminds me of a quote, I don’t remember who said it, but it’s about sculpting—how the figure is in the stone already, you just have to find it.
SE: It’s very true, I do feel that way a lot of the time, that there’s already something here. I do think of it as coloring and inside of the lines, like the outline is there in some capacity and the idea is there, it's just not quite executed yet. It’s about slowly adding those layers, slowly coloring and shading until you come out with what’s really working for you.
CC: That particular theme played on the Viola, first heard when the characters are in the storm approaching the island and then again later when they're on the island itself. What is the name of this particular theme/cue? I came to think of it, while I was watching, as the "Island Theme" but I was curious as to its actual title.
SE: Yes, there was a solo viola that I recorded during the storm in episode 6 and again when they arrive on the shore of the Island in episode 7. Each of these tracks on the soundtrack are titled "15 - Through the Storm" and "07 - Where to, Ulysses?" respectively.
This actually wasn't a specific theme, though we hear little snippets and fragments of a strange viola motif as Sheldon begins seeing visions of his dead father, Chester, earlier in the season, so I thought of it as the "Chester Sting." It kind of became an evolution from that viola nugget associated with Chester and evolved into the frenetic, intense arpeggiated viola in the storm scene at the height of Sheldon's psychosis.
The "Island Theme" was actually a sonic signature that I composed which has layers of trumpet mouthpiece, strange unusual vocals, or mouth sounds, which feels more fitting, and shepherd's horn, which is sometimes accompanied by a tappy high percussion figure. The "Island Theme" is heard for the first time after the storm passes, when they all see the Island in the distance and it carries us through episode 7 as they face the hurdles and challenges on the Island.
CC: Are there any cues in particular that when you looked at the scene, it just popped right into your head?
SE: Yes, surprisingly. Chloe was definitely like that, Chloe's big action sequence. There's a scene in episode 7, kind of the penultimate scene of the episode, where all six characters are trapped inside of this rock wall formation. It's one of the many challenges they face on the island and they have to work together to get past it. This was again something that have been decided very early on in the spotting session that, as each character approaches the wall, they touch it and a light comes up and there's also a tone that’s associated with that. All of the characters were supposed to have their own tones. That was decided, that it wasn’t going to be sound design, that was going to be a musical element.
So, when I sat down to write it, I was kind of like, “how do I make all of this work?” and at the same time, that's obviously diegetic on-screen sound. “How do I also make it work with the underscore that’s happening there?” It was a daunting task for sure, trying to make a puzzle pieces fit, but I think I only had a day to write that scene and I think that served me better because I just had an idea and went with it. Sometimes when you just have to commit to something you just make it the best it can possibly be.
Yeah, I had another conceptual idea for that one, which was, instead of giving all of these characters random tones for their lights—at that point almost all those characters had themes that were being established. So, I was like, “Why don’t I use just a little snippet, a microcosm of each person’s theme, like the first two notes, on their instrument that I had been writing for them?” And put that as they touch the wall and then a tone comes out of it. It’s such a composer thing to do because no one in a billion years will ever notice that, but for me it felt right. Because Sheldon goes up and touches the wall and the first two notes of his French horn sound and then a tone come out. Grace has a violin, harmonic thing so you hear that and then the tone comes out.
The idea was that none of the tones harmonically actually fit together, they're all hanging in the air and not super dissonant but there’s something about it that’s not all piecing together. The idea was if anybody’s light goes out, the sound bursts and their little motif is reversed. It’s not until all of their hands are on the wall and all of their lights go up that you hear this harmonious major chord. Sheldon’s tone changes with Walter’s tone and it becomes this thing.
There was the added challenge there of what do you do with the tones after the walls start to open? I was like, “I feel like it would be really weird if they just went away.” So, what I decided to do was make the tones that were diegetic, non-diegetic, so I took every single person’s tone and made an arpeggiated sequence out of it, that keeps growing and growing with the underscore, with the score cue, and added the shimmer effect as they walk into the light.
So, that was a surprising one but it came out right away. I just chose this path and I was surprised by how quickly it came and how complicated all of the elements were. I was very lucky that it ended up that way because the schedule was getting really insane. It was really fun and rewarding to be able to do something like that because it’s very rare for a composer to really be able to blend those diegetic sounds with their non-diegetic score.
So, yeah, that was an interesting one.
CC: I believe that the choir doesn't come in until the wall opens up, is that right?
SE: There’s some vocals in there, then the big choir piece comes in the following scene when they go into the light and it’s on the other side of the light.
CC: Conversely, were there any moments where it was really hard to find the right underscore for the moment?
SE: There were unique challenges along the way. In episode one there's a huge like seven-and-a-half-minute action sequence on the hilltop as the whole Union is fighting Black Star. It’s in episode one so I had tackled that first, so it’s a bit daunting, jumping into a huge action sequence as you’re still figuring out the shape and the tone of the score. I think I took like a week to write that, just because it was a meaty chunk of music that I wanted to make sure was really catered and I wanted to make sure I was developing things in the right way.
It’s wasn’t a struggle necessarily; it was definitely daunting but I'm happy with what we ended up with. It was also one of those scenes where the visual effects kept changing and evolving so that the scene kept getting recut, they always do. So, the music needed to follow the pace of it, even if the pace was changing. So that one jumps to mind as being a tricky one, but, you know, nothing out of the ordinary.
I think, as with any TV series, once you get a couple episodes in you find your stride and the people you’re working with, you have a good shorthand with them, so creatively I think there was a trust there, which really nice. One of the showrunners sang and one of the executive producers, Hameed, they really pushed me to do different things and not be afraid to take risks. They were never attached to any temp music which is really great for me. They didn’t have any specific opinions about that they just really trusted my vision for the score and that’s such a dream, to be able to have that. Especially to be able to have people be like, “No, make it weirder. No, push it.”
That’s why I love doing this, because it’s so collaborative and if you find those collaborators that are going to do that for you, you're only going to keep growing and trying to stuff. I was lucky to be able to have that experience and I hope to be able to do it again.
Still from Jupiter’s Legacy
CC: What advice to you have for composers just starting out, who would like to get into composer for TV & film?
SE: My biggest piece of advice would be to not shift your compositional style or musical sensibilities to sound like "film music." This industry needs new, creative, and diverse voices in order to keep the musical landscape evolving. Write music that feels genuine to who you are. Write music that pushes the boundaries and excites you. I think when we try to fit ourselves into these pre-made artistic boxes, we stop growing creatively. Allow yourself to explore and experiment and see where it takes you.
CC: What’s next for you? Do you have any upcoming projects that you’re able to talk about?
SE: I actually just finished a DLC for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which is called Siege of Paris, that’s coming at some point this summer. I'm excited about that one, because I definitely feel like I got to explore different sound world. Figuring out what Paris sound like in the year 845 was a unique undertaking. But it was really fun, I just gathered all of these instruments that are strewn across my room and sort scratched and banged on and a bunch of raw recording here. Then a ton of production in the computer to make it sound like a modern production but with ancient instruments.
So, that was a really good time. I'm currently working on this documentary feature film for Lucasfilm, which is directed by Gillian Jacobs. I work with her once before, which is about a robotics competition. That’s fun and quirky and unique in its own way.
I’m also doing another title for Assassin’s Creed, and I’m doing a short film for Universal, a short-animated film. And then I have season 3 of Step Up: High Water, which is on Starz. I did the second season of that, season 3 we're about to start diving into that soon. Quite a few irons in the fire.
