I just wanted to invite you to check out this month's episode of Streamers and Punches. It includes an interview with composer/orchestrator/conductor Conrad Pope, who was the orchestrator and conductor of the new Hobbit film.
Fantastic interview. I'm surprised this hasn't gotten any comments. It's a great look into the modern scoring process and I particularly liked Conrad's comments on where he'd like to see it go in the future.
Thanks, Mike. Glad you liked it. I was the disembodied producer voice you might have heard on a couple of occasions.
One thing I thought was pretty interesting was the way he adopts technology. He's still writing in a more-or-less traditional manner. Dots-and-lines on a staff. But for an (ahem) experienced guy like him, he uses a lot of technology around that to work with other people. We do the show over Skype. I live in Orlando, one host lives in Boca Raton, another lives in Flint, MI, and Conrad was joining us from L.A. He told us that they did all their work over the Internet, even the spotting. I know that's not exactly the most bleeding edge tech anymore, but I thought it was cool because of the people embracing it.