So, tomorrow, Show Dogs opens in theaters across the US and I had the awesome opportunity to be a part of my friend David Shipp’s orchestrating team and do orchestrations (and music prep) for this score composed by Heitor Pereira. And what that means is that I can now talk about this project. And, quite honestly, when you work on a project and want it to succeed and want to create more projects, part of the ‘job’ (to me at least) really is to talk about it and share your involvement with it to your ‘tribe’.

Show Dogs is a super fun, cute PG movie directed by Raja Gosnell. Raja directed The Smurfs, Scooby-Doo, Never Been Kissed, Big Momma’s House, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Your, Mine and Ours and Home Alone 3. But you KNOW his work as an editor as he edited Home Alone. Yep..He also was an editor on the 1980 Robin Williams movie Popeye (which he and I talked about in the studio as I used to play the soundtrack record all the time at home). We had some really fun conversations about Popeye, Scooby-Doo and I even talked to him about the ‘iconic’ scene in Home Alone (when Kevin is shaving and puts on after shaves and does the ‘hands to the face’ scream that now EVERY man does at least once in his life). He and I had a really good time talking while he was here (he even made a point to say that he really enjoyed our conversations).

Jeff D. Anderson with director Raja Gosnell at Ocean Way – Nashville during orchestra recording session for Show Dogs

But let’s get down to the music!!

The score was composed by a truly brilliant and passionate composer, Heitor Pereira. Despicable Me….That’s enough right there to be sure. That’s awesome and our family LOVES Despicable Me and quotes it a TON!!! Along with that he also did the other Despicable movies (2 and 3), Minions, Scooby-Doo, The Angry Birds Movie, The Smurfs, Curious George, Running the Sahara (Rick Eldridge produced who produced my first feature “Four Blood Moons”) and plenty more films.

BUT BUT BUT to me, one of the most emotional and powerful music moments he was a part of was ‘Dueling Guitars’ from August Rush. Heitor wrote this piece of music and performed it with Doug Smith. If you’ve seen August Rush, you’ll remember this moment…Oh man…it’s one of those moments.

If you haven’t seen the movie (spoiler alert), this is father and song meeting in a park for the first time serendipitously, but they have NO IDEA they are father and song. They just share this powerful musical moment together. Oh man…it’s so good! Here’s the clip:

 

So all that that to say, when my good friend David Shipps (who is lead orchestrator on this and a TON of films, video games, tv shows) asked if I’d be involved in Show Dogs, it was an absolute YES!!! Thank you again David!!!

I’m sometimes overly redundantly redundant, and I’m certainly going to do that now. I do not EVER want to overstate my involvement in a project. (overstatement happens a good bit in the movie industry) My role was two fold on this project. Music Preparation and Orchestration. Music preparation involves taking files from Heitor’s team and setting up Pro Tools sessions and Finale files. And then David also asked me to orchestrate on this film.

Heitor has worked on a LOT of high profile films as a composer but also as a musician (guitar on Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Angels & Demons, Black Hawk Down, Mission:Impossible II, As Good as It Gets and Pearl Harbor to just name a few). Spending the couple of days here at Ocean Way with him recording his music, I’ve just got to say…it was an absolute joy. Pure Joy. He is a passionate musician, but that passion ALWAYS poured out in such a gracious way with everyone around. Every conversation and interaction with the musicians and team was in a way that made you WANT to give your best. Inspiring. I know why folks want to hire him as a composer and why folks enjoy working with him. Inspiring and passionate music. Even when it is for talking dogs (Ludacris, Shaquille O’Neal, Alan Cumming, Stanley Tucci, RuPaul). No question, it was an absolute honor to be able to work on the music for this film.

Jeff D. Anderson with composer Heitor Pereira at Ocean Way – Nashville during orchestra recording session for Show Dogs (Yes Heitor does have a little bit of fun/crazy in him)

 

Credit where credit is due:
Heitor Pereira composer, Alan Umstead – Nashville Music Scoring contractor/concertmaster, David Shipps lead orchestrator and team leader, Rob Adams orchestrator and music prep, Lee Marcum music prep, Nick Spezia score recording engineer, Jasper LeMaster recordist (Pro Tools guru), and Emily Joseph additional arrangements and programming.

 

Show Dogs opens Friday, May 18th, 2018!