SOUND
Music & Sound Design Team Creates Hardcore Emotion and Magic By Ca ro l Bada r acco Padge t t
P eople have a constant need to be entertained,” states Veigar Mar- geirsson, eliciting an immediate nod of agreement from his business partner, Brian Brasher. Brasher, an Atlanta resi- dent, serves as president of LA- based Pitch Hammer Music. Margeirsson, living in Iceland, is the company’s vice presi- dent, creative director, principal composer, and producer, overseeing a thick roster of the best composers and songwriters in the busi- ness. Their joint understanding of society’s full-throttle entertainment fixation, coupled with each man’s innate musical talents and industry backgrounds, have positioned Pitch Hammer as the go-to source for designing the musical emotion and sound in the movie trailers of today’s most acclaimed films, TV shows, video games, and other products. Brasher’s personal pedigree—as a guitarist and founding member of rock band Creed, no less—and Margeirsson’s 20+ years of music composition mean that, together, they deliver an irreplaceable musical recipe for enticing audiences worldwide to watch a film and turn it into a blockbuster.
“ It’s about building emotion and getting people excited— getting them to buy a ticket. ”
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Hammer, available through APM music. Other services in- clude music for video games, songs for sync, and their trade- marked cover song labels called Trailerized® and Vocalized®. No matter what music and sound they’re creating, though, it’s all about storytelling, Mar- geirsson notes. “Full-fledged movie trailers hit in the 2:30 ball- park and teaser trailers, like a mys- tery reveal, at :90,” he describes. “Plus, there will be multiple :15 trailers online. And what makes them all work is a story.
Veigar Margeirsson
Photo courtesy of Bernhard Kristinn
Brian Brasher
“Our job is to put our music and sound design to the visually inspiring experience that’s edited, but not to draw attention to our music—instead to take the visuals up to the next level. It’s about building emotion and getting people excited—getting them to buy a ticket.” He adds, “We need to inspire so that a movie has a good opening weekend, because the Rotten Tomatoes review can come out so fast, then social media, and it can be brutal.” Equally fast is the pace at which the Pitch Hammer team, under the operational guidance of teammates Jenn German, Laura Andrews, Ryan Andrews, and Reece Tennery, must work to custom-create and deliver its product. “Three composers and I might do 72 hours of work in 28 hours,” Margeirsson states. “There are extremely high expectations and millions at stake for these production companies. No one is allowed to screw up.” To make it all click, the Pitch Hammer crew’s work ethic is much like the raw emotion it creates: hardcore— and magical.
Photo courtesy of Pitter Productions Photography
Their work to date includes trailers for Marvel Studio’s Black Panther , HBO Max’s Game of Thrones , Warner Bros. Studio’s Joker , Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures’ Star Wars: The Last Jedi , Universal Pictures’ Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom , and a list that rolls on ad infinitum. Brasher grew up entrenched in the industry, playing music and studying its business side in college. And despite the fun of his early years with Creed, by 1997 he left behind the rock-star lifestyle to pursue a career in the music business. “I met someone at a label and got introduced to a production music library called Killer Tracks, owned by BMG at the time,” he says. “And this exposed me to the music licensing business for film and TV commercials.” It wasn’t long before Hollywood’s APMMusic, a leader in the production music library business, recruited Brasher to manage its Movie Trailer Music division. While pitching music to APM clients, he met Margeirsson in 2009, a classically trained composer and top creator of custom music scores for blockbuster movie marketing campaigns. “I’m a ‘rock music’ guy and I’m ear-trained, but Veigar is a well-trained musician, composer, and conduc-
tor. I was intimidated when I met him,” Brasher admits. “But it worked. We clicked and we did some cool creative stuff together.” Margeirsson says, “He’s strong where I’m weak and vice versa. For me, the music is easier than the business. But we have the same value system about how we treat people in the business. We’re very much in harmony that way, and that makes a great partnership.” So when Brasher told his employer at the time, APM President Adam Taylor, that he and Margeirsson wanted to set off on their own as a boutique trailer music company, Taylor gave his blessing. Pitch Hammer, as they named their venture, began with nothing more than a flash drive of tracks. But its founders quickly built out a composer and songwriter lineup to serve its upper-echelon entertainment industry clients. And all the while, APM’s Taylor has continued his support, asking Brasher and Margeirsson to build an addi- tional music catalog to service APM clients. That catalog, recently launched, is called Annihilation, *powered by Pitch Hammer. So while Brasher and Margeirsson operate Pitch Hammer as their hallmark boutique premium music label, they also offer Annihilation *powered by Pitch
pitchhammermusic.com | @pitchhammermusic @annihilation.by.pitchhammer | @apmmusic
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