Ex-Valley composer scores for video games

Chance Thomas makes his musical mark on 'Avatar: The Game.'

By Rick Bentley / The Fresno Bee

11/20/09 17:29:12

Gamers who navigate their way through the new video game based on James Cameron's "Avatar" will hear the musical works of former Oakhurst resident Chance Thomas.

He composed 267 minutes and 49 seconds of original music for "Avatar: The Game," which will be released Tuesday for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.

"Film composer James Horner met with me during the development of the game score to share his vision of the film music. Although this seems an obvious step to help align the aesthetic of the film and game scores, it is so rare as to be practically nonexistent in our industry," Thomas says.

Thomas is no stranger to the video-game world. During the 13 years he lived in Oakhurst, he composed music for the "King Kong," "The Realm," "The Haunted Mansion," "Bunny Luv" and "Lord of The Rings" video games. He moved to Utah two years ago to study music at Brigham Young University, specializing in recording engineering and production.

Part of the "Avatar" video game was scored in Los Angeles at the 20th Century Fox Newman Scoring Stage with musicians from the Hollywood Symphony. Another part of the score was recorded at Bastyr Chapel in Seattle with the Northwest Sinfonia.

Here's what Chance has to say about working on the new game:

Question: Can you describe the tone you took for the music?

Answer: The world of Avatar takes place on a lush, tropical alien planet. It's inhabited by a native, tribal species called the Na'vi. The conflict is set up when the RDA -- an industrial-military consortium from Earth -- shows up and starts mining operations on the planet. To underscore the Na'vi and their world, I took a tribal tone mixed with synthetic elements. For the RDA, I went with traditional Western film orchestra and massive drums, also mixed with some synthetic elements

How long did it take you?

I began working on the score May 9 and delivered the final round of edited masters on Sept. 9. Since the score is interactive, most of the levels in the game required four interchangeable layers of music. It's a big game world anyway, but adding the fact that you can play the entire game as either race, the size of the score became formidable.

Did you watch footage of the game to create music to fit the scene?

The entire project was shrouded in secrecy. Security was tighter than I've ever seen for any entertainment development. Ubisoft actually had to bring me up to Montreal to play the game. And they sent me home with some screen shots and a game script. That's all I had to go on for the first couple of months. After that, they finally started to send over a very limited amount of rough footage.

Are you a video-game player?

I'm a casual gamer who's absolutely passionate about video game music and sound.

Did you get to hear the film's original score?

Yes. About halfway through the project, I met with the film's composer, James Horner. This was a request I had made at the very beginning of the project so that I could get the aesthetics lined up between the game and the film score.