Pixar's 'Lifted', with new sound effects and music (HD reconstructed)

As a project a friend and I took on replacing the sound effects and music for the short Pixar movie 'Lifted'. He provided the wonderful sound effects, and I made the new music.

(This is the reconstructed, repuloaded HD version from the 2008 version.)

ABOUT THE MUSIC

My music for Pixar’s Lifted is based on both the tradition of classic cartoon music – like that of Looney Toons – and on the Leitmotiv-based programmatic compositions of Richard Strauss, in which the music tells and supports the story and expresses the underlying emotions or thoughts.

In the two and a half minutes of this little clip, the music develops from one single motive in terms of counterpoint, harmony and rhythm. This ‘main motive’ is downward-going, as a paradox of what the little alien is trying to achieve, namely lifting up the human. When the motive is played staccato, it gives the sense of it being mechanical, robot-like, unworldly and whimsical. When the light beam starts to pull, the atmosphere is mysterious, thick and intangible. The big instructor alien has a tuba/contrabassoon motive, which is a shortened and more decisive derivative of the main motive. In contrast, there is the ‘doubt motive’ (played by the oboe), which is also a fragment of the main one.

Concerning the harmonics, it is quite chromatic, but based on the keys a minor, g-sharp major, e minor, g major, f-sharp minor and d major; together they follow the notes of the main motive.

I hope the use of one single, throughout developing motive gives the listener a subconscious sense of musical coherency in this capricious little movie.