Composer Andrew Lockington freely admits he is a luddite. He carries around a folio
and writes notation the old-fashioned way. So, when he was asked to score another
film for Brad Peyton with whom he had worked with on the music for Rampage and
San Andreas, his expectation was it would be “epic.”
Epic is one thing that is Lockington’s score certainly is. Atlas, starring Jennifer Lopez,
Simu Liu, Mark Strong, and Sterling K. Brown is the story of a woman who carries a
deep distrust of artificial intelligence after synthetic lifeforms rebelled and became
terrorists. Yet, to survive, Atlas (Lopez) must learn to trust an artificial intelligence, Smith (Gregory James Cohan). Andrew Lockington speaks with InSession Film about finding the humanity in Atlas and
Smith.
Nadine Whitney: Let’s start from the beginning. You’ve worked with Brad [Peyton] before. Is this your third piece together?
Andrew Lockington: It’s our third big film. It’s our eighth project together.
NW: Okay, so you and Brad must have a very specific communication style now; when he gives you something, he just says, ‘Okay, Andrew, make it epic.’ Is this something he does? [Laughs].
AL: Yes, it is. We have a shorthand after working together for so long. There’s a lot of trust, which is amazing because it allows me to go and try some things musically that maybe with a new director you might not. I have that kind of flexibility, but with the trust, I can try really off-the-wall ideas, which is fantastic. It also means if they don’t work, I’m not going to get fired. So, we have the chance to try things and experiment a little, which is how you end up going outside your box and doing something you haven’t done before.
NW: Well, I was listening to your score and all your scores last night. So, you’ve been in my dreams as such, but I was specifically listening to the score of Atlas because it is germane, of course, to our interview. And I was interested because when I was watching the film. One of the things that happens in the film is that Atlas herself is interested in classical music. She’s listening to Baroque music. But your score is very much not Baroque, with the exception of the main themes, which use human voices. Otherwise, the score is very heavily orchestrated.
The music doesn’t have a sense of that period that the character herself was interested in. When you were looking at the script, were you thinking, ‘Could I put what Atlas herself likes in it?’ Or were you just thinking, ‘I just need this to be propulsive and strong and not quite action-oriented because it’s not that obvious, but just very, very intense.
AL: Yeah. When Brad and I first started talking about the music for Atlas many years ago, really before the script was finalized, well before production. It was obvious that there was a lot of technology already in the film, and the classical music references were written into the script and were really important as her escape, but I was trying to find a way for the music to be as uniquely human as possible. And especially in this day and age, when AI is getting closer and closer, and it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference. What would be some musical element that would feel profoundly human and something that couldn’t be replicated?
So that was really the focus of the score and trying to come up with something that was uniquely human and just a sound that was as far away from the technology as possible. And I did think about the classical idea. I think, maybe subconsciously, the fact that Smith [Gregory James Cohan] ‘s theme is solo, very minimalist piano, maybe influenced that. I hadn’t thought of that before, but quite possibly, that is a connection. But yeah, so much of the score, for me, is the most important part of the score, which is the humanity and the emotional connection between Smith and Atlas.
NW: I think that that’s captured beautifully in the score because I think that a lot of science fiction films really push heavily on synthesized aspects. This score doesn’t have massive amounts of synthesizers at all. I don’t believe I heard one because you have [conductor] Matt Dunkley doing the orchestration, and it is all orchestra. It’s strings, and it’s very human. So, I think that you have made a really interesting decision in your composition to keep it almost universal without pushing it so far into this kind of dystopian future thing where we can’t understand humanity.
AL: That’s a good observation, actually. And it’s interesting because there are actually electronics nestled in with the orchestra. They’re hidden, almost like they’re making the orchestra more powerful, but they’re trying not to be noticed. They’re trying to be more organic. Initially, I thought about what Smith would sound like.
Smith spends so much time trying to be aligned with Atlas and be more human than robot. He’s trying to convince her, in my mind, that he isn’t a robot. So, for his musical theme to be something out of a 1960s Batman computer sound or Max Headroom or something like that didn’t really make sense because I think the technology and the computer elements are already so well represented visually.
It was a conscious choice, and I think about Siri. Or Alexa and all these AI assistants that we already have. They don’t sound computer-generated; they sound more and more human all the time. So, it felt like it was more important, in order for them to actually have an honest relationship and for the musical themes to feel very human, even though one of them represents an AI.
NW: I’ve actually never used Siri or Alexa, so I have no idea what they sound like.
AL: You’re the first person I’ve met…I don’t either. I’m so suspicious of it listening to me all the time. I’ve turned it off, and I just don’t want it in my life.
NW: No, I’m quite happy to type instructions if necessary. [Laughs].
AL: You and I are so alike that way. That’s so funny! In that sense, I can understand why Atlas is so suspicious, and I’m the same way. I like keeping tasks as human as possible.
NW: Oh, so do I. I still write notes on paper. And I imagine that when you’re writing scores, you use paper sometimes.
AL: It’s so funny you say that because it’s so two things. First, I have a paper calendar, spiral notebooks, and tons of other things. I love my black wing pencils and pencil sharpeners. I’m always using actual tactile writing in instruments, and I have a book of manuscript paper that I’ve had for years where I write all of my themes, and I hum them in my head, and then I write them down on the staff. So, I am clinging to the human elements of what we do as much as I can, as long as I can.
Gosh, I sure hope there’s a good to it to balance all our fears of AI. When this film began, when we started talking about it, five or six years ago, and there was no talk of AI in this way, this was pure science fiction. It’s incredible how, in the last few years, it’s become a topic that is much closer to reality than it was then.
NW: Well, people like myself, and I imagine yourself, to an extent, as anybody whose job is in the arts. We are fundamentally being told we can be replaced, and that is something that we have to bristle against. To say, ‘Well, actually, no, my specific style of writing is never going to be able to be replicated because the human element is essential.’
AL: It’s funny, even knowing that it comes from a human source as it’s natural. Isn’t that all the difference? It’s amazing.
If I find a beautiful rock on the beach or a piece of sea glass, that’s fascinating to me because of the history that’s behind it and all the circumstances that led to that being so beautiful. If a replicator like in Star Wars just creates a piece of sea glass, just because it doesn’t have that history, it doesn’t have the same value to me. So, I wonder if society will struggle with that. If people care about the history behind writing or art or music, they will separate and go a different path than the people who don’t care, the people who are just happy with something that looks old and real but doesn’t have that history.
NW: I don’t know. I think the character of Atlas herself is fascinating because what happens in the film is that Atlas causes Harlan (Simu Liu) to become sentient out of a very basic human emotion, which is jealousy. And she blames herself so intensely for what happened. Her distrust of AI doesn’t really come specifically from distrusting her brother, but from distrusting what humans themselves can do with AI.
AL: Absolutely. And it actually makes me think a little bit; I remember hearing last year that AI was progressing so much faster than anyone had imagined. It was exponentially faster, and it was very much related to when chat GPT became this very trendy thing that so many people were inputting essays and ideas and asking questions. In fact, in our curiosity, we were creating this thing that we so feared. And in fact, it was accelerated because of the amount of input it was getting from people using it.
I think Atlas does that in the film; she actually creates her nemesis, like you said, out of jealousy and out of trying to be loved by her mother. So, it’s interesting how we can sometimes be our own worst enemy. And when you think about it, we’re fearing something in AI that we’ve created. So, in that sense, it is similar. I mean, Atlas is a very fun film, but in fact, the underlying themes are very relevant.
NW: I think they’re extremely relevant. It’s just fascinating because I think everyone is suspicious, but at some point, we are all being scraped. So, what do we do now? How do we live with this thing that we created? How do you feel as a composer when you’re putting these ideas down? Do you ever feel that ‘I’m Andrew Lockington, and someday somebody is just going to copy me, and it might not be human?’
AL: I think that’s probably inevitable, but the parts of music that fascinate me really affect me emotionally. I can’t put my finger on what they are. I can’t sit down and say, ‘I’m going to create something really moving today.’ I can sit down and approximate something, but there is a magic, a secret sauce that comes from the ether. You find the diamond every once in a while, or the gemstone, and it just happens. I often think of writing with two sides of my brain and then my heart. And I can write something that’s very kinetic and action-like. And I can write something that is emotional. And, sometimes, something just kind of comes out. Often, it’s an emotional life event, or something will happen that bypasses my consciousness and my brain entirely, and it just sort of shows up and comes out. I’m suddenly transcribing something that I don’t really know where it came from.
I guess, to me, that’s the part that’s furthest away from being replicated because I can’t replicate it. I can’t know when that’ll happen. You must find that, Nadine, sometimes in your writing, you have magical moments where you write something spectacular. It’s much greater than the sum of its parts.
I think that’s the part that hopefully will always be valuable, that people will want to know that something came from a human, that there’s a story behind it, that there’s aches and pains or joy or life experience that went into the art. That’s my dream anyway. I’m hoping that’s the case.
NW: Yes, there is something essentially human. My understanding of something, your understanding of something, comes from basic emotions and connection. We still, I think, use our history and our influences. Who are some of your heroes and heroines in music?
AL: I try to listen to a ton of music from all over the world. On Atlas, there was some influence from Ligeti. One of the producers of the film took me to the Hollywood Bowl in L.A to see a live performance of 2001: A Space Odyssey. That score uses a couple of Ligeti pieces and woodwinds texturally instead of melodically.
And that had a big influence on the score for Atlas, actually. It made me think, ‘Oh, that’s a great idea, especially with all the sound effects. There’s a lot of sound effects. The woodwind idea, that range became a texture I could play with that would be out of the frequency range of Smith’s walking, or the sound of the planet, or explosions, things like that.
Early on in my life, I was very influenced by film music. The Spielberg, the Cameron films, Ridley Scott. Those were all interesting to me, and musically, they had a certain style. But it’s fascinating that as much as I know that, that style lives in me, and my music pays homage to it in films like Atlas. The audience has evolved so much since then. I think we’re much more sophisticated as an audience. I’m always very conscious of not wanting to narrate emotions but instead, create an environment and a musical palette where the audience can feel their own emotions. And different films have that ability to different degrees, but that’s something I’m very conscious of.
NW: I think the perfect balance with any score for a film is to know it’s there but not to know it’s there.
AL: No, I so agree. That’s a great point.
NW: I often will come across a score, and I would just think, ‘Oh, would you shut up?’ I want to experience these emotions myself. Please don’t tell me what to think. There are some scores that say, ‘Here is the time when you feel sad.’ And I don’t think that your score did that. It wasn’t a character on its own. It was there to support the characters. And that is a delicate balance that some composers just don’t get right at all.
AL: Well, I’m so happy you said that because that is always a very conscious thing [for me]. We’re a few weeks into the release, so here’s a spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t seen it. But, in the end, when there’s the Smith and Atlas goodbye, that was a scene that was really important to me. The music isn’t about death.
It isn’t about mourning at that point. I really thought of the scene as my grandparents before they passed; what are all the things I wish I’d said to them to say what they meant to me? How would I have addressed them? What would I have said? I wouldn’t have said, ‘I’m so sad you’re passing.’ I would have said, ‘This is how you’ve changed me. This is how you’ve affected me.’ And I would have tried to speak to them in a way that paid respect to them.
Atlas, when she is saying goodbye to Smith, instead of it being, ‘I’m so sad.’ It’s, ‘I respect you now. I want you to know that I’m opening up to you because you’ve earned that respect, and I care about you.’ And that, to me, was so much more important than, ‘You’re dying.’ I think if the audience feels sadness with that, I wanted it to be because the music reflected what they were going to lose, but they came to the conclusion of that loss on their own.
It’s always a very conscious thing. Another moment where that same theme plays is when Atlas watches the archived video of her mother giving a lecture about the possibilities of AI; it is obviously long before the revolution and the war. But I use that same theme there. And as I said to Brad, it’s a great opportunity to use it because, in that moment, it’s the mother and all of her optimism about what AI can be. And at that moment, Atlas is watching it with disdain for her mother’s feelings.
So, to me, that was sort of an opportunity. We haven’t earned that theme, even remotely, but if I put that theme in the lecture, then we can hear it, and Atlas can respond to it in a very polarized way to the evolution she makes at the end of the film, where it actually does represent how she feels. But it was very important, and I was so determined. It’s stating that if we’re using this music here, the minute she pauses it, it has to stop because the audience can never think that this music is reflecting how Atlas feels about it at that point. We just haven’t earned that even remotely.
NW: Well, I’m getting the wind up here. I wanted to say thank you for the score. It was one of the most transcendent bits in the film. I think you did an excellent job. So you are a genius. You won’t be replicated. Don’t worry!
AL: Thank you. You’ve brought up some really good points, especially about classical music. It’s interesting to look at it based on your observation, and I’m realizing that [influence] subconsciously wormed its way into my approach. So, thank you for bringing that up. And, hopefully, it was just the fact that happened, and I wasn’t aware of it. Maybe that puts us one step further away from being taken over by AI!
Atlas is streaming on Netflix.
