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www.postmagazine.com 6 POST SEPTEMBER 2015 COMPOSING FOR THE FOX HIT EMPIRE I was first approached to write the score for Empire before the pilot season of 2014. At the time, I literally had no idea what I was walking into other than "Lee Daniels and Danny Strong are doing a soap about the world of hip hop." Based on that description alone, I wondered whether they had the right phone number. I love hip hop, grew up with a lot of hip hop records (Straight Outta Compton, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best albums of all time), but I'm hardly known for it. Once I met with Lee, very early into his director's cut, the concept and rea- son why they called me became much clearer. Lee was adamant, not only that the score should juxtapose the hip hop in the show, but that it should under no circumstances be a "TV score." He wanted something cinematic and in his words, even operatic at times. Right from the beginning, we all knew that in order to pull off the whole idea, we would need a live orchestra. Rather than complicate the writing and delivery process, it actually made it a lot simpler and infinitely more enjoyable. Each episode begins with a spotting session. I'll usually sit down with Lee, Danny and [writer] Ilene Chaiken, as well as my music editor, our music super- visor, picture editor and sound effects crew. The purpose of all of those people in the room is to make a clear roadmap of where there should be music, where music could potentially clash with songs or sound effects, and just as impor- tantly, where the music should not be. Since Empire is so song intensive, with many on-camera performances, we often lock picture quite late into the week, as there are just so many moving parts to each episode. That means in reality that I tend to have around four days between spotting and recording to write an episode (sometimes less). As soon as the spotting session is done, I head to my studio, by which time my music editor has put up notes from the spotting session on an online spreadsheet that is shared by my whole crew. Organization is key when there's so little time. I start writing in either of my studios (one in my home and one in a building that also houses my crew), which are synced together via a server. My writing rigs consist of a number of Mac Pros networked together, running Pro Tools HD (both for sequencing and printing) and VE Pro for the sample template. Once a cue is completed, the MIDI goes to my orchestrators and copyists. The whole crew can instantly see the status of any cue online. By the time I'm reviewing the written scores, we're on the scoring stage (my poor orchestrators are very used to getting cues from me at 4am on the day of the session). That means having a copyist on the stage so that I can make changes in realtime if I need to (with such a short turnaround, there have also been situations where notes have come in from producers while we're in the middle of recording, which means making changes at the piano during a break and re-printing new parts for the orchestra). The clock hits 10 and we start recording, myself on the podium conduct- ing, my orchestration team and engineers in the booth relaying any additional notes. Each session is three hours long, and then it's straight off to the mix. My mix engineer will usually mix while my assistant is assembling the takes from the recording and sending him the edited Pro Tools sessions. The finished 5.1 stems are delivered straight to the dub stage, and I'm there for a playback with the producers at the end of the second day of the dub. Then we do it all again for the next episode! Working with such an incredibly talented creative team and crew makes it all not seem like work. My job is pret- ty much the best thing in the world — I get to watch movies all day and dream up music for them. That's fine by me. —BY FIL EISLER For more on Empire, turn to our "Primetime" column on page 12. BITS & PIECES LENOVO'S NEW THINKPADS INTEGRATE COLOR CALIBRATION TOOLS MORRISVILLE, NC — Last month, Lenovo introduced a new family of mobile workstations. The 15-inch ThinkPad P50 and 17-inch P70 are the first two re- leases in the line-up, and the company says they are designed to run the most demanding Independent Software Vendor applications. Lenovo has united its mobile workstations and towers under the "P Series." The ThinkPad P70 is loaded with up to 64GBs of DDR4 ECC memory and the ability to handle up to four storage devices and up to a terabyte of SSD storage, utilizing the latest PCIe technology for speeds up to five times faster than current SATA technology. Additionally, the ThinkPad P70 comes with two Intel Thunderbolt 3 ports for ultra-fast connectivity and a 4K UHD display or optional FHD touch. Lenovo's thinnest and lightest full-function mobile workstation yet, the Think- Pad P50 features a 15.6-inch UHD 4K display and is certified to run users' most requested ISV applications. Both machines are equipped with the new Intel Xeon Processor E3-1500M V.5 product family, and both feature Nvidia Quadro GPUs for high-end graphics capability. Lenovo's new FLEX (Fully Loaded Expe- rience) Performance Cooling system provides a dual-fan design that allows for cooler, quieter and faster performance. The P Series also comes with X-Rite Pantone color calibration, keeping colors accurate throughout the life of the product and protecting the customers' invest- ment. X-Rite also prompts the user to calibrate their system as scheduled. The user just closes the lid and in a matter of seconds, the screen is calibrated again. Users can also customize the calibrator, including setting the white point and gamma. The new ThinkPad P Series mobile workstations will be available starting in Q4 through Lenovo business partners and on www.lenovo. com. Pricing for the P50 be- gins at $1,599, and the P70 begins at $1,999. For more on "Color Cali- bration," turn to our feature on page 24. Fil Eisler (left) relies on Pro Tools HD and VE Pro running on Mac Pros to complete Empire's original score.