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PHINEAS AND FERB Phineas and Ferb are all about making the most of their summer vacation. This year, they’re taking it to a whole new dimension, by crossing over to a feature-length produc- tion. Danny Jacob, music composer on Dis- ney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension, created a theatrical score that stays true to the quirkiness of the Phineas and FerbTV series.“It starts out feel- ing kind of like the TV show, but then it’s like The Wizard of Oz, once Dorothy is in Oz, everything changes,” explains Jacob. “All of the sudden, it really feels like you’re in a movie. It’s more intense.” Working on the past three seasons of Phineas and Ferb has prepared Danny Jacob for the feature length. He re-worked existing themes from the TV show as well as created new ones.“All the characters have their own themes. Like when Candice comes, there’s always that tipping your hat to the wicked witch when she wants to bust her brothers. They’re just bigger, more fleshed out be- cause there’s more time.With the movie, I started from the beginning but then as I re- ally got into it I started to develop all these other themes, new themes. It’s good to start from the beginning at first, and then when you’ve really been working at it and you’re doing your best work, you go back and re- visit the beginning. As you’re working you come up with some new stuff that you want to hint at in the beginning.” Being a music fan, Jacob looked to other composers for inspiration for character themes.“When I first started scoring for the first episode, I came up with themes for each of the characters. I looked at Perry and thought, that’s James Bond. So I started re- visiting the great composers of James Bond, like John Barry and David Arnold. I listened to Austin Powers and all the wonderful com- posers from that genre. I would incorporate all of that. For Dr. Doofenshmirtz (the show’s nemesis), I play him straight. I would listen to Beethoven, those Germanic roman- tic minor-chords and Danny Elfman. I treat Dr. Doofenshmirtz very seriously even though he always screws up. He always puts a self-destructive button in a device.What makes the movie so great is that Dr. Doofenshmirtz in the other dimension actu- ally succeeds. He’s more evil. He doesn’t screw up.And I got to really score him scary, using lots of French horns and cellos.” The longer format allowed for more time and money for the music. “We had a bigger budget so we were able to use more live musicians, and produce it in big studios,” says Jacob. “For the TV show, it’s usually always or- chestral samples, but occa- sionally we’ll use live musi- cians for higher priority episodes, for example, the episode ‘The Longest Day of Summer’ we got to use a live horn section. “I always have to make it sound great with all my or- chestral samples. On the movie I was able to use J.A.C Redford, a very well respected orchestrator who worked on Avatar. He took my MIDI files and wrote the parts out for the musicians. During the ses- sion, he conducted the mu- sicians, while Jay Stutler,VP of music for Walt Disney Television Animation, and I sat in the booth and made comments. J.A.C then made changes with the musicians. It was a wonder- ful process.” When writing in his stu- dio, Jacob reaches for the guitar first. “For me, if I’m writing songs, I’m going to have a guitar in my hands. My composing comes from being a guitar player, even though I use a keyboard to trigger my samples. I star t with the guitar for creativ- ity. I usually need to have a melody or some germ of a song. Once I play some- thing I like on the guitar, I’ll use a piano and program it www.postmagazine.com July 2011 • Post 41 Composer Danny Jacob gave each character in the movie their own musical theme. AUDIO Phineas and Ferb