Michael Giacchino

Michael Giacchino (born October 10, 1967) is an American composer of music for film, television, and video games.

Giacchino grew up in Edgewater Park Township, New Jersey, and graduated from Holy Cross High School in Delran Township, New Jersey in 1986.

He holds dual American and Italian citizenship.

His brother Anthony Giacchino is a documentary filmmaker.

Giacchino began combining images and music at age 10, when he began creating stop-motion animation with homemade soundtracks in his basement.

While in high school, an art teacher who mentored Giacchino recommended to his parents that he attend the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Giacchino describes visiting the school with his parents thus:

"I thought, wow, this is fantastic. They actually have colleges like this? Where I can do the things that I am really interested in doing? That was amazing to me. I loved SVA. I loved the kind of freedom that it provided. It was kind of like this great experiment—okay, you're here because you like something. So let's see how much you like it. We're not going to regulate you too much. We're going to see how passionate and driven you are, and how much you want this thing."

Giacchino enrolled at SVA, majoring in film production and minoring in history.

During his final year at SVA, his instructor in film publicity announced an unpaid internship was available at Universal Pictures.

Giacchino, who was the only one interested, obtained the six-month position, which he filled at night while attending school during the day and working at Macy's to pay his rent.

He graduated from SVA in 1990 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, after which he took music classes at the Juilliard School, and then at UCLA.

When Giacchino's internship ended, Universal hired him, giving him a job upon graduation from college.

He later moved to Disney, and when Disney relocated to Los Angeles, Giacchino moved with them, working in publicity, while taking night classes in instrumentation and orchestration at UCLA.

His work for Disney had him interacting with the various personnel who worked in films, such as the producers who hired composers, so when a job at Disney Interactive opened for a producer, Giacchino obtained the job, thinking he could hire himself to write music for the games he produced.

Giacchino's composition work for Disney Interactive during the 16-bit era included the Sega Genesis game Gargoyles, the SNES game Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow and the various console versions of The Lion King.

However his first major composition was for the DreamWorks video game adaptation of the 1997 movie, The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

The video game was one of the first PlayStation (also on Sega Saturn) console titles to be recorded with an original live orchestral score.

Giacchino has since continued his relationship with DreamWorks which also included composing the score for the Small Soldiers video game in 1998, providing full orchestral scores for many of their popular videogames.

He also worked with Pandemic studios to create the theme for Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.

Giacchino's award-winning compositions covers the first four installments of the Medal of Honor series (Medal of Honor, Underground, Allied Assault and Frontline), Heroes: 2, and also the scores for several other World War II-related video games like Secret Weapons Over Normandy, Call of Duty and Call of Duty: Finest Hour.

Additionally, Giacchino composed themes for The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer, and co-wrote the theme of Black with composer Chris Tilton.

He also composed the score for Alias, which was based on the television series of the same name.

In 2001, J. J. Abrams, producer of the television series Alias, discovered Giacchino through his video game work and asked him to provide the new show's soundtrack.

The soundtrack featured a mix of full orchestral pieces frequently intermingled with upbeat electronic music, a departure from much of his previous work.

Giacchino would go on to provide the score for J. J. Abrams's 2004 television series Lost, creating an acclaimed score which employed a unique process of using spare pieces of a plane fuselage for percussion parts.

The score for Lost is also notable for a signature thematic motif: a brass fall-off at the end of certain themes.

Just like his counterpart Stu Phillips, he worked with the television show creator Abrams on his shows with his music scores while Abrams supplied the show's main themes on certain series such as Alias.

In 2004, Giacchino received his first big feature film commission.

In 2007, he returned to the Medal of Honor franchise as he composed the music for Medal of Honor: Airborne.

Giacchino's work on various video games led to his entrance into television.

In 2008 Giacchino wrote music for Turning Point: Fall of Liberty.

He has received many accolades for his work, including an Oscar for Up (2009), an Emmy for Lost (2004), and three Grammy Awards.

He is also known for making the score of the current Paramount Pictures logo since 2011/12.

Giacchino is known for his collaborations with directors J. J. Abrams, Brad Bird, Matt Reeves, Pete Docter, Colin Trevorrow, Jon Watts, Drew Goddard, The Wachowskis, Taika Waititi, and Thomas Bezucha.

His film scores include several films from the Mission: Impossible; Jurassic World, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Trek reboot series, eight Pixar Animation Studios films, multiple Disney films, Rogue One, The Batman; and several other films.

He also composed the score for the video game series Medal of Honor and Call of Duty and the television series Alias, Lost, and Fringe.

In 2018, he ventured into directing beginning with the Marvel Studios Disney+ special Werewolf by Night.

Giacchino was born in Riverside Township, New Jersey.

His father's ancestors were Italians, coming from Sicily, and his mother's ancestors emigrated from Abruzzo (in central Italy).