Yes, they were written way ahead of time. We started out by reading the script, we wrote the songs, and we worked with the scriptwriter and the producers, making adjustments in the songs till we got everything to fit together with the characters and what they wanted. Then you go off and make demos of the songs with synthesizers and demo singers so they can animate to that, drawing to the people moving their mouths, and we came back later. The actors we hired were singing over our synth demo tracks, and we added the orchestra. Yes, I think it s a terrific genre.
Animation is perfect for a composer.
You can be very imaginative and do a lot of stuff with it. It s a lot of fun, actually. You ve also done a lot for television, amazing scores like One Against the Wind and Into Thin Air . Obviously the biggest difference is time and money. The budgets are smaller in television, with usually less time.