Joel McNeely

## External Links

Wikipedia

**Joel McNeely** is a composer for the show *The Orville.*

McNeely wrote music for the Season 1 episodes *About a Girl*, *If the Stars Should Appear*, *Krill*, *Into the Fold*, and *Mad Idolatry.* He returned in Season 2 to score the episodes *Home, Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes, Identity, Pt. 2*, and *The Road Not Taken*. He composed the Season 3 episodes *Mortality Paradox*, *Gently Falling Rain*, *Midnight Blue* and *Future Unknown*.

## Background

Joel McNeely is a composer and conductor with over 30 years in the Film and Television industry. Joel comes from a musical family and pursued an education in Music Composition and Performance.  After attending the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, Joel received a Bachelor of Music from The University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida and a Master of Composition from The Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

Joel’s filmography includes 76 credits as composer, orchestrator, or conductor on such work as *The Wonder Years, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles*, *Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Dark Angel, The Polar Express, Air Force One, A Million Ways to Die in the West, American Dad* andThe Orville*.* Joel has been nominated for multiple awards and has won a Primetime Grammy for
his work on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, an ASCAP Film and Television Award for *Air Force One*, and an IFMCA for The Orville.

As a conductor he worked with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

McNeely first worked with Seth MacFarlane on *American Dad*. MacFarlane requested McNeely to produce an album with him from the Great American Songbook, which became the 2011 album *Music is Better than Words*. The album was nominated for a Grammy, and the pair went on to work together for three more albums.

Joel continues to work on *American Dad.*

## The Orville

McNeely announced he was hired as a composer for the show in April, 2017, on his website. MacFarlane hyped the upcoming show on Twitter by highlighting McNeely's work: "Joel McNeely, [fellow composer] Bruce Broughton, and a 75-piece orchestra-- @TheOrville is gonna sound pretty good".

In an interview with *Variety*, McNeely commented: "Seth wants each show to be its own individual story, to think of it as scoring completely different movies from week to week." He added in a second interview with *Variety* that "[t]he score never references the comedy; Seth wants it always to be played straight."

### Composing the show

McNeely was given scripts of his episodes, but he later said that he paid little attention to them, preferring instead to examine its artwork for inspiration. A rough, temporary film of each episode was used as a framework to compose around.

McNeely felt challenged by The Orville, composing a unique "palette" for each episode, which meant that he started an entirely new score for each one to find its "voice." "Last night I worked eight hours and wrote 12 bars," he told MacFarlane one night during Season 2. He found the action sequences to be the most difficult kind of scene to score because of their length of time.

In Season 1 and Season 2, each episode's score took roughly three weeks to compose although an undisclosed Season 2 episode took five. McNeely was given far more time to compose for Season 3. As a result, the fastest he worked on an episode was five weeks - coincidentally the same amount of time the longest episode took in the first two seasons.

Each episode of Season 3 required about an hour's worth of music. His sheet music for the orchestra's score in a single episode would require a stack of binders about three feet tall.

### Awards

In 2018, McNeely, Broughton, John Debney, and Andrew Cottee collectively won Best Original Score for Television from the International Film Music Critics Association Awards for their music for Season 1 of The Orville. McNeely, Debney, and Cottee were nominated for the award again in 2020 for their work on Season 2.

In 2020, McNeely and Broughton won ASCAP Screen Music Awards for their work on the show.

## Interviews

* Planetary Union Network
* The SCL

## References

1. ↑ *News*. *JoelMcNeely.com*. April, 2017. Last accessed April 4, 2018.
2. ↑ @SethMacFarlane. "Joel McNeely, Bruce Broughton, and a 75-piece orchestra-- @TheOrville is gonna sound pretty good". *Twitter*. July 1, 2017.
3. ↑ Burlingame, Jon. "Seth MacFarlane’s ‘The Orville’ Gets Movie-Style Scoring From Emmy-Winning Composers". *Variety*. Sept. 7, 2017.
4. ↑ Burllingame, John. "Emmys 2018: The Orchestral Arms Race of TV’s Sci-Fi". *Variety*. June 4, 2018.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "The Orville Fan Podcast w/ Joel McNeely (27)". Planetary Union Network. Jan. 20, 2019.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Joel McNeely's Challenges of Scoring "The Orville: New Horizons" | Screening Q&A Clips". The SCL. June 26, 2023.
7. ↑ "IFMCA Award Nominations 2017". *IFMCA*. Feb. 8, 2018.
8. ↑ "IFMCA Award Winners 2017". *IFMCA*. Feb. 22, 2018.
9. ↑ International Film Music Critics Award (IFMCA). IMDB. Last accessed June 23, 2020.
10. ↑ @ASCAP. "Congrats to ASCAP board member Bruce Broughton & @JohnDebney on winning ASCAP Screen Music Awards for composing the music to @SethMacFarlane's @TheOrville Trophy  #ASCAPAwards". Twitter. June 23, 2020.