285 - The Music of Project Hail Mary, with Composer Daniel Pemberton

285 - The Music of Project Hail Mary, with Composer Daniel Pemberton

From Dolby Creator Talks by Dolby

March 26, 2026 · 52 min

About this episode

Composer Daniel Pemberton discusses his original score for 'Project Hail Mary' and the creative process behind it.

Composer Daniel Pemberton returns to Dolby Creator Talks to discuss his inventive new original score for “Project Hail Mary.” In conversation with guest host Jon Burlingame, Pemberton breaks down how he built a custom musical language for the film using everything from wooden blocks, body percussion, treated vocals, bowls of water, and even a squeaky water tap recorded on his iPhone. He also reflects on balancing the film’s vast sci-fi scale with its intimate emotional core, and how experimentation, failure, and discovery shaped one of his most ambitious scores yet. “Developing all your own sounds… I call it mixing your own paints. You've basically spend a long time mixing paint colors rather than buying it off the shelf. And that's how you get stuff that feels very original, like this. And I've got millions of these and most of them don't work. You spend ages when you experiment. When you have time to fail, you have time to create ... Hopefully there'll be something in there that'll work.” —Daniel Pemberton, Composer, “Project Hail Mary” Be sure to check out “Project Hail Mary” now in theaters in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®. Please subscribe to Dolby Creator Talks wherever…

People in this episode

Host: Jon Burlingame

Guest: Daniel Pemberton

Topics covered

  • music composition
  • film scoring
  • sci-fi film
  • creative process
  • sound design

Keywords

  • Daniel Pemberton
  • Project Hail Mary
  • film score
  • sound design
  • music composition

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Dolby

Books & works: Project Hail Mary

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