Bear McCreary Helps the Nerd Steal Christmas

BEAR MCCREARY HELPS THE NERD STEAL CHRISTMAS

ANGRY VIDEO GAME NERD’S CHRISTMAS SPECIAL FEATURES ORIGINAL MUSIC BY BEAR MCCREARY

(Los Angeles, CA – December 16, 2010) Hot off the airing of the season finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead, film, television and video game composer Bear McCreary’s latest project is a gift to the fans. Angry Video Game Nerd’s Christmas episode, How the Nerd Stole Christmas is viewable at http://www.cinemassacre.com/2010/12/08/avgn-episode-97-christmas-special-2010/

“Because I’m such a huge fan of the Angry Video Game Nerd,” described McCreary, “I thought that the least I could do was pitch in some music and help him out on one of his videos. However, I never really thought we would end up with something as cinematic, narrative and funny as we would end up with.”

“I needed a score for this one that was very different than the others,” said James Rolfe aka The Angry Video Game Nerd. Rolfe reviews really old, not-so-classic video games on his popular site. The idea for the Christmas episode was to create a take on Chuck Jones’ classic animated version of the Dr. Seuss story How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In How The Nerd Stole Christmas, the nerd steals all of the new video games and replaces with them with the, well, crappier video games from his childhood.

“This whole thing sounded like a lot of fun, so I dove in,” said McCreary. “I had a blast with the classic video game sounds in this score. I’ve had projects with 8-bit music, but few opportunities to mix these sounds together with live, orchestral music. The results were often surprisingly effective.”

In addition to mixing in the sounds of classic video games, McCreary incorporated a new arrangement of the classic song “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” with lyrics written by the Angry Video Game Nerd. Doug Lacy. He also incorporated other holiday references, as Bear describes:

I even tucked several musical quotations into the score itself, including a Christmas classic, ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies’ by Tchaikovsky. I used this quote while The Nerd snuck into the village of Gameville to steal games. However, when he descends down the chimney, James added a well-known sound effect from Super Mario Bros. Taking that reference to its next logical level, I scored the following scene with a quotation of the underground music from Super Mario Bros, combining it with ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies!’

Bear McCreary was among a handful of select protégés of late film music legend Elmer Bernstein and is a classically trained composer with degrees in Composition and Recording Arts from the prestigious USC Thornton School of Music. At the age of 24, Bear McCreary was launched into pop culture with his score to Battlestar Galactica, “the most innovative music on TV today” (Variety). Io9.com declared Bear McCreary one of the Ten Best Science Fiction Composers of all time, the only composer under 50 on the list, (he is now 30), and the only one recognized for work in television.
McCreary earned his first Emmy© nomination for his original theme music for Human Target. The series featured the largest group of musicians to play on a television series, according to Variety. McCreary’s latest project is The Walking Dead — the runaway hit of the 2010-2011 television season — airing on AMC.
Next up for McCreary is The Cape, which begins airing January 9, 2011 on NBC. In addition to his work for television, McCreary’s credits include the video games SOCOM 4, Dark Void and Dark Void Zero, and the films Step Up 3D and Wrong Turn 2.

To read Bear’s in-depth blog entry about the creation of the music, and for a free download of the music, visit http://www.bearmccreary.com/blog/?p=5863