Today we’d like to introduce you to Truman McCaw.
Truman, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My screen-scoring journey started sitting on my carpet watching Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace on VHS. I credit a lot of my musical voice to the content I watched as a kid. Whether it was Lord of the Rings or High School Musical 2, I found myself drawn to the music and to the stories being told. Screen scoring only became a professional reality for me when I started scoring short films that friends and I were making as teenagers. Not only was it awesome to have custom music for our silly short films, I felt a sense of joy and confidence as a composer, unlike anything else before. I decided to pursue my higher education at Berklee College of Music in their newly branded “screen scoring” program. Berklee enlightened me to the many roles in the music department and gave me the skills to be a professional in whatever role I chose. The friends and colleagues I made at Berklee are my greatest resource today, and I am continually grateful for their help and guidance. Now, I am looking to work on projects that inspire young people the way Disney, DreamWorks, and so many others inspired me. No matter what the role is, I crave to work with a group of people who care about the project they work on and give their full effort to make it meaningful.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I couldn’t have asked for a better road to be on. I am unbelievably grateful to the people who have helped and guided me to get where I am today. I am so lucky to have two loving parents who want nothing else but to see their children succeed. I am also so grateful to have an incredible group of kind, loyal friends and an unbelievably supportive partner who makes pursuing my career possible. Every struggle I have faced, I have had people around me to support me and I couldn’t have asked for anything else.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I describe myself as a musical problem-solver. Whether it’s composing, assisting, troubleshooting, or editing, I always find myself drawn to solving problems. As a composer, I am constantly solving musical puzzles to give a scene more depth or drama. As an assistant, I am there to deal with any problem a composer has and to fix it quickly and adeptly. As a music editor, I am usually the first musical consultant on a project. Starting with creating temp music to take the place of to-be-composed music, all the way to the dub session, where the final music is placed into the film. In between, I am constantly working with the composer to fix issues when new cuts of the project arrive. A project I hold dear to my heart is an animated Star Wars fan film I worked on with composer Tyler Grow last year. The project is animated in the style of the television show Star Wars: The Clone Wars and follows Anakin and Obi-wan’s “Battle of the Heroes” on the planet Mustafar (sorry for nerding out). The film has been a huge passion project for all of us involved, and we are glad the Star Wars fan community has given it such praise.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
Thank you, VoyageLA, for the interview and for the recommendations by Ali Arshi and Mar Gimenez-Marin!
Contact Info:
- Website: trumanmccaw.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/mccaw.truman
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/truman-mccaw-5a857a208/
Image Credits
Andrew Choi
