Elysium Musical Composer Becomes A ‘Made’ Man

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Every Summer, movie goers around the globe anticipate being treated to an array of movie blockbuster experiences.  Some movies strike gold, and build potential billion dollar franchises and others tank leaving industry executives thinking “what the hell did we just sink a nine figure budget into?”

“Elysium,” starring Matt Damon and helmed by 2009’s “District 9: director Neill Blomkamp, has been one of this season’s highly anticipated summer releases.

I’m going to go off script here and just be me, and being me involves making obscure movie references. Have you ever seen the movie “Donnie Brasco,” starring Johnny Depp? Fantastic movie! It’s based on the true story of undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone and his infiltration into one of New York City’s crime families.  Pistone’s goal in the movie is to maneuver his way up the food chain within the crime family from mob associate, the lowest mafia rank indicating a person with mob ties or ‘a friend of mine,’ to a ‘made man,’ a person officially inducted into the mafia aka ‘a friend of ours.’ (For a quick rundown on this Mafioso terminology watch the video below.)

I make the “Donnie Brasco” reference, one because I recently re-watched the movie, and two because I find there to be similarities between how Lefty Ruggiero, played by Al Pacino, recruits Donnie Brasco, and how Blomkamp chooses Ryan Amon as “Elysium’s” musical composer.

The “Elysium” project consists of ‘made’ components. The cast: Matt Damon and Jodie Foster are both “made actors.”

Blomkamp, as previously mentioned, directed “District 9.” With a production budget of $30 million, “Distrct 9″ opened with a number one ranking at the box office, during the summer of ’09 and went on to gross $210 million worldwide.  A director that’s able to put together a sci-fi project with a summer release date and generate a 7-1 return on a production budget, by industry standards, merits ‘made guy’ status.

OK, so now who do you get to do the music for the project? Certainly you’d turn to a ‘made guy’ with regard to movie scoring to help compose the soul of the movie. Nope. Blomkamp, in an attempt to find a powerful and organic sound for “Elysium,” employed Amon, whose previous credits had primarily been composing music for movie trailers.

While Living in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Ryan received an email out of the blue from Blomkamp. The email consisted of one sentence, asking “is this you?” followed by a YouTube link to one of Ryan’s Trailers. A fan of Ryan’s had posted some of his work online and Blomkamp happened to come across it.

‘What a huge blessing, just completely out of nowhere,’ says Amon about the opportunity of a lifetime.

Coming into college, music had been a hobby for Amon. He grew up with classical training on the piano. Played the saxophone in his high school’s Jazz band. After initially attending college and double majoring in art and biology, Ryan began to realize his true passion.

“Something was shifting in me probably when I was 19 or 20 years old, where I started having more fun skipping class and picking up a guitar and writing a song,” Says Ryan.

He made the decision to drop out of his double major degree, and enroll in a two year music program at the McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul, Minnesota to pursue his dream of composing music scores for feature films.

Fast forward to the summer of 2013, and after his impressive work on Elysium, Ryan Amon can now be referred to as “a friend of ours.”

“Elysium” opened in theaters on Friday Aug. 9.

Reach reporter Mike Zepeda here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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