Musique Fantastique

Interview with Composer Gareth Coker on Scoring ARK: The Animated Series

Interview by Randall D. Larson

An animated adaptation of the hit video game ARK: Survival Evolved and featuring a voice cast that includes Michelle Yeoh, Russell Crowe, Gerard Butler, David Tennant, Jeffrey Wright, Elliot Page & Vin Diesel. ARK: THE ANIMATED SERIES is a sweeping saga spanning eons of human history. When 21st-century paleontologist Helena Walker (Madeleine Madden) finds herself resurrected on a mysterious primeval island populated by prehistoric beasts, she must learn to survive with new allies from throughout time while trying to uncover the true nature of their strange new world. 

 Lakeshore Records has released ARK: THE ANIMATED SERIES, Volume 1—Original Series Soundtrack with original music by LA-based British composer and two-time Ivor Novello Award-winner Gareth Coker (Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Halo Infinite, Immortals Fenyx Rising, and all of the music for the game ARK: Survival Ascended, basis for ARK: The Animated Series). Coker’s soaring orchestral score – recorded by an orchestra of up to 80 of London’s finest session musicians at Abbey Road Studio One – augments the action and drama to the star-packed animated series.   

Notes Coker: “ARK: THE ANIMATED SERIES has been a labor of love ever since the idea was first introduced to me by the game’s creators, Jeremy Steiglitz and Jesse Rapczak. I’ve immensely enjoyed building ARK’s musical landscape across the game and its several expansions. The chance to add further to it through a different lens was an unbelievable opportunity and a privilege to be the composer bringing their transmedia vision to life, from scoring both the show and the game. The most striking feature of the show is that it is character-driven. That allowed me a huge canvas for thematic development, which was encouraged further by the direction of wanting the show to have a score that wears its heart on its sleeve. ARK has never been shy with its music, and the Animated Series is no different. The show has themes and melodies that abound, with the power that our fanbase has come to expect, but within this show, there is also a more intimate side they have rarely heard before.”

 ARK: THE ANIMATED SERIES is streaming now on Paramount+ in the US and Canada (and in international markets beginning April 19). Seven new episodes will debut in Part Two of the season later. 

Q: What were your initial thoughts about transitioning the video game musically into an animated series?

Gareth Coker: I started working on the game back in 2015, and it’s still going. They’re still releasing new content for it; I feel like it’s every couple of months. So, when it first came into my inbox, I was pitching for the project, and they’d just sent me the very first trailer of the game. Still, they had no music behind it, and all I saw were a bunch of humans, dinosaurs, and a few other things. I’m wondering why all these creatures are together, and it doesn’t matter – it was just a very epic montage of action, and they said, please score it, and I’m, like, okay. What do I need to capture here? The first thing that I didn’t want to do was to have it sound like JURASSIC PARK – and it’s not because I don’t like the JURASSIC PARK score; it’s that I don’t want to sound like a B-version or a C-version of John Williams! No matter how hard I try, it will still be a much inferior version. 

The other thing I noticed, and it’s been proven over the years, is that ARK is a very community-driven game. I’m going to back up a bit: In the game, you wake up on an island, and you don’t know why you are there, and you don’t know why you are there with all of these creatures! The plot of the game is that you have to survive for as long as possible to uncover why you are there, and that is gradually revealed through story beats in the game. You can do this by yourself, but it’s much easier if you team up with other people to do it, so you create tribes and communities, and eventually, there are factions that fight each other. It becomes quite a very involved gate in terms of the amount of people who can interact with each other, which is why it’s so incredibly popular.

And the thing I’ve noticed about the community over the years is that, in the game, it has a positive sense of adventure. We’re in a time, like right now, in film and TV and games, where I feel like, a lot of it, is “let’s have another dark, gritty adventure movie where our heroes save the world, but it’s still all dark and gritty,” and I wanted to avoid all of that, as well, in the main theme. So what I wrote for the trailer, which was originally my pitch, was something that captured all of that. My version one of the pitch ended up being the main theme. And when your pitch is the main theme, you’ll get to do the rest of the game.

Q: What prompted the animated version of Ark?

Gareth Coker: The first I heard about it was in 2019. I’d never worked in TV before, and I was so skeptical because they’re a team with big ideas. This franchise has grossed over a billion dollars now. It’s huge. But honestly, I didn’t believe they could turn it into a TV show because they had never made one before, and the mechanisms to make a TV show are entirely different. So the first I heard about it was in 2019, and I was, like, I’ll believe it when I see it – if you need music for it, contact me when it’s ready. And then, I think it was in October during the pandemic that they’d made some head ground on it and sent me the Dropbox of scripts. And I’m going, okay, this might actually be real. Then they sent me the pilot episode, which was fully animated, and then they showed me the cast – which, if you’ve seen the cast for the show, it’s absolutely insane! My only thought behind why they were able to get such a cast was that no one was working during the pandemic, and to be a voice actor, you just need to have room to record! 

So, then, it was, “Okay, I guess we’re doing this for real!” One of the things that the two CEOs of Studio Wildcard, who make the game, retained the creative control of the TV show, which meant that I was the only person ever considered for the job. Despite my lack of experience in making TV music, it is a linear way of scoring, and one of my pet peeves about the entertainment industry, in general, is this weird stigma that game composers can’t do linear entertainment, whether TV or film. The game composer is often never considered for the TV show or movie. It’s very strange to me because we’re very familiar – moreso than anyone else – with the material, and especially in this case, I’d already been working on ARK for five years. I’ve built the musical vocabulary and done a lot of the themes, so it only made sense to the showrunners that I do the TV show. 

Now, I will admit there was a definite learning curve to do animation. My goodness! I was not ready for how tightly synced everything has to be because there really aren’t new edits in animation. You get the cut, and that’s it because it’s too expensive to re-do the animation. After all, this was all done by hand. Some VFX is done with computers, but the animation was done by hand, and those studios charge by the second. So, what I got was what I had to work with. If you’ve seen the show, it’s pretty much wall-to-wall music, which isn’t uncommon in animation because the music often requires a lot of heavy lifting because you can’t go as far with the expressions on the faces.  So that was a real battle because, in games, you have the freedom – you don’t have to worry about timing because the player dictates the timing. That’s a different kind of puzzle, whereas this was like, this is the timing and what you have to work with. It took me about two months to score the pilot episode, which is 45 minutes. But it’s not just scoring the episode; it’s coming up with themes that I will be working on for the whole show. But then, when I got to the final episode, I wouldn’t say I found it easy, but it was a lot easier than when I started. But I think, overall, coming from the game to the TV show, it just made sense for the showrunners to have me involved, and that’s now been proven that the show is out because it’s cool to see fans recognize what I’ve taken from the game and put into the TV series, and also being able to give them new material as well.  

Q: What was the difference between the video game and the animated TV series, as you regarded it sonically?

Gareth Coker: We wanted some overlap between the game and the show. However, the game doesn’t really have much quiet, intimate, or emotional music. The music, as it exists in the game, is really to underscore many conflicts because the game is fundamentally about conflict. To survive, you need to tame animals because they will protect you. It goes all the way to… you can tame a T-Rex! Pretty cool! And that leads to being able to ride a T-Rex, which is… pretty cool! And then, eventually, that expands to: you have your own army of T-Rexes versus another tribe’s army of T-Rexes, and you get these absolutely insane battles that are really over the top. So, in terms of the action/adventure music, that’s ARK on a large scale, and the game broadly covers it. However, we never really dive into character development in the game because each player has their own character, and how can you write music for millions of characters? You can’t. But that’s the strength of the TV show – we can create characters and then highlight them throughout the show to explore the game’s story and take a point of view, so that’s where all the new material came from. I like to think of the show as a character drama set in the ARK world. I was able to explore a lot of softer music that I always wanted to explore, but the game never allowed me to do it. It just wasn’t justified, but the TV show allowed me to increase the dynamic range of ARK’s musical DNA significantly. If you’ve listened to the soundtrack, I think that is proven: it’s very quiet at its quietest moments, and it’s exceptional load at its loudest moments, which, as a composer, is about as fun as it gets!

Q: How did you work with the series’ showrunners to determine how the animated game’s music was to reflect the video game while creating music that both supported the game and yet give the series its own musical sensibility?

Gareth Coker: There were a few different stakeholders with the animated series, so the CEOs that I’ve already mentioned, who created the ARK IP, were overseeing everything, but they didn’t know how to make an animation; they’ve never done it before. So, the animation studio we hired did the day-to-day animation, and they also had a director. They would be responsible for putting together the edit, so before it got to me, there would always be a lot of back and forth between the animation studio and the Studio Wildcard, the game side people, they were working together to put together the episodes, and I think that’s why there’s quite a lot of convergence between the game and the TV show. It’s not a one-to-one retelling because there are things you can do on TV that are just better than storytelling in a game, but they worked together to ensure that the convergence between the game and the TV show was solid. 

And then, in terms of the music, we just had a spotting session, where, in this case, it was with the director of the animation studio and the Studio Wildcard people. In contrast, if you’re doing a film or TV show, you’d probably just be doing it with the director. So, all the key stakeholders were there at the spotting sessions to talk about the music, and then I would go away and do my thing, and it’s the usual back-and-forth that I’d imagine is for every other TV and film composer. And I think, because of that communication that we that was honestly brilliant throughout the whole experience – again, the spotting session for the first episode was tough because we didn’t know, and by the time we got to the end, it was, like, well, we know which themes we’re going to drop where, and the only thing I had to do was timed it out so everything lined up perfectly.

One of the interesting things about working on this show is that in episodes 1, 2, 3, and 4, we were all still finding our way because none of us had ever done this before. The animation studio has, but of course, they had to work within the restraints of working on a game. So it was a first for them, too. And we’d start to see the effects of a team working together in episodes 5 and 6, and for sure, the second half of the season, which airs later this year, you’re seeing a group of people who’ve hit their creative and technical stride, and know what they’re doing. And I don’t think that’s uncommon across TV shows. There are a lot of TV shows that come out where you can feel they were finding their way; there are a few ropey episodes, but then, once they get going, they find their identity and know what they’re doing in terms of the storytelling, and that definitely happened on this project. The added factor was that for the first five episodes, we were working on pandemic restrictions and restraints, and then once we got out of that, I think it was just a big morale boost for everyone, as there was for everyone across the planet. I think that’s also reflected in the show, as well. 

Q: Tell me about recording the animated iteration with players brought into Abbey Road. – I understand you brought in 26 brass players along with hand-picked musicians!

Gareth Coker: When the Studio Wildcard people said they wanted to make the whole show’s music live, I honestly didn’t believe it because that’s a significant expense, and then they said they wanted to do it in London at Abbey Road because that’s where we recorded the majority of the game soundtrack, I said “Okay, you guys are really serious about doing this the right way,” which, of course, for a composer is a significant vote of confidence, and also a lot of pressure, as well, because that room has recorded a lot of great soundtracks. As I said, in the first five episodes, we were recording under pandemic restrictions, so we couldn’t even have the strings and the brass in the room at the same time. It was not legal to do that and against musicians’ union rules, so that had its challenges. Another challenge for the first few episodes was that the orchestra had to be socially distanced, so each player was six feet apart, which is not normal. It’s so much harder for them to hear each other when they’re that far apart; it’s just because they’re just perfect that they were able to make it work. 

“I think the orchestra grew with the project as well because, by the end, they knew all the themes. Because I was telling them the story as we recorded each musical cue, they understood exactly what they had to do. “Oh, it’s Nerva’s theme; we need to play in this style, or it’s Helena’s theme; we need to play in this style.”

One of my favorite moments in the whole show was actually being able to leave this country for the first time and record episodes five and six in person. On the first four episodes, I wasn’t able to record in person; I was doing it remotely, here, literally in this seat right now, listening to Abbey Road at 3 AM because of the time difference.

So the first time I turned up, it was fifty strings and then between 20 and 26 brass for the entire show. One of the things I’m most proud of was that we were able to get the same musicians for every single episode. We worked hard to ensure that, and, as I said, I think the orchestra grew with the project as well because, by the end, they knew all the themes because I was telling them the story as we were recording each musical cue, they understood precisely what they had to do. “Oh, it’s Nerva’s theme; we need to play in this style, or it’s Helena’s theme; we need to play in this style.” They got the musical vocabulary, as well, by the end. Being able to grow with a bunch of musicians who have played on literally every major film soundtrack over the last decade or two, it was quite flattering and humbling just to be able to hear my music being played by them. In that room, especially for loud action music, I think that room is, arguably, the best in the world, or one of the best, for sure. I’ll be forever grateful to the ARK team for just letting me do that because I think it’s unprecedented to have that much music be recorded live because, between the first part and the second, it’s about seven hours of music in total, which is a lot for a single project, and especially for an animation. Obviously, we did have a reasonable budget because we wouldn’t have been able to get all those actors as well, but it’s still unprecedented – and it’s an obvious place where they could have made a shortcut. I’m very glad they didn’t because it allowed me to write the music in a way where I knew it was being recorded by a top orchestra with people I’ve worked with for years, so I’d know what the end result is. Thankfully, the CEOs know the difference between hearing a digital mock-up and hearing the final. The best quote I got from the people in charge was, “Yeah, we’re never doing anything, not live again!”

Q: How did you treat the character of Helena Walker (Madeleine Madden) from a meek paleontologist into a well-crafted warrior in the animated series?

Gareth Coker: Ah, Helena’s theme! This is the one I spent the longest time on because we literally see her from the first frame of the TV show. I needed a theme that would be malleable with all the situations she finds herself in during the show. If you thought it was nuts for the first six episodes, it’s even more crazy for the show’s second half! But, honestly, the development of the theme was dictated by what was given to me in the scripts and what was given to me on screen. But there are stakes in the ground where we need to shift the character, and I think the big one is in episode 6, where Helena is being trained by Mei-Yin (Michelle Yeoh); it’s a training montage. It’s not like the Rocky montage in the ROCKY films, but that’s her equivalent of that moment because she’s finally starting to understand how to fight in this world that she’s not familiar with. And so it was a fun piece of music to do because she’s being trained by Mei-Yin, who also has her own theme. She’s an Ancient Chinese warrior, but she also meshes that with Helena’s theme. The first time you really hear Helena’s theme, it’s soft, she’s a scientist, and now she’s in this violent world where she has to learn to fight, so it’s like, how can I take that theme and vary it – and it’s just changing the tempo, adding rhythm, and then having kind of a dance between Mae-Yin’s theme and Helena’s theme and combining that into one cue. I can’t talk too much about the second half of the season, but her character takes on even more turns that allow me to develop the theme even further. 

One thing I appreciate about the showrunners is that they wanted it to be a melodically driven show. We’re in an age where there are a lot of textural soundtracks, and that’s not a problem; that’s one approach you could take. I imagine this show with a textural soundtrack would feel completely different, and I’m not sure it would work. It’s an obvious approach, sometimes, but honestly, whenever Helena’s on the scene, you’ll probably hear some semblance of the Helena theme. Whenever Mae-Yin’s on the scene, some version of it that’s hopefully appropriate for the scene. I wanted to prove that you can have melody and dialog simultaneously, and if they are skillfully done, they can work in harmony. Michael Giacchino’s been doing that for years, and he started in games, by the way! That’s probably a really good reference point! I wanted that to be a focal point of the score, and thankfully, the showrunners did, too.

Q: What has been most challenging – and most regarding – about accomplishing your score, that is both effective to the video game while the animated series captures a balance of it’s own?

Gareth Coker: That’s a great question. I think the most challenging thing was adapting the action music from the game to the show because people have played ARK for thousands – and in some cases tens of thousands – of hours, so they’re incredibly familiar with the music. So, if you mess with that in any way, there will be comments all over YouTube! And, of course, you have to mess with it because I’m tied to the picture! I can’t lift the game track and drop it in! I wish I could; it would have made my life much easier! But I couldn’t do that. And there are several landmark fights in the game. One, which I’ve spoken about a couple of times on Twitter or elsewhere, is in episode 2; this fight with the giant spider is a prominent event in the game, and the first 40 seconds of that track are lifted from that game. I got fortunate – I wondered if the tempo was going to work, so I just dropped the track from the game; fingers are crossed, how far can I get… and it got me through 45 seconds of the scene. So that is pretty much note-for-note the same, which was great because it’s one of the first big reference points from the game that is in the show. But then, of course, the scene changes, and then it’s like, okay, I’ve got my first 45 seconds; now I have to be a composer and develop it differently. But it was beneficial that it lined up nicely with the cut, so I didn’t have to change too much. 

I think, overall, the action sequences in general because there are some long action sequences – episode 6, there’s a long one. I cannot give you too much detail, but in episode 12, one of the action sequences is twenty to twenty-five minutes. There’s an ebb and flow, but as a long cue, it just has to keep going and keep being interesting. I think that was one of the biggest challenges of making long, linear pieces of music interesting! Most of the time, in games, the most extended piece of music we are ever writing is four- to five minutes because most are looping, repeating, or interactive. So you never really get to stretch your legs compositionally, like in a serious way. Long cues in films are also uncommon, but they do exist, especially for long action scenes. But that long scene in episode 12 was by far the biggest challenge. I had to go back to school in a way, “Wait, how do I do this? Again, how do I do a long scene?!” It’s just a case of building out a road map and then being able to follow it. It’s easy enough when it’s three or four minutes, but when it’s that length, you have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.

But the thing about people coming from the game and watching the series is that they’re going to want the action to be amazing. The one thing we had to nail – we really had to nail everything, of course, but what we had to nail everything of course, especially with our fans who are coming from the game, is the action because that is what the game is known for, these big, wild set pieces, action/adventure moments. We needed to make sure they were really good, and I think everyone who has seen the show should probably be entirely happy with how the action has turned out. Although I will say this, it was more gory than I expected.

But I found that most challenging and rewarding because I know once I get it right—because I’ve played ARK, too, and my father plays it, too—and okay, this feels pretty good to me. I’m reasonably competent in it, and I’m an ARK player, so I think the fans will be happy.

Q: What’s coming up for you next that you could talk about?

Gareth Coker: I released a game soundtrack I did early this year, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and we’re doing a little add-on to the game that’s being announced (see Spotify, etc.). All of my large-scale projects are very much under wraps. I will say there’s a very large-scale project, an original, starting-from-scratch new intellectual property in a genre I haven’t had the chance to do before. I’m very excited about that because I get to work in science fiction and do my own thing for the first time. I’ve worked in science fiction and had it be part of another person’s sound world – I worked on Halo, but I didn’t create the Halo sound. I get to create this new project from scratch, and I’ve already been working on it for about two and a half years – there’s probably another two years to go. It’s world-building, which is what I enjoy the most. It’s what I did on ARK because I was part of it from the beginning, but this is a very different flavor of the soundtrack from everything I’ve done before, so it will be interesting to see what people think when it comes out.

Special thanks to Greg O’Connor-Read of TopDollar PR for facilitating this interview, and to Gareth Coker for taking the time out of his schedule to speak with me in detail about the ARK ANIMATED SERIES.

Purchase/Stream the ARK: THE ANIMATED SERIES, Volume 1—Original Series Soundtrack album, here: https://lnk.to/ARK-ost