Music to watch movies by

Young Chang

It’s people like Brian Tyler who make you cry. He makes your heart

beat faster when the protagonist is in danger. He tells stories and shows

emotions, but without using words.

Tyler, the film composer for “Panic” and a Newport Beach native, knows

he’s done his job right when directors tell him he’s made a movie better

-- that his music has made the funny parts funnier and the sad parts more

sad.

While some see in color and others in shapes, Tyler sees in song. Sit

the 28-year-old down in front of a movie scene and within seconds he’s

scoring a piece in his head. Eating dinner, driving to the studio, going

about his average day -- any and all of this inspires in him the original

music that has shown up recently in such movies as “Panic,” which stars

William H. Macy and Neve Campbell, “Undead,” “The Fast and Furious” and

“Plan B.”

“I think, as Alfred Hitchcock said, it’s 50% of the movie,” said

Tyler, who is just finishing up composing for “Frailty,” a movie starring

Bill Paxton and Matthew McConaughey due out in September. “The heart of

the emotion is in the music.”

Tyler learned this early on.

Growing up, he spent entire days at his grandparents’ house in Newport

Beach. Ruth Tyler would give him piano lessons and Walter Tyler, an

Academy-Award winning art director for “Samson and Delilah,” would show

him designs for sets and other models he had built.

By the age of eight, Brian Tyler was composing music, playing the

drums and learning to play the piano. He attended many a concert at the

Orange County Performing Arts Center -- he remembers Dvorjak and

Rachmaninoff, though there were many, many more -- and the first record

he ever bought was the soundtrack to “Jaws.”

At Corona del Mar High School, Tyler led several rock bands. One of

them -- Synesthesia -- played on the campus quad.

“We’d get up there and rock the house for lunch period and go back to

class deaf,” he laughed.

Tyler also played gigs at the Four Seasons Hotel and clubs on Balboa

Peninsula. All the while, his love for film never dwindled.

“When I was five, I remember telling everyone on the block that they’d

have a part in the movie I was gonna direct,” he said.

And when Tyler and his friends weren’t hanging out by watchtower No. 5

at Newport Beach, they’d catch flicks at Edwards Big Newport in Fashion

Island.

“But after all of that kind of duality, it became one thing,” Tyler

said of blending films and music.

And he’s limitless in his range of musical genres and instruments.

Jazz, Big Band, classical, techno, rock -- he composes it all. He plays

the drums, piano, acoustic guitar, banjo, electric guitar, bass, timpani,

orchestral percussion, the marimba and he sings.

As a conductor, he plays one primary instrument.

“The orchestra becomes my instrument,” he said. “It becomes the sound

of the score, and I’m basically playing the orchestra.”

Director Greg Yaitanes, who worked with Tyler on “Plan B,” starring

Diane Keaton, Paul Sorvino and Natasha Lyonne, noticed Tyler’s schooling

in yesterday’s musicians.

“Brian was really respectful of the old-school way of doing things,”

Yaitanes said. “I think the great jazz musicians of their day would be

proud to work with him.”

As was he.

The director calls Tyler’s score for “Plan B” the real “star” of the

movie, alongside talents like Keaton. He doubted he’d ever find a

composer who would meet his expectations. Then he did.

“I could only describe it as genius, what he does, his attention to

detail. And he’s got a great way of seamlessly blending [the music] in

with the film,” Yaitanes said. “It’s hard to find someone with as much

heart and dedication as you have.”

Tyler has a little something that keeps him going. His grandfather’s

Oscar -- a reminder of all the stories that inspired him to do what he

does -- looks over him at his West Los Angeles studio.

“Definitely something to aim for,” Tyler said.