Walter Mair Interview: Balancing Film and Game Projects. Classically trained in Vienna, Walter Mair is one of the rising composers in the film and video games industries. Over the past five years alone, he has worked on prominent game franchises such as Killzone, Total War, Need For Speed, and Grand Theft Auto, between collaborating with prominent directors on numerous titles such as The List, The Road Home, and Ryan Gosling’s Lost River. In this interview, Mair talks us through his journey from working on critically-savaged horror movies to scoring major video games and films.
He focuses especially on his music for the recently released shooter Killzone: Mercenary and how he contrasted the ISA and Helghast using experimental hybrid approaches. He also gives some general insight into scoring projects and how best to break into the industry. Interview Credits Interview Subject: Walter MairInterviewer: Harris Iqbal, Chris GreeningEditor: Chris GreeningCoordination: Greg O’Connor-Read Interview Content Walter Mair: That is absolutely true.
Interview with Walter Mair, Composer for Killzone: Mercenary. The Sound Architect has the pleasure of speaking with the fantastic composer for Killzone: Mercenary, Walter Mair. Walter has previously created dramatic original scores for feature films such as The List, Seamonsters and Alone In The Dark as well as commercials for BMW and Mercedes-Benz. His previous video game scores include the Ivor Novello nominated Empire: Total War and Viking: Battle For Asgard. We talk about Walter’s career path and gain valuable insight on how he works and how to work towards composing professionally. How did your journey into music composition begin? I started playing music instruments from an early age, playing the recorder for a few years before I entered the family of brass instruments, the trumpet. At that time I also taught myself to play the piano by playing along to songs on the radio.
What is your proudest project so far? Being what some people call a hybrid composer, working on movies and video games alike, I would have to name a project for each genre.