285 - The Music of Project Hail Mary, with Composer Daniel Pemberton

Composer Daniel Pemberton returns to Dolby Creator Talks to discuss his inventive new original score for “Project Hail Mary.” In conversation with guest host Jon Burlingame, Pemberton breaks down how he built a custom musical language for the film using everything from wooden blocks, body percussion, treated vocals, bowls of water, and even a squeaky water tap recorded on his iPhone. He also reflects on balancing the film’s vast sci-fi scale with its intimate emotional core, and how experimentation, failure, and discovery shaped one of his most ambitious scores yet. “Developing all your own sounds… I call it mixing your own paints. You've basically spend a long time mixing paint colors rather than buying it off the shelf. And that's how you get stuff that feels very original, like this. And I've got millions of these and most of them don't work. You spend ages when you experiment. When you have time to fail, you have time to create ... Hopefully there'll be something in there that'll work.” —Daniel Pemberton, Composer, “Project Hail Mary” Be sure to check out “Project Hail Mary” now in theaters in Dolby Vision® and Dolby Atmos®. Please

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285 - The Music of Project Hail Mary, with Composer Daniel Pemberton is an episode from Sound + Image Lab: The Dolby Institute Podcast by Dolby.

This episode is 52:07 long.

This episode was published on Mar 26, 2026.

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