Exclusive Interview With 'Barbie: The Movie: In Concert' Producer Macy Schmidt
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At New York Comic Con, CultureSlate had the chance to talk to several amazing artists and storytellers who have worked on Broadway, film, music, and TV in various ways. All of them shared their stories, how they came into their roles, and what their jobs entail in the industry.
This interview is with Macy Schmidt. She is an orchestrator and entertainment producer for shows such as Barbie The Movie: In Concert and Avatar: Last Airbender Live in Concert. She has a company called Overture Global Entertainment that helps to license and produce movies/shows with a live orchestra.
CultureSlate: How did you become involved in taking movies to orchestra form?
Macy: I have a company of all women orchestras around the world, and those orchestras started being asked to perform in film concerts as the orchestra. We did the world premiere of Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse Live In Concert! We did Avatar: Last Airbender Live in Concert and Cowboy Bebop LIVE. We did Tokyo Ghoul for the 10th anniversary with Crunchyroll here in New York. In addition, I have a company called Overture Global Entertainment that licenses and develops those concerts. We work with the studios and the rights holders to license the IP and create those concerts, and then also hire the orchestra to play them.
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Image Source: Canvas Rebel Magazine
CultureSlate: What influenced you to choose this career path?
Macy: It's a very cheesy answer and a very overused answer. I spent a few years living in Central Florida, and my family and I would go to Disney World. As an adult, looking back now, Disney World is immersive musical theater for adults. It's for kids too, but the adult part of it, it's like you're walking through and there's music coming out of a hidden speaker in a bush, scoring your immersive fantasy experience. Disney was the first context for me of music adding to the story. If an adult asked me, when I was eight, what's your favorite song, I might have said “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid, but the Disney fireworks version, not the version in the movie. I didn't have language to articulate why it was different, but they've got this big, epic, orchestral version that plays in the fireworks show versus the produced studio one that you hear movie. It was kind of my gateway into understanding that. As I got older and learned and dug into music theory, and what that is, I started to understand it. But the blocks of everything that I do now, both in terms of producing big, immersive fan experiences around music and manipulating and arranging music to present it in a new way to audiences, that all was handed to me on a platter as a child via the Disney parks which was the attention to detail and the world-building and the way that you leave the real world behind and you step in to the story.
When we did Barbie, I had our team make these life size replicas of this billboard poster that shows up in the movie that says, “real world this way” and “Barbie-land this way”. We had the great Helen Mirren record some narration for us so that when you park and you're walking into the venue, you pass by this “Barbie-land this way” sign, and you hear Helen Mirren’s voice talking to you. You're leaving the real world and entering Barbie-land. And when you leave, you've got the “real world this way” sign.
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We try, with the film concert events to make it a full fan event and brand event, and you're entering the world of that IP and that brand. We've had people who come to these events who come to feel part of the world and have a new way to experience their favorite IP or franchise or superheroes or whatever it may be. And a lot of people end up seeing an orchestra for the first time in a context that's way less intimidating than you think. It’s fun to introduce people to that through fandoms and franchises. Orchestras can be used to create such a grand, musically exciting experience with any kind of music, not just the Beethoven's of the catalog. The orchestras of Broadway and Disney influenced me the most. Those are the emotions that I like to emote and what we put out.
CultureSlate: Do you add or take away anything when you take film scores to live concert form?
Macy: Barbie is a very particular one because there's a lot of pop music that needs to be translated to be played by an orchestra. The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. When you're doing a film that is scored for a big, full symphony orchestra superhero style, and you're having it played that same way, then no. But on Barbie, there was a lot of amazing pop music that Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt and the different artists on Barbieput together. There were some ways to fit the instrumentation of exactly the instruments you have in the orchestra but there's also supplemental track left in if there are sounds in the produced pop universe that can't really translate. The goal is to keep the integrity of the original film soundtrack as exact as it can be, but for audiences having that kind of surround experience, as if you're in the recording session while the film is being recorded. It's what started my career doing orchestration in that same way, but for musical theater, and I love that music, so it was honestly all fun for me.
Be on the lookout for more interviews in this artist, film, and musician series!
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Written by Elizabeth Dresdow
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