Brad Bird and Michael Giacchino Featured in Conversation During San Diego Comic-Con Week

During San Diego Comic-Con convention week, some fans might find themselves heading to some special events hosted by UC San Diego Artpower.

What's Happening:

• Two special events will be hosted by UC San Diego Artpower during the weekend of San Diego Comic-Con, according to the unofficial SDCC Blog.
• Tuesday, July 21 at 7:30 PM, convention week kicks off with a high-energy live performance featuring composer Mick Giacchino (Muppet Mayhem) and musicians/composers Zach Robinson and Leo Birenberg (Cobra Kai).
• Together, they will perform a genre-hopping set that pulls across from TV and film, including Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, Cobra Kai, The Penguin, and more into a full concert experience.
• Tickets are available now at the official Artpower site.
• On July 22 at 7:30, Academy Award winning director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille, The Iron Giant) will be in conversation with longtime collaborator, Oscar and Grammy winning composer Michael Giacchino.
• Together, they will trace the arc of a filmmaking life that began with a handmade short sent to Disney at age fourteen and has never stopped reaching for something extraordinary. Along the way, they will share stories from over two decades of creative partnership that you won’t have heard anywhere else, and dive deeper in to the worlds of some of favorite Pixar animated films.
• Tickets are available now at the official Artpower site.
• Both events will be held at the Epstein Family Amphitheater, which is about an hour from the Gaslamp on the trolley.

The Pair:

• One of the most notable creative partnerships in Brad Bird’s career is with composer Michael Giacchino. Their collaboration is often compared to classic director-composer pairings because Giacchino’s music strongly shapes the tone, pacing, and emotional identity of Bird’s films.
• They have worked together on huge projects, including The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.
• For The Incredibles, Giacchino created a bold, jazzy orchestral score inspired by 1960s spy music and composers like John Barry. The soundtrack became one of Pixar’s most acclaimed scores and helped define the retro-futurist superhero style of the film.
• For the sequel, Incredibles 2, Giacchino expanded the musical language of the original with even more aggressive brass writing, spy rhythms, and superhero motifs.
• It was a shift when they teamed up once again on Ratatouille, when Giacchino shifted to a lighter, Parisian-inspired sound with accordion, jazz, and romantic orchestration that matched the warmth of the film and its setting.