Digital Nation by Gary Dretzka

A writer of music for such gruesome-sounding entertainments as Inhumanoid, Scream, The Crow: Salvation, Dracula 2000, Resident Evil, The Watcher, Scary Movie 3 and T3: Rise of the Machines - with Cursed and Hellboy still to come - might be expected to toil in the garret of some ramshackle neo-goth mansion in the Hollywood Hills. A harpsichord would be his instrument of choice, and portraits of long-dead composers would line the walls.

That description might fit a musically gifted member of the Addams family, perhaps, but not composer Marco Beltrami. The studio of this boyishly handsome Ivy Leaguer is situated behind the spacious Malibu country home he shares with his family, in a yard overflowing with vibrantly flowering trees and shrubs.

This quintessentially American residence would seem more likely to inspire soundtracks for movies about the Brady Bunch and Olsen Twins, than sequels to the Halloween and Scream franchises. On a foggy night on the coast, however, it probably isn't difficult to imagine the possibility of sharing the neighborhood with teen fiends Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers.

"I don't think I even watched a horror movie all the way through, before I started writing the music for Scream, allows the Italian-born and Long Island-raised Beltrami, in the airy studio in which much of thunder for T3 was conjured. "But music is music, and I love to experiment with sound. Coming from a concert background, I quickly realized that horror lends itself well to compositional techniques associated with 20th Century music.

"I was able to come up with a unique voice for these films. It helped, of course, that they were a little bit over the top in their own right."

Even though he majored in urban planning at Brown, Beltrami's first and most lasting passion was music, especially the plugged-in variety. He went on to study in Venice, with Luigi Nono; Yale, under Jacob Druckman; and USC, as an intern to Jerry Goldsmith. While testing the waters of Hollywood, he completed commissions for the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Sao Paulo State Orchestra and the Oakland East Bay Symphony.

Beltrami's first soundtrack came attached to a Sony-funded USC short, The Bicyclist, in 1994. A year later, he wrote the theme for the syndicated TV series Land's End, which caught the ear of horror-meister Wes Craven. After passing his Scream test, he scored Ole Bornedal's Nightwatch and Guillermo del Toro's Mimic.

Although several of these projects reaped huge profits, they hardly prepared Beltrami for T3, one of the most intentionally expensive movies in Hollywood history. Everything about it shouted, "Bigger!"

"There are very few movies that are as big as this one," he said, a few hours before its gala Hollywood premiere. "Everything was on a large scale ... the music, the scope, the ensemble of musicians and singers. The music had to be loud to be heard among the pyrotechnics, but, of, there were some quiet spots, too."

It isn't likely that many viewers will come away from T3 remembering those softer moments, however, or much of his really loud music, either. Even with a digital boost, Beltrami's intricately constructed walls of sound must compete with a cacophony of explosions, collisions and metal-to-metal combat, recorded at decibel levels usually only allowed at airports.

"We have sequences in this movie with more than 1,000 simultaneous tracks of audio," said director Jonathan Mostow. "Creating the sound design for Terminator 3 was an around-the-clock effort over a period of five months."

Fortunately, the music is allowed to stand on its own in the already-released soundtrack album.

Ironically, even before Beltrami knew he was being considered for T3, his music was influencing the shape of the production.

"One of the reasons I got the job was that 75 percent of temp score was from my previous work ... from Crow, The Watcher and a I am Dina, a Danish movie that has yet to be released here, except for the soundtrack album," he continued. "At one point, they asked my agent for more material, and that's when I found out it was a possibility for me. That information also helped me understand what they would want in the finished version of Terminator."

Beltrami enjoyed a much longer than normal gestation period for the score. He was handed a rough cut of T3 in December, then, in April, a print that included visual and sound effects.

In the meantime, Beltrami was able to work closely with his digital wizard, Buck Sanders, "coming up with sounds ... recording them, manipulating them, processing them."

All of that work was done here, in the Malibu studio, where they would records vocals and solo performances, then mix them into the digital stew.

"We'd always start with organic sounds, then alter them and blend them into the music produced by an orchestra," recalled Beltrami, who still relies on paper and pencil for scoring. "I don't take any of the digital stuff for granted. I write all the music, but Buck does all the sampling."

Along with Goldsmith, Beltrami says he's been influenced by Nina Rota, Ennio Morricone, Elliot Goldenthal. He also admits to borrowing "little things" from lots of other sources.

"I occasionally listen to other soundtracks to see what other people are doing, although not when I'm working in the studio on a new score," he said. "I get most of my inspiration from other sources, whether it's classical or country music."

One of reasons Beltrami enjoys working in the horror genre is because the directors usually are more willing to experiment with different forms of music and sound design. Their mission is to scare the pants off viewers, using any means at their disposal.

If this requires the invention of a new, even more frightening musical vocabulary, then what better place than this unassuming digital laboratory, off a shaded lane in Mayberry-by-the-Sea.