the IMAX countdown music goes hard as hell

Easing into this week with a bit of light blogging. Nothing too wild, just a bit of a web log. In the spirit of last week's La La Land over-analysis, let's continue on a parallel journey: music and movies.

I joined the AMC A-List as soon as I moved to Los Angeles, because this is a movie town, and an AMC A-List membership is a real form of social currency here. That means that I have enjoyed an unprecedented number of movies in IMAX format — movies about men who invent bombs, movies about guys who get bit by a radioactive spiders, movies about Tom Cruise jumping off a cliff. IMAX is a dazzling way to see a movie. Big ass screen. Loud ass sound. The spirit of the cinema seeps into your very bones.

If you see a movie in IMAX, before the feature presentation, but after the trailers and at least one theater-sponsored commercial that tells you you'd enjoy your movie more if you ordered some popcorn and a soda, there is an IMAX countdown. I need to shout this countdown out.

Of course, listening to it on a tinny computer or phone speaker does not offer the spine-tinglingly immersive experience of listening to it in an IMAX theater. But isn't the music in this wild? The nervous ambient noise at the beginning, the ultra-low bass bwahs, that whining, glissando...synth...violin??? TINGLES, BABE.

I did a little blog research and saw that Man Made Music's Joel Beckerman, who also did the music for a lot of good television (30 for 30, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations) created the theme. The shorter theatrical intro comes from a longer piece that features a 150-piece orchestra and a 75-voice choir.

“The process was pretty intense,” Beckerman said in a Fast Company piece. “It was a pretty detailed creative brainstorm trying to get to the center of what the story was about and to get to the emotional takeaway for IMAX. It had to do with the intersection between humanity, technology, and storytelling. That’s where it all ended up coming from.” I would give big, big money to see what the whiteboard at one of these creative brainstorms looked like. I guess the words "humanity" "technology" and "storytelling" would be written on it, for starters. But they did such a good job. The core tenets of the IMAX brand shine through. ASMR videos don't really do it for me, but I get big-time ASMR from the IMAX Sonic Anthem. It's time to start IMAXmaxxing.