Pop-Culturalist.com

Matt Hutchinson is an award-winning film, television, and video game composer whose credits include Ma, Found, Kung Fu, Riverdale, Castle Rock, and All Rise.

His latest project, Your Lucky Day, was recently released in theaters on November 10th. After a dispute over a winning lottery ticket turns into a deadly hostage situation, the witnesses must decide exactly how far they’ll go—and how much blood they’re willing to spill—for a cut of the $156 million.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Matt about Your Lucky Day, collaborating with writer-director Dan Brown, incorporating holiday elements in the action-packed thriller, and more.

PC: You grew up with a strong affinity for music, and there were various paths you could have taken as a musician. What ultimately lead you to the film, television, and gaming industries?
Matt: I started out like a lot of people. I loved music as a little kid. I was on a camping trip, and my uncle brought his acoustic guitar. I was obsessed with it. I was about five years old at the time. He let me play it, and I had a natural knack for it. I could play and pick out melodies. He showed me a couple of things, and I picked it up really quickly. That was when I was like, “I love music.” My grandfather purchased me a little three-quarter-scale guitar and paid for a few lessons, but I was largely self-taught and became obsessed.

I would listen to music all the time. I thought I wanted to be in a band. When I was a teen, that was when the ’90s Seattle scene was really blowing up, so I latched on to that. I loved Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and all these Seattle bands that were really blowing up. I lived about two hours away from Seattle, so I was like, I’m moving there. I’m getting into a band, and I’m going to be a famous rock guitarist.

I moved to Seattle. I was playing in bands, but I also studied audio engineering, mixing, and sound design at the ARK Institute of Seattle. I got a job working at an audio post house when I was nineteen, so I was doing both things. That’s really when I started to become more aware of the fact that there is music in media, and people are hired to write music for commercials, TV shows, movies, and all of those things.

I had grown up loving music and film music. I was a huge fan of John Williams’ music in Star Wars, E.T., Danny Elfman, Thomas Newman, James Horner, and all of those guys. I had never considered doing that myself at that point in time. I was so focused on other things.

But I got married, and the idea of being on tour and never being home didn’t sound appealing anymore. I was watching a film with my wife, and she was like, “Have you ever thought about scoring a film?” Because I had been commenting on the music and how cool it was. She planted that seed. I was like, “Wow, that’s a really interesting idea.” I didn’t know how to work with an orchestra or anything like that. I had not gone to a traditional music school, so I just bought a bunch of books and was really obsessed with that.

That led me to study under a man named Hummie Mann, who teaches a film scoring course up in the Pacific Northwest. It was pretty new at the time. He’d been doing it for a few years. Now, it’s a full master’s program. That’s pretty neat. But that was a crash course in the craft of not just writing for an orchestra but how to score a film and how scoring really works from a craft’s perspective. That really got me going and led me to where I am today.

PC: You’ve had so much success throughout your career. When you look back, is there a moment that stands out to you?
Matt: What really changed things for me early on was when I was working at the studio. I was the youngest guy there. I had to work my way up. So I was in a position where I was mixing things, but I wasn’t getting the high-level jobs at the time. I was getting the easier projects to mix. They weren’t quite as high stakes.

Then one day, we got a call from a company called Digital Kitchen. They were a big visual production shop in Seattle. They did title sequences for Nip Tuck and Six Feet Under. They won Emmys for it. They were one of the first production houses that asked why shouldn’t we make the title sequences as artful and cool as the show itself?So they did that, and they were doing amazing work. Everyone wanted to work with them.

They called, and they had a project that they weren’t happy with in terms of the audio. It was a title sequence for a show called The Grid on TNT. They were like, “Do you have anybody available?” They were talking to the studio manager. They were like, “Is anyone available there to do this? We need it tomorrow or the day after?” I was the guy who was available. So suddenly I’m doing this project and I ask them, “Do you know I’m a composer as well? Do you mind if I take this home and score and sound design it?” They said, “Do whatever you want.” I did and brought it back to them. They loved it. It ended up getting an Emmy nomination. It didn’t win, but they got nominated for that, and all of a sudden, I was working with these guys a lot.

That’s where I met Dan Brown. He was one of the visual effects guys on their team. The first project that we worked together on was a trailer for a video game. That sparked a twenty-plus relationship!

PC: Speaking of Dan, Your Lucky Day is coming out on November 10th. This project originally started as a short film and now has become a feature. You worked on both projects. What were some of those early conversations that you had with Dan as this narrative expanded in scope?
Matt: Great question. Like you said, I scored the short in 2010. It was just a few minutes of music. It’s such a different format than a feature length. There’s no real time to develop a theme or any sort of musical arc other than just setting the tone and making sure you’re hitting the right beats so the film feels right. But it’s just a few minutes of music in that score.

When we spoke about the feature film, it was basically like tackling a new film; at least that’s how I felt. We had a long three-hour conversation about the film, the themes of the movie, and that feeling. I hadn’t seen anything yet, but I knew it was shot and he was getting together a rough cut at the time. But we talked in general terms about what he wanted to convey in this film and any musical ideas that he had. We talked through that.

He filmed it in the middle of COVID, and I hadn’t seen him in a few years, so it was a nice reunion as well. It was a really fun, fun day at the very end of that conversation. Before we ended, I asked him, “Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that could be important to you musically?” He said, “Yeah, this takes place on Christmas Eve, so I’d really love for there to be a holiday element there somewhere.” I was like, “Wow, that was the last thing on my mind.” I was like, “That’s going to be an interesting challenge, but also a great opportunity to do something really unique. That’s one of the things that I love about Dan and working with him. He’s got a really creative genius and sees things in a way that most people don’t. That’s certainly not how my brain works.

He always ends up giving me a challenge that pushes me somewhere new that I wouldn’t have otherwise gone. It’s always ends up being really cool. I love knowing that whenever I work with Dan, he’s going to bring the best out of me.

PC: Filmmaking is such a collaborative art form. How different is the spotting session when you’re working with a director who you’ve had these prior relationships with as opposed to somebody that you might be working with for the first time?
Matt: When you’re working with somebody that you know, there’s a comfort. When you’re meeting somebody for the first time, it’s a little bit nerve-wracking. You don’t know each other personally. You haven’t been through the trenches of making a film together, which in and of itself is a very bonding experience. You don’t know what their sensibilities are as well.

But having known Dan for so long, you can cut right to the chase. No one is worried about hurting the other person’s feeling. We can speak openly about what’s working and what isn’t, and why that is. There’s an ease and rapport that does help the process. It’s interesting. By the time that I’m done with a film, I feel like I’ve always made a new friend at the end of the process. It’s an amazing experience to create something like this with Dan.

PC: I also imagine that typically, you’re given the script and you start to formulate ideas of where you want to incorporate music to heighten the narrative. But it’s in the editing process and after seeing the actors’ performances where things really start to take shape. How do the performances of the cast of Your Lucky Day influence your work?
Matt: It influences everything. For me, I usually get a script. In this case, I didn’t. He shot it so quickly. He shot it in sixteen days. I didn’t even know a movie had been shot until I read about it in the trade. Then I called Dan and said, “Hey.” He was like, “I was just about to call you.” It’s so important when I see the cut to understand the pacing, the flow of the edit, the color of the film, any sound design that might be in there, and especially the cast and their performances. In this case, there were so many great moments and really interesting conversations that you wouldn’t expect to see in an action-thriller. You know there are going to be action sequences.

We also had the interesting blend of the holiday vibe as well. But there were so many introspective questions that this narrative asks you, including what you would do if you had $1,000,000 and the exploration of everyone’s justification for what they’re doing, which was not necessarily good behavior, but everyone had their reasons. I thought that was such a fascinating aspect of the film. It opened up a whole avenue of delicate string writing that we wanted to be underneath those scenes. We didn’t want it to be too intrusive, but there needed to be something there. There’s also some very cool textural writing and creating an ambiance where these conversations had the gravitas that they needed.

PC: Great answer. As you were saying, one of the major differences between the short and the feature is that it now takes place on Christmas Eve. When you think of holiday music, you think of something more cheerful. But this is a really dark, gritty thriller. How were you able to find those moments when you could incorporate elements of holiday music and that nostalgia while making it work for this narrative? How did you do it so seamlessly?
Matt: It was a challenge to know exactly when and how much to bring those elements. When we finally watched the film as a whole, I had basically written the score. Every scene was essentially finished. The editor Nick [Pezzillo] and Dan came over to my studio, and we watched the entirety of the film and got a sense of how this was going to work as a whole.

Dan is an instrumental part of this collaboration. It was a joint effort between him and me. Those were precisely the types of questions that were being asked. Where do we need more of the holiday vibe? We decided to incorporate holiday songs throughout, but there were moments when we felt it was getting too dark for too long, and we wanted to inject a bit more fun into it.

There’s a horrific moment when this character wakes up next to something gory and horrific. Initially, the music was very dark, as one would expect. However, Dan suggested, “I really think this would be a good time to do something a little different.” That particular cue underwent more back-and-forth than any other in the film. It allowed us to strike the right balance, combining the holiday choral vibe with more traditional orchestra and the dark textures and sounds already present in the movie.

I heavily relied on Dan for his guidance on that. Watching the movie with someone else is key. While I sit here and watch it again and again, as soon as you get a couple of other bodies together, it’s amazing how it exposes the mistakes.

PC: You actually had more time to score this project than they did to film it. What are some of the benefits and challenges that present themselves to you as a composer?
Matt: Yeah! I’m used to being the guy who only has two weeks to do that and thinks, “How am I going to do this?” It was a reversal this time around where we had the luxury of time, and it changes everything because there’s something to be said about your first instincts. When I’m scoring a project with very little time, I almost don’t have any time to think. I just have to get going. I have a lot of fear driving me, thinking, “Let’s get this going. What are we going to do?” I’m searching for that little kernel of an idea that’s going to elevate the entire score. It’s almost like unlocking a lock. What is the key to figuring this out?

So when you have a little more time to focus on that, it’s nice. That’s what we had here. We had the luxury of knowing we could take our time and not be rushed. We got to see the film in its entirety and then went back to fix things that maybe weren’t as great.

Sometimes you just have to get it done, and you don’t have time to go back and do too much. There have been times where I’m watching a film that I’ve scored or something, and I’m like, “I wish I had done this scene a little differently.” But that’s the nature of the job, where commerce and creativity meet, and you have schedules. We were fortunate on this one.

To keep up with Matt, follow him on Instagram. Your Lucky Day is out in select theaters now and on VOD on 11/14.