Life and Death (Live from National Concert Hall, Dublin / June 2019)

Woo!
Alright, it's hard not to get emotional back there
Holloway and I were sitting back there, oh
Um, you know people ask me sometimes
You know, what is- what's your favorite moment of- of Lost
And it really happened at the end of the first season of the show
Uh, you know we were exhausted
We made 24 episodes of the show in less than a year
Um, to put that in British terms
That's like 75 years of Sherlock

Without the pressure of having to create next week's episode
Damon and I went to the scoring stage
To watch Michael record the music for the season finale
And Lost was one of the very few shows that have an actual orchestra
And this size orchestra um, you know doing the music most times
TV shows that point and even today are just one guy
Sitting in a room with a synthesizer
Not only that, you know Michael had people playing stuff like
Pieces of wrecked airplane wing and crazy instruments

Anyway, we're on the scoring stage for the final cue
Which was the raft launch
And we had written this scene where some castaways
Attempt to leave the island for the first time on a raft
And it was a scene with a very few words
And we were counting on the music to carry the day

Now, here's something you may not know
The studio musicians who play music for film
They don't rehearse the pieces they play
They sight read them right then and there
So, up came the raft scene on the screen with beep tones for sync
And then the scene started playing
And the musicians begin playing along
And they were playing this piece of music altogether
For the very first time that ever been played
And it was beautiful and everyone was frozen, mesmerized
And when it ended everyone just burst into applause
The players was tapping their bows and there wasn't a dry eye in house
And it was this cathartic moment that you know
To me really showed the power of artistic collaboration
Which is what making television is all about

Um, my theory about making movie or television shows
That you make it four times
You sort of make it when you write it, make it when you shoot it
You make it when you edit it and you make it a final time
When you added the music
And like Star wars or Jaws, Lost would not be anything close to what it is
Without the incredible music that Michael wrote for the show

So as you've heard in the couple of the reading that Jorge did
We even started acknowledging the importance of Michael's music in the scripts themselves
Uh, also an excuse for laziness, we just would-
So, for instance, the raft scene, part of the description reads
And now, Michael Giacchino does the heavy lifting
Music comes up, moving
And allegates score and plays over a series of shots
I won't read more, let's watch it instead
Ladies and gentlemen, "Parting Words"