TRANSCRIPT:
Elizabeth Tobey – Welcome to the 9th episode of the Mafia II podcast. Today I am here talking with Jack Scalici about mood and music in the game. So how about we start off by talking about what kind of music we're gonna hear throughout the game.
Jack Scalici – Well it varies. You start off, you're in the 40's during World War II. A lot of the music you hear on the radio is pop stuff like Bing Crosby – artists like that. Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, the Andrews Sisters – everything is very patriotic and centered around America. Also coupled with that you have things like World War II news updates, DJ speech – things like that on the radio. Really just sets the mood that says “this is pre rock and roll, it's World War II, it's Americana.” And then as you progress through the game, you get to the 50's, all of a sudden you have guys like Dean Martin becoming really big. Tony Bennett comes out. Along with that you have rock and roll – you have the birth of rock and roll. So you have artists like Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, all the legendary pioneers of rock. You know, Chuck Berry, Little Richard – they're all in our game.
ET – So, approximately, how many songs are in the game? It sounds like there are quite a few.
JS – We're just about done with it, as far as the licensing goes, and I think we ended up with 121 or 122.
ET – How did you guys pick what songs made it into the game and specifically what played in different scenes, different places in the city, and when you're in the car?
JS – About 5 years ago, when I first started working on Mafia II with the team, we talked about the size of the soundtrack. We decided that no matter how big the soundtrack was or how small we wanted the best music possible in there. So I went through a list of basically every song released that made it to the billboard charts in the 1940's, the 1930's, the 1920's, and then the 1950's. So I narrowed it down to about 1500. And those 1500 tracks I listened to repeatedly for about 2 years – narrowed it down to 300. And then we just put the offers out to our friends at the record labels and the music publishers and we ended up with 122. So that was the basic goal – and the goal obviously is to have great music. I could have easily gone to a production library - like a certain other game based on the Mafia did – and just filled up the soundtrack with an unlimited number of songs that were legitimately recorded back then but they were hits, they were just nobodies. We want every song you hear in the game to be great so you would never want to change a radio station when a certain song came on. So that was pretty much the decision making process. And of course we have different themes on each radio station. One plays oldies, one plays the crooner stuff – like the Dean Martin and the Tony Bennett – one plays, in the 50's, plays rock and roll, and then there's pop stations in both eras that will play just the pop music of the day. So we kind of broke it down. We said, “ok most people are gonna be listening to this, this, or this so let's license more of these tracks.” But we have a pretty even assortment between the rock, the pop crooner kind of stuff, jazz, we have a lot of really kick ass R&B in there too. The second part of your question – how did we pick what songs went where. I have a video editing background, and the music has to fit the mood of the picture. So if the mood of the scene was, you know you just killed somebody you really hated and you stole his car and drove away it's rock and roll or it's kick ass R&B – it's the kind of stuff that you want to blast as you're driving down the highway in a convertible. If it's a really dark stormy night and you're going to kill somebody then maybe you want something a little more ominous – a little more creepy sounding. So we tagged each song with certain words, and the radio system is intelligent enough to look at the song and say ok this song is creepy, this song is happy, this song is uppy, this song is slow. One cool thing we do for example is like at the end of the mission when there is really nothing to do left narrative-wise and your only option is to go screw around in the city or just go to bed – in certain missions it will be late at night so we have the kind of music you find late at night on the radio. If you notice, when you listen to the radio late at night, stuff is slower, it's quieter, has a more even tone, and that's what we try to do in our game.
ET– Besides the actual songs and the licensed music, there's other sounds and music in the game. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how you selected it or created it?
JS– It was created by our in-house composer, Matus Siroky, over in 2K Czech, and there is about 180 minutes of score in the game in addition to the 121 or 122 licensed tracks. We chose to go with an in-house composer because on a project this big you can't just hire a guy like you normally do for other titles - like BioShock we'll hire a composer for 6 months and he'll just sit down with the game and bang it out. With this game, it's so big and everything was in such a constant state of flux throughout development as far as how long is each cut scene gonna be, how long is each gameplay segment gonna be, are we introducing this character to that character, do they need their own themes – things like that. Because the way we worked on this project and the tools that Czech has we're able to change stuff pretty quick. So you can't be constantly writing music for stuff that you're gonna end up re-purposing or throwing out. So he ended up writing about 180 minutes that went into the game. Of those we recorded about 90 with the live orchestra in Prague. The Czechs have a very rich culture when it comes to music and art and they have some of the greatest concert halls and studios in the world over there. So we ended up with 180 minutes of score in the game that we're really proud of.
ET– What kind of impact did you want both the score and the songs to have on the player when there's specific moods, moments, and an overall feel that you're aiming for?
JS– Well if you're going for fun – if you want to say, “ok this part is about having fun.” This gameplay segment you're gonna go here and do this and it's gonna be fun the whole way – there's really no emotion that goes into it other than happiness, fun, joy, whatever. That is rock and roll – or it's kick ass R&B. It's something that you're gonna nod your head to and you're just gonna love. So it's like, “ok here, we're not gonna do the score. We're gonna do the soundtrack.” Other scenes, like cut scenes where you have a lot of emotion going on, a lot of tension – it's difficult to do that with a soundtrack so we do it with the orchestral score. We say, “ok something bad's about to happen in this scene and we want the player to know that” so we'll have the violins come in there and that just tells you, “uh oh, look out, something's gonna happen.” So you can do things with an orchestra like that and you have a lot more control. Your composer is literally writing to the scene as opposed to trying to find a licensed piece of music and just laying it in there and praying that it fits.
ET– What are some of the toughest moments that you've had? Obviously you've been working on this music for years. What were some of the challenges that you faced or particular problems that you had in the experience?
JS– I'd say that one of the biggest problems was a lot of licensers, a lot of artists, and a lot of deceased artists – a lot of estates. They have control over where their music is used and we'd been in contact with a lot of record labels and everyone was on board with getting their music in the game. They really understood it – they understood that it's this epic narrative-driven adventure – it's not a game where you drive around and kill people while wearing suits. It's not just the base level of what people know of the Mafia. This is an epic story of two guys who end up in the mob and what happens to them. It's not violence and sex and drugs and all this other crap that certain people assume that it's going to be. So we had certain licensers who refused to allow their stuff in the game, fearing that it would be way too violent – video games are just violent mindless crap that's polluting America's youth – whatever people say. So we had certain songs that we were told, “yeah you can use this stuff” and we built whole scenes around these songs. Kind of like if you watch Goodfellas. That whole movie is – half of it is a music video. They had like 40-something songs in a two and a half or three hour movie which is awesome I thought. So we built entire scenes around licensed pieces of music and then at the 11th hour when the artist or the estate has to approve it, that approval got yanked because, “oh no it's this game about the Mafia and we don't want to be associated with the Mafia.” Meanwhile these are guys – there's pictures of them with known Mafia figures. So it was kind of hypocritical and it sucked. So we had to yank the music from the game and find other music to replace it or change the scene to fit other music. So that was disappointing that a lot of well-known artists – people might pick up on this. They might say, “hey how come they didn't get this guy? This guy was iconic from that era, he fits totally with this high class suits and cars and playboy and booze and girls – this is his image, why isn't he in the game?” It's probably because they chose not to be because they were afraid of what this game is. Or what they believe this game is. You know, “ooh it's got boobies” - big deal, it's playboy, who cares. “Ooh it's got swearing.” Yeah it's a game about the mob, I hear swearing every day at work. It's not like it's that bad. So that was one of the toughest parts. As far as the score goes, like I said, because we had the ability to keep changing the cut scenes and vary the length of each gameplay segment – things like that. It was very difficult to get the score done early enough so we ended up going right to the wire with that. And it came out great but I like to have things done with just a little bit of buffer. Because part of my job in addition to being the writer and the music supervisor and everything for Mafia – my job is to make sure stuff gets done on time for all of our games as far as music goes and it was a little scary at the end but we pulled it off.
ET– So with all those trials and tribulations do you have a favorite moment and perhaps a favorite track that you want to share?
JS– I do. I can't really give away too much because I want it to be a surprise. We've already given away so much in the trailers and the interviews and the demos and things like that – I want to leave something to be discovered for the first time as far as one of the great moments in the game goes. The song is “Return to Me” by Dean Martin. And I won't really get into the first time you hear it but it's something you'll remember. It's something we just screwed around with – it started out as a joke. And we put it in the game to see how it would work and we were like, “wow this is really good.” And everyone came to me and said, “this is my favorite part of the game right now. You have to keep this in, make this work, please make this work.” So we made it work. It took a lot of engineering and doing stuff behind producers' backs and things like that but we made it work and it ended up really great. I don't want to get into exactly how it's used but you'll see and hopefully you'll like it as much as we do.
