The Movie Trailer Composers
Vikram Gudi and Richard Schrieber are award-winning composers who have scored countless movie trailers including Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Endgame,
Top Gun: Maverick and Blade Runner 2049. Together, they run the music school Protege which teaches musicians their winning formula to create music for picture.
In 2012, Vik founded Elephant Music in LA, an independent production company that produces music for movie trailers. He has produced no fewer than 700 songs and more than 60 albums’ worth of material for Elephant and has won countless awards including two Clios for the Ready Or Not and A Quiet Place trailers.
Richard specialises in darker, more organic trailer cues and has scored the gritty soundscapes for British horror Truth or Dare, epic hybrid orchestral music for Japanese blockbuster Tenku No Hachi, and uplifting pop for the dramatic short film
Quietus. He has also had his music licensed around the world for TV shows including UFC, Got to Dance, and Catfish and has written music for clients including Google, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler and Unilever.
Computer Music: Tell us a little about your musical backgrounds
Vik: “I had trumpet and guitar lessons at a very young age but my enthusiasm initially grew with singing in the choir. I was surrounded by Indian classical music as a child as my uncle was a famous singer – Madhava Gudi. My cousin was also a movie star in India, so Bollywood songs chimed around my house every day. My school was selected to sing with Phillip Schofield and Andrew Lloyd Webber in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat; I was only 10 but I already knew music was the one for me. I picked up a guitar for my 15th birthday and formed a couple of bands at school and then learned about electronic music and DJing while studying engineering at UCL, finally ending up doing an audio engineering diploma post grad. I started producing beats and using Logic and Ableton for another five years before my first break in the music industry.”
Rich: “I grew up being exposed to lots of music, a kind of mix between pop cheese and film score (which kind of explains my own taste). At the age of 10 I asked for keyboard lessons, which I really enjoyed, but it was not until I discovered the guitar and the Smashing Pumpkins that music became a huge part of my life and my