>> Hi, my name's Chris Lennertz,
and I am a composer for film and television,
and sometimes video games as well as a songwriter.
[MUSIC] I have done lots of different kinds of things over the past 20 years.
Many comedies like Horrible Bosses,
and Ride Along, and Pitch Perfect 3.
Lots of kids films like Alvin and the Chipmunks and Hop.
A bunch of television like Supernatural, and Agent Carter,
as well as The Boys on Amazon,
and Lost in Space for Netflix.
I also am a very not secret lover of musicals.
I worked for two years with Alan Menken on a show
called Galavant and also did a movie with him called Sausage Party.
Last summer, I also did a movie called
UglyDolls where I wrote all the songs with Glenn Slater.
We even gotten performed by people like Lizzo,
and Nick Jonas, and Janelle Monae,
and Kelly Clarkson. I love doing that as well.
When I think about why I love doing this job,
I love writing music and telling stories,
it really comes from my childhood.
I was that kid who would sit there with a flashlight and
plow through all of the Narnia books and all of the Tolkien books.
Then when we got a VHS player,
I would stay up way past my bedtime and I'd sneak into
the basement just to watch Star Wars for the billionth time.
I was that kid and I really developed this love of fantasy,
and storytelling, and feeling what I would call big emotions, exploring new places.
That escapism thing, that's where my heart is.
It's things like Star Wars, and The Godfather,
and Forrest Gump, and Braveheart, and stuff like that.
I love that process,
the process of allowing someone who lives in Van Nuys,
or outside of Boston,
or in Philadelphia who literally does not have a horse,
has never swung a sword,
has never scored a winning touchdown in football,
or sunk the last basket.
It's the idea that I can go in and feel
that emotion that Jimmy
or whoever the kid at the end of Hoosiers when he sank that winning shot,
and Jerry Goldsmith's music got really loud.
There's that feeling where you feel like you're there.
You feel like I'm part of it and I'm experiencing that emotion that they're experiencing.
For me, I look for that in things that I choose to do,
and the jobs that I take that give me
that feeling back are the ones that I find the most inspiring,
and now in my career,
I'm able it really search those out.
It has a lot to do with the kinds of stories and the kinds of music it is,
but it also has to do massively with who you're working with.
There is nothing better for me than to
be able to be on a journey of telling a story with people that I love,
with a director that I love,
and producers that I love,
and music supervisors I love because even probably one of
the reasons I love theater so much is that it is a cast, it's a team.
It's an effort where you work together to tell the story.
Then you can hear whether it's audience applause in a theater
or audience applause on a stage if it's a theatrical thing,
that is what pays us all back.
That's where that feeling that you touched people
and that you gave them that experience of
feeling the emotion that they wanted to feel or that I
didn't even know they wanted to feel but they loved.
I think that's the best thing about this job and really working in
the movie industry or in the entertainment industry is to be
able to give that experience.
[MUSIC]