Hans Zimmer is one of Hollywood’s most sought after composer’s – he’s worked on over 500 projects in film and tv from blockbuster movies to documentaries like the Frozen Planet.
Even if you don’t know his name, you will have heard his music.
Of course there are many factors to his success, such as his outstanding talent and being good to work with, but one thing really jumped out at me whilst watching Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel.
He has a client avatar and for every movie score he composes he asks “what would Doris think?”
His avatar comes from when he was playing working men’s clubs in northern England in a band he joined after leaving school.
In his words:
We were the entertainment nobody listened to. We were so bad. Up north, We would be the support act to the stripper. And it was interesting because it was the 80s and it was Margaret. Thatcher and it was coal miners strike.
Woh, it was rough up north. People were so frustrated. You know you left London and you entered another world, entered another country and this country was a country that was desperate and it was poor, and it was everything that you could only imagine of the left behind and of the forgotten.
And to this day I have this person I write my music for, and she’s fictitious. She’s called Doris and she lives in Bradford, and she has a great coat, and you know uncertain age. She’s got two terrible boys, I mean they are so Ill behaved and her hair dye job isn’t very good, you know and she works really hard throughout the week.
And come the weekend she has a choice. She has a choice of going to the pub, having a drink, or she has a choice for coming and seeing one of our movies.
And she’s a hero to me because she works hard. And so when she comes to see one of our movies, I want to make sure that she gets her money’s worth. And I promise you I mean, every movie I sit there and I go what would Doris think?
Who is your hero? Who is your Doris?