by Nick Spacek
Composer Jongnic Bontemps is having one heck of a start to the summer. Last month saw the release of the open-world, co-op FPS, Redfall, developed by Arkane Austin and published by Bethesda Softworks, for which Bontemps created music that he explains is like “if the Goonies had trap music” where he combined traditional horror sounds with chamber strings and mixed it together to create ‘spooky hip-hop’ music with some electronic and techno elements.
On June 9th, Bontemps’ biggest project to date is released on the big screen. The seventh live-action instalment in the blockbuster film franchise, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, is the latest collaboration between director Steven Caple Jr. and Jongnic Bontemps, the duo having previously worked together on The Land and Creed II. It’s an impressive 2023 for a composer who only began working in the field professionally 13 years ago. We spoke with Jongnic Bontemps to discuss his rise.
STARBURST: This is a big couple of months for you. Redfall just came out at the start of May, and you’ve got Transformers: Rise of the Beasts coming out almost exactly a month later. That’s gotta be something for you, huh?
Jongnic Bontemps: It feels like I am having a bit of a moment! It feels like the leap of faith that I took 12-13 years ago to leave my software background and jump into a career in writing music for media is finally being – rewarded is not the right word – but at least it is culminating way bigger than I ever thought it could!
When you say that, like, what do you mean? What were your goals and dreams for success in taking this leap?
Well, I always wanted to do big movies. I always wanted to do action movies, and even the little music I was writing in my home studio at the time that only my wife and kids would hear was aspirational of this kind of music. It wanted to be this kind of music. I didn’t have the skills or the experience to write at it at the time, but that was what I was working toward.
But, even though this was sort of a dream, I never thought that would be a film like Transformers. When I first got into this, I was thinking about game music, and I wanted to be a video game composer. I was a big fan of games like Uncharted. That Uncharted series was amazing. I was like, “The music in that was amazing. That’s what I wanna do,” but I also knew I wanted to do movies, as well, when I finally figured this out.
I looked at the landscape, and I saw that game composers are very rarely asked to do film and TV stuff, but film and TV composers are regularly asked to do a game, so I said, “I’ve gotta start on film and TV and then migrate to games, right?” That was my career. I focused on film and TV, and I did lots and lots of short films and documentaries and eventually some TV series and that kind of stuff. I was having a pretty good career. I was like, “Okay, I’m happy.”
I was actually asked to do Redfall ’cause I had done some music on additional music on Call of Duty: WWII with a game composer called Wilbert Roget II, who’s amazing. He invited me to work with him on Call of Duty: WWII, and when the audio director from Redfall was looking for composers and saying, “A spooky hip hop score is what we’re looking for. Do you know anybody?” Wilbert referred me because I had done some stuff that was in that vein.
My score for United Skates and my score for Godfather of Harlem were hybrid scores that pulled in the ideas of hip-hop into underscore, so when they came to me with this idea for spooky hip-hop, I was like, “I’m all in. Let’s do this.” I was like, “Okay, this is great and I’m really happy doing this kind of thing.”
When Transformers: Rise of the Beasts came up as a possibility, it was because the director was this guy named Steven Caple Jr., who I met while I was at USC and I worked on his very first project in USC and everything after that – web series, his first feature, he brought me on as an additional composer on Creed II.
When he was tapped to do Rise of the Beasts, I was like, “You know what? I love you, man, but I understand. I probably not gonna go on this one with you, so I’ll catch you on the next one. I’m gonna keep working on my little stuff, and maybe I’ll catch you on the next one so I can get some more credits,” but he believed in me, and he put my name in the ring.
I ended up writing a demo that I believe captured what I believed the Transformers world was. I guess that demo resonated with some people because they ended up giving me a meeting, and a few months later, I was hired to be the composer. I never thought that that was ever gonna happen.
What are the challenges for you as a composer when these movies have been going on for almost 20 years now, but this is also kind of a prequel, kind of a sequel? There’s a lot going on. How do you honour the 20-year history of this film franchise – to say nothing of the animated series and the animated movie and the video games and the comic books and all these things?
Right. The good news is that I was in love with Transformers as a kid. I had the toys, I watched the animated series. I watched the animated movie. When the Michael Bay Films came out, I was first in line at the theatre to watch all of those. I wouldn’t call myself a Transformer stan because I know people who are Transformer stans now, and I was like, “Okay, y’all really love Transformers. I love Transformers too. So I’m gonna put myself in the right position here.”
But I do love the franchise, and I love the world and when. I was asked to come and be a part of this. I already had a deep love and respect for the music of the movies and the music that Steve Jablonsky wrote. I knew the themes. I could sing them. I was in love with the music. I listened to the albums, all this stuff. I was a big fan of those scores, so when I was asked to come in and do something, I knew the music that I was writing had to be of that world. It had to have what I would call “nobility and honour,” which was so intrinsic to that sound and was gonna be important.
I also knew it had to be a hybrid orchestral score that merges both the humanism of the orchestra with obviously the electronics and precision and the mechanics of synthesizers. Those things were sort of set in stone for me because I understood the world, I understood the assignment, and these are the things that are part of that world.
Where the challenge that came to me is, “How can I take these tools and create something new – create something a little different?” One of the things that they were doing was trying to create a new chapter in the franchise. I know that they hired a director like Steven Caple Jr. because they wanted to do something new, and that’s gonna be across the entire board, so that included music. How can I take this legacy and then create something new with that legacy?
That was a huge challenge, so I had to rely on a couple of things. One is I knew that the movies took place in Brooklyn in ’94, so I said, “Okay, that’s almost like the second version of hip hop, right?” Not quite the birth, but let’s say maybe like the second wave of hip hop. That was an era that I grew up in, and I understood that music, so it was about how can I bring the essence of that music into the score, right? This is not a hip-hop score, this is a Transformers score, but I wanted it to have that little hip-hop seasoning.
One of the things I want to get into right away is the sound of the Roland 808 drum machine, which is so iconic for that era. You would instantly hear that drum machine, and you’re like, “Boom!” It brings you right back, so I said, “We have to make sure that this drum machine and the sounds of this drum machine are present in the score when we’re in Brooklyn.”
Then the next thing I thought about was, well, this journey takes us to Peru, right? I wanna make sure that we honour the music of Peru and the culture of Peru, and how can we integrate that sound again into a Transformers score? I called a friend of mine who was a Peruvian composer, and he gave me a deep dive into Peruvian music. He gave me so many YouTube links and recordings of music from the Andes, music from Cuzco, music from the jungle, and I kind of settled on music from the coastal Afro-Peruvian Tradition.
So I started thinking about, “Okay, if I wanna bring in the Afro-Peruvian grooves, how does that work?” And I met a guy through my journey – well, he’s not a guy, he’s actually a percussion legend named Alex Acuña – and he brought his troop in, and we were able to then start work hopping how we could integrate some of these grooves in there.
So for me, it was not only about honouring the legacy of and the tradition of the past movies but bringing in the flavour of the era, time, and cultures right, that we are visiting and travelling through to this movie. I think those two things merged together with, obviously, my voice, gave us something new for the franchise.
But it was a struggle. I mean, I’d been on this project for two years, so during that two years, there was a lot of music in the garbage. A lot of failed attempts, a lot of things that no one will ever hear because we went really crazy, and it’s like, “Oh, that was nice, but that didn’t work out so well.” There’s a lot of that going on here, but I think where we ended up is something that will stay true to the tradition of the series but feel new, and I hope that the fans really enjoy it.
You got to really, really live the dream that you had when you first took this leap.
It is very true, but maybe the more accurate thing is, yes, I always dreamed of doing movies of this size, right? But it was a dream that I was okay with it, never being realized. Another thing that’s very sobering to me is that I’m the first African-American to do a movie of the size, to compose the score for a movie of the size.
There was no person before me to open the door and say, “Hey, this is something that is a possibility.” I was very happy doing my TV series and video game and all this kind of stuff, so this exceeded my wireless expectations – and also so quickly. I didn’t do 40 blockbuster films, and then now I’m asked to do Transformers, right?
My biggest prior project was probably Redfall, or Creed II, where I was really the additional composer. Ludwig Göransson was the main composer on that. Quite honestly, it was a huge leap and something that I did not expect to happen this early in my career.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is released in cinemas on June 9th from Paramount, with Milan Records set to release the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack the same day.
