Pinar Toprak on being told a Turkish woman would never make it as a composer to scoring Captain Marvel & Justice League

It takes a special kind of determination to hire, finance and conduct a 70-piece orchestra for an audition you have no guarantee of securing a job from. Composer Pinar Toprak explains why she did just that for her score pitch for Captain Marvel. The Hans Zimmer protégé talks Headliner though her biggest chess moves.

The year was 1998, and unbeknownst to her, the soundtrack to Dreamworks film, The Prince of Egypt was about to change a young Pinar Toprak’s life. Born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey where she began her classical music education at the age of five, despite “not really knowing English at the time,” Toprak moved to LA aged 17 to study piano performance at the Berklee College of Music, although her true passion lay elsewhere.

“Everybody was telling me that majoring in film scoring is not a very smart idea,” she recalls, speaking to Headliner from her LA home during lockdown, although she jokes that her life usually resembles quarantine anyway.

“They said, ‘you're probably not going to make a career in film scoring as a Turkish woman; it's just not going to happen, it's going to be a waste. You should think about majoring in piano; you can be a teacher and play in sessions and just make better use of your degree’.”

Being young, Toprak almost believed them for a minute. She started her piano major, but it never felt right or made her happy. After leaving the practice room one day, she meandered down to Tower Records, and towards her true calling:

“The Prince Of Egypt had just come out, and in ‘98 if you wanted to actually preview a soundtrack, you would go to a listening booth, put your headphones on and listen. So I started doing that. It was 11:30pm, and they were going to close at midnight. They were announcing that they were going to close, but I couldn't let go of the soundtrack. I just couldn't stop listening to it!”

As the shop was about to close up for the night, Toprak decided to use the remaining $20 she had to her name to buy the soundtrack, which was written in the majority by Hans Zimmer and Stephen Schwartz.

“I had to eat and survive for the next three or four days – I was working three different jobs on campus,” she explains. “It was a really tough time financially. I made the decision to buy that soundtrack with my last money, and I just went to my place and I listened to it all night.”

First thing the next morning Toprak changed her major to film scoring.

“Even as I talk to you, the CD is right next to me,” she points out. “I have not written a single note of music without that CD next to me since 1998. Sometimes we have a full cup already and we just need that one last big drop to make things happen, and that soundtrack was that last big drop. It's a constant reminder of how one decision can really change the course of your life.

"I realised at that point that I’d rather fail at something that I love doing rather than succeeding by attempting something that really does not make me happy. That was a big decision. It was a big risk. I'm very grateful for that risk, and that really changed the course of everything else that followed.”

Toprak has always thought of every decision as a chess move, and when speaking to her it’s clear that when she sets her mind to something, the only possible outcome will be that she’ll be the one calling checkmate.

“I still think of everything like a chess move! I think: okay, this is where I want to get to and after this move, I'm going to do this. I call myself a flexible planner. I plan, but I adapt along the way.”

Being an ‘80s kid, Toprak was never without her walkman; she used to record the music coming out of the TV and listen to it back. The first soundtrack that made a big impression on her was John Williams’ London Symphony Orchestra score for the 1978 film, Superman.

“I must have been around eight,” she remembers. “It was just incredible – the soaring music had this unbelievable impact on me and my love for fulfilling music.”

Other composers that have made a lasting impact on Toprak include Italian composer, Ennio Morricone (the 1988 film, Cinema Paradiso is amongst one of her all time favourite scores), and Hans Zimmer, who she soon set her sights on working with.

“Working for Hans Zimmer was basically my goal at the time,” she asserts. “So how was I going to do that? I got an internship at Paramount Pictures’ music department – that became my first job at the age of 20. It was an incredible experience being on the scoring stage every day. Then I felt like I was ready to try reaching out to somebody at Hans' camp. And so that's what I did. I called various people who were working there because I knew I couldn't get to Hans directly. For about a month, I was pretty obnoxious. I was annoying myself,” she laughs.

“I figured, ‘what do I have to lose? Right now I'm not working for Hans, so the worst case scenario is I'm still not going to be working for Hans.”

Unsurprisingly, Toprak ended up working for Zimmer after working for somebody else for six months in a room next to his office.

“I made sure he saw me there when he got there, and I was still there when he left. After about six months of doing that, he offered me a job working for him – very casually in the hallway. I was like, ‘yeah!’”

However, what Toprak learned from Zimmer was beyond the craft of just film scoring:

“The most valuable thing that I've learned – which is something that you don't learn in school – is how to navigate meetings and the business entrepreneur side of the industry. His curiosity was infectious; he's a very curious person. He's about doing things a different way – a better way. I really love that mindset and that energy.”

Toprak’s confidence and composing skills rocketed, and today she has penned scores for Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel, DC’s Stargirl, Superman prequel series Krypton, HBO’s six-part docuseries McMillions, Epic Game’s massively popular/addictive online video game, Fortnite, has crafted the new main theme for Walt Disney World’s iconic EPCOT theme park, and wrote the music for Christina Aguilera’s 2019 Xperience show in Las Vegas.

Toprak broke into the big movie leagues and started her superhero streak when she worked with another composer she had long admired: Danny Elfman. He tasked Toprak with composing a portion of the score for the 2017 star-studded movie, Justice League.

“Another thing that I hold on to as I write music is a beautiful handwritten note he wrote me – which people don't do these days,” she realises. “It's framed on my desk and I look at it every day. He's not only a fantastic composer, but just a genuine, beautiful human being. He is the person that unlocked that part of my career.”

With one superhero hit under her belt, Toprak set her sights on Captain Marvel, although several years prior to that, she also pitched for Wonder Woman.

“It was a cold pitch, nobody asked me to demo for Wonder Woman,” she says. “I just wrote this track called Echoes Of Battle, and they actually really liked it! But obviously they hadn't asked me for the demo, and I didn't have the credits to support that kind of a film at that time.”

By the time Captain Marvel came around, Toprak gave it her all:

“I knew that an opportunity like that wasn’t going to come by every day. Now, I didn't think that I was going to get to film. Of course I wanted it! But I figured, I'm just going to do my best and even if I don't get it, hopefully with my effort they're going to remember me for the next one. So how do I make that impact? How do I stand out? I wanted them to remember me.”

Although she had the option to do it all in the box, Toprak hired and conducted a 70-piece orchestra (paying for it herself) to record her initial main theme for the movie, also sending in an additional audition tape on what she envisioned for the score.

“I wanted them to see me in front of the orchestra conducting because it was important for me that they knew that I could handle the orchestra,” she explains. “I wanted to make the most of it so that I didn’t look back and say, ‘man, I should have done this!’ That's the worst feeling for me.

"A couple of weeks after I got a call that I actually got it, which was just incredible. I lost feeling in my legs and I collapsed on the floor! It was like a movie moment – it was an incredible feeling. And then I couldn't tell anybody for weeks, which was like winning the lottery, but you can't tell anybody. It's changed my life!”

Stargirl

DC's Stargirl series premiered in May 2020, following the life of high school sophomore, Courtney Whitmore, who becomes the inspiration for a new generation of superheroes. Toprak worked closely with showrunner and show-creator, Geoff Johns to establish the tone of the score. All though mostly going with a traditional approach, one thing stands out for Toprak as being exceptional:

“For one thing, we had a live orchestra for every episode of the show, which is not common in TV shows these days! Geoff and I talked quite a bit about Back To The Future kind of influences, which is a score that I've always loved. There's a bit of that traditional approach and then there's quite a bit of hybrid elements as well, with different characters and villains that appear throughout the show. I've created different themes and sonic vibes for each one of them, so it's been a blast.”

Essential to Toprak’s workflow is Steinberg’s Cubase, which she has used on every project she has done in the last 10 years.

“My template is close to 2,000 tracks, so Cubase really speeds up my workflow to be able to have every different kind of articulation and sound at my fingertips,” she enthuses. “It just works the way my brain works. It's really easy for me to figure things out with it and to grow with it. It makes my workflow seamless. The goal is to get your ideas from your brain to the computer as fast as possible.”

Before she found Cubase, Toprak was using another DAW and was resistant to change:

“I kept an open mind and said, ‘I'm just gonna give this a try’ – nobody has to know. As I started using it, it was one ‘wow’ after another. They're constantly evolving and figuring out different ways of doing things. I can't imagine writing without Cubase now!”

Currently, Toprak has several projects in the works, although she can’t talk about them just yet. Headliner has no doubt they’re going to be anything less than epic.