House of the Dragon music editor was surprised at his triple Emmy nomination

Music is nourishing for the soul. The language of music is even understood by people who cannot read or write. Some of the top scores in the industry have been used in both House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones. Hence there’s no wonder the show’s music staff has been awarded a number of times in history, with another win (possibly) on the way.

Music editor David Klotz expresses surprise over his Emmy nominations

Music Editor David Klotz has received triple nominations at this year’s Emmy, including one for House of the Dragon, the other two being Dahmer and Stranger Things. He told Gold Derby, “It never gets old! It’s very exciting. I feel grateful. I feel lucky that I’ve had the opportunities I’ve had to work on such incredible shows, with such incredible sound teams. The best part of the whole process for me is being able to work with all these incredibly talented people as a team.” 

How music editors work on a particular scene

Klotz went on to describe how he edits a piece of music for a scene, “As a music editor I’m the person putting the music into the show. That’s the one easy way to describe what I’m doing. What goes along with that often is I’m working with the composer. We sit down at the beginning of a project and decide where music’s going to go into the movie or the show, where it’s going to start and where it’s going to stop. I create a set of blueprints that everyone on the project uses called spotting notes.”

“The composer writes the music, delivers the music, we have scoring sessions and all that fun stuff and then we put the music into the show, and that’s where the fun part begins, because nothing ever stays the same anymore. Picture is constantly changing. Visual effects are constantly messing up scenes.”

He added, “I have to continually adjust the music to make it work, which can be challenging because we’ve spent all this money scoring with this beautiful orchestra, and then they chop the scene in half, and you’ve got to figure out, how can I make the music still work in the scene?”

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