22 June 2006
IMM studio A 2.24
Christian Halten on music in Hollywood
Christian Halten graduated as a film score composer and sound designer. He studied Music Theory in Saarbruecken and Film Scoring and Sound Design at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. He has been serving as an assistant professor at the Filmakademie ever since. His work in film score composing brought him to Los Angeles for an extended time period, where he contributed to the scores of Hollywood blockbusters such as "Catwoman" (Score: Klaus Badelt) and "The Ring II" (Score: Hans Zimmer, Henning Lohner, Martin Tilmann). Mr. Halten worked at Hans Zimmer's Hollywood studios as part of the original score production team on several cues of these movies.
Additional to his works in scoring feature, documentary, animation, commercials and art films, Mr. Halten cooperated with companies like Waldorf (Microwave XT, Q, PPG Wave 2.V), Wizoo (Xphraze), Hartmann (Neuron) and Applied Acoustics Systems (String Studio, Lounge Lizard) in the field of sound design. Christian Halten was invited to serve on the jury of the young composer contest "Jugend komponiert 2006".
His own company SKYLIFE film music and sound design also serves as a music publishing company, specialising in producing music in surround sound. SKYLIFE's OFF SPACE DVD, a Horizon Surround Music Award Los Angeles nominated DVD, is one of the companies most sucessesful surround sound project. Furthermore, Christian Halten conceived and programmed the audio software SampleRobot in cooperation with Eric Moortz. The software allows the user to 'copy' acoustic and electronic instruments automatically and transforms them into virtual tools. SampleRobot was awarded the 2006 Special Innovations Price of the Music Exhibition in Frankfurt.