Spider-Man, Beetlejuice, The Simpsons, and a few others came to visit the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in November—via the Hollywood legend who gave them their sound.

GRAMMY-winning composer Danny Elfman took time off from his run of shows at the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) to visit with SFCM students in the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Department for a Q&A session. Students were also given the opportunity to look backstage at the inner technological workings of Elfman's performances on a tour of SFS given by SFCM's Director of Recording Services, Jason O'Connell (also a GRAMMY winner).

"You have the capacity to do anything here," Elfman enthused at the Q&A, held in SFCM's cutting-edge Studio G. "This sounds like a great program," he added, "the kind I would have loved to be part of had I ever gone to college."

SFCM Music Director Edwin Outwater and Danny Elfman in SFCM's Studio G.

"It was a dream come true to have Danny Elfman come to TAC for an interview," faculty member Matt Levine says. "His pioneering spirit and his incredibly unique compositional voice represent some of the highest achievements we strive for in TAC. We're also thrilled to be collaborating with the San Francisco Symphony in this way, and we look forward to hosting many more luminaries in the future."

Elfman's Q&A was moderated by SFCM's Music Director Edwin Outwater, who said, "It was such a pleasure to interview Danny Elfman at SFCM, and to see the faces of our students as they responded to his words and advice." He added, "I've been a fan of Danny since I heard Oingo Boingo as a kid in the 80’s, so I was quite starstruck as well."

Elfman spoke about his background growing up a film fan in Los Angeles. Inspired by the sounds of the punk and ska movements coming out of Britain in the late 1970s, he started his band, Oingo Boingo, before coming to the attention of Pee-Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens, who suggested Elfman to Tim Burton for their 1985 film starring the character.

"You never know where anything's going to come from," Elfman told students of that moment, revealing that he initially asked his manager to refuse the offer before changing his mind. "Any break you get, there's kind of two things at stake. One is persistence, and the other is the hope for a little bit of luck. Nobody I know who's made it in my industry didn't have a lucky break somewhere. But they had to be positioned for that lucky break."

Student Ihtesham Roy says his exposure to Elfman's music sprung from a childhood fixation, much like Elfman's, with film. "I used to watch the first three Spider-Man movies he scored like crazy as a kid," he says. "I used to watch them like breakfast, lunch, and dinner: My mom still makes fun of me for it."

"I don't think I even knew his name as a kid," Roy continued. "But as I grew up and watched more movies, he became a big name for me. I was sitting in the front row in the middle for the Q&A, and I was so nervous, but he was super-chill and answered my question about the relationship between composer and directors."

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Danny Elfman during a student Q&A at SFCM.

Elfman, who's done over a dozen scores with Tim Burton, has also regularly collaborated with directors Gus Van Sant and Sam Raimi. He said repeated collaboration depends on creative trust, between a composer and a director, but that he still gets as nervous presenting music to filmmakers as he did to Burton for Pee-Wee's Big Adventure back in 1985. "It's the hardest thing for composers," he said. "You've been working for weeks and weeks with all these ideas. You've got like three scenes, four themes, variations. You play that for the director for the first time and just pray that it clicks."

Though Elfman delved into his background and the technical aspects of his workflow, TAC student Thomas Stenzel was struck by something more general. "Danny is someone who is, truly, unapologetically himself," Stenzel says. "A lot of people like to say 'just be yourself' to find success; Danny outlined so many specific points where he doubled down on his own crazy ideas and how it ended up serving him in the long run. He inspired me not only to find my own voice, but to relentlessly chase it down and explore it."

Elfman repeatedly underlined his first experience with Burton, telling students that ultimately, pushing past his initial fear of failure set him on the path to where he is today. "If you're going to grow, you're going to have to push yourself, and if you're going to push yourself, failure is going to be there," he said. "You have to allow the possibility of doing something and failing, and then learning why you failed—so then when you do it again, you do it differently."

He closed his talk by telling the students, "Find out where your limits are, because you don't know until you push where they break, but don't set them in advance, don't pre-decide where they are. I just wish you a creative journey that ends up getting somewhere close to what you're imagining. Because whatever it's going to be, it's probably not what you're imagining right now, but it could be something way different and way better. Whatever it's going to be, good luck getting there."

Learn more about studying Technology and Applied Composition at SFCM.