Introducing Your Speakers

Starting at Pixar in 1990 as the studio’s third animator, Docter collaborated with John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton in developing the story and characters for Toy Story, Pixar’s first full length animated feature film, for which he also served as supervising animator.  He served as a storyboard artist on A Bug’s Life, and wrote initial story treatments for both Toy Story 2 and WALL•E.

Docter’s interest in animation began at the age of eight when he created his first flipbook.  He studied character animation at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) in Valencia, California, where he produced a variety of short films which have shown in animation festivals around the world, and won a Student Academy Award®.  Upon joining Pixar, he animated and directed several commercials, and has been nominated for four Academy Awards® including Best Animated Feature (Monsters, Inc.) and Best Original Screenplay (WALL•E).

Docter currently resides in Piedmont, California with his wife and their two children.

JOHN OTTMAN has enjoyed success as both a film composer and a film editor. His long association with director Bryan Singer dates back to their co-directorial debut on the short film “Lion’s Den,” which Ottman also co-directed.

Ottman went on to win a BAFTA Award and earned an American Cinema Editors Eddie Award nomination for his editing work on Singer’s acclaimed feature film directorial debut, “The Usual Suspects,” for which he also composed the score.

He has since teamed with Singer as both composer and editor on “Apt Pupil,” “X2”, “Superman Returns” and the Tom Cruise thriller, “Valkyrie,” where he also served as an executive producer.

Ottman’s additional film credits as a composer include “Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang,” “House of Wax,” “Hide and Seek,” “Cellular,” “Gothika,” “Trapped,” “Eight Legged Freaks,” “Pumpkin,” “Bubble Boy,” “Lake Placid,” “Incognito”, “The Cable Guy.” He is currently composing for the upcoming “Orphan” and “Astroboy.”

One of the foremost talents in film music today, Golden Globe-nominated composer Christopher Young has scored an impressive number of features in virtually every genre, all with strikingly original music. The spine-tingling “Hellraiser” showcases the composer’s seminal upbringing in horror; the new-techno sound of “Swordfish” displays his versatility; the resonant, genuine Celtic sounds of “The Shipping News” display his attention to detail; to the heart-pounding rhythms of “Spider-Man 3” are all evidence of his willingness to experiment. These scores are among the nearly 100 films that embody the work of this prolific composer. Young was recently awarded BMI’s prestigious Richard Kirk Career Achievement Award; past recipients include Danny Elfman, John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith.

Young says he has been blessed with his career so he gives back to the film music community.  He has taught a film scoring class at USC for over ten years, a two-term past president of The Film Music Society and the president of the Madrid Film Music Festival in Spain.  He has also purchased a residence to house students and struggling young composers.

Allison Wright Clark’s diverse career has emphasized the fusing of creative projects to music. Beginning at Konami Computer Entertainment, she coordinated music production for smash video games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Frogger, and the original Metal Gear Solid series. Soon afterwards she added commercial production to her resume for clients like Sears, Quaker Oats, Helene Curtis, Miller Brewing and many others.

In 1996 she produced music and sound design for commercial campaigns with many composers such as Hans Zimmer, Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, Gavin Greenaway, Jeff Rona for clients like Nike, Land Rover, Coca-Cola, and Universal Studios. She then managed the busy Media Ventures’ music editorial department on projects like Blade II, Wonderland, Live From Bagdad, and Six Feet Under. In 2002 she collaborated with composer Klaus Badelt working on the film scores for Pirates of the Caribbean, The Recruit, Basic, K-19, and Ned Kelly.

Recently, she completed the music supervision on ABC Family’s sci-fi comedy, The Middleman, Jeff Fisher’s Killer Movie, and new The Broken Lizard comedy, The Slammin’ Salmon. She currently is working on the TV pilot “The Good Wife” starring Juliana Margulies, Christine Baranski and Chris Noth.

J.A.C. Redford is an accomplished composer of concert, chamber and choral music, film and television scores, and music for the theater. His music has been featured on programs at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the Lincoln Center in New York, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Redford has written the scores for more than three dozen feature films, TV movies or miniseries, including The Trip to Bountiful, One Night with the King and Disney’s Oliver & Company. He has composed the music for nearly 500 episodes of series television, including multiple seasons of Coach and St. Elsewhere (for which he received Emmy® nominations).

Collaborating with other artists, Redford has orchestrated, arranged or conducted for Academy Award®-winning composers, James Horner, Alan Menken, Randy Newman, Thomas Newman and Rachel Portman, as well as for Terence Blanchard, Danny Elfman, Mark Isham, Marc Shaiman, and Cirque du Soleil’s Benoit Jutras, on projects including The Little Mermaid, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Perfect Storm, Spiderwick Chronicles and Pixar’s WALL-E. He has written for and recorded with Grammy Award®-winning artists Joshua Bell, Steven Curtis Chapman, Bonnie Raitt and Sting.

Over the past 20 years, Dan Savant and his two companies have been involved in music recording and production for television shows, records, major motion pictures and almost every major theme park in the world. In 1978, Savant started his music production company, Savant Productions. His band performed at large parties for ABC, Universal and Disney Studios as well as charity events for The City Of Hope and Children's Hospital. In the 1980s, Savant Productions Inc. moved into television and film recording and producing. In 1997, he formed Angel Song Inc. and worked with this newest creative company as Music Director/Producer for the Paralympic Winter Games of 2002 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
After starting Big Phat Band in 2000 with Gordon Goodwin, the two produced 4 CDs that have garnered multiple Grammy nominations. Dan also produced the orchestral and choir music in London for Mel Gibson’s record-breaking film “The Passion of the Christ”. 
Savant’s solo trumpet playing can be heard on the film “Sin City”, and on the Golden Globe winning film and soundtrack “Sideways”, as well as the newly released “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”.

He lives in Southern California with his wife and three children.

Born into a musical family, Rob Simonsen began playing the piano by ear at an early age - his musical experiments inspired by film scores, jazz, orchestral and electronic music. At the encouragement of his grandmother, who taught voice, Rob continued his pursuit of music and the piano through college. This pursuit eventually led to his first foray into filmmaking, the scoring of the film Westender. Although it was initially intended as a short, Westender grew to feature-length proportions, exhibiting in film festivals, winning awards and eventually gaining distribution, both domestically, through Warner Bros, and globally. Critics described Simonsen’s score as "...unusually rich" (Variety), "resonant" (Combustible Celluloid) and "vibrant and powerful" (dvdtalk.com)

At Westender’s 2003 Seattle International Film Festival premiere, Rob met and befriended acclaimed film composer Mychael Danna. Shortly thereafter, Rob began to orchestrate, compose, and produce music both with Mychael and on his own. He has worked on such titles as Little Miss Sunshine, Capote, Surf's Up, Fracture, Breach, and The Nativity Story, among others. Rob and Mychael recently completed season 1 of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse and Fox Searchlight’s 500 Days Of Summer.

Rob currently lives in Los Angeles.

As Associate Director of Film/TV Relations at BMI, Anne Cecere’s current duties include signing new composers and songwriters while maintaining relationships with existing BMI affiliates, including John Williams, Thomas Newman, Danny Elfman, and John Ottman to name a few. Ms. Cecere also serves as BMI’s liaison with such organizations as The Society of Composers & Lyricists, Film Independent, South by Southwest Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the Game Audio Network Guild, Association of Independent Music Publishers and the California Copyright Conference, where she currently sits on the board of directors. Anne regularly visits with a wide array of composers, publishers and songwriters in diverse genres of music, to explore their needs, enforce their royalties, and insure the placement of their compositions in the marketplace.

Before joining BMI in 2004, Anne had the pleasure of working as Managing Director for Earle Tones Music with multiple award-winning composer Mark Isham. Upon completing her contract, Ms. Cecere’s contribution to six Mark Isham films include: Miracle, The Cooler, Highwaymen, Twisted, Spartan, and the 2006 Academy Award-winning film, Crash.

Ms. Cecere’s knowledge and experience have provided her with opportunities to speak as an authority on craft and culture of the music industry before several universities, conservatories, music festivals and trade associations. Ms. Cecere’s professional associations include: Los Angeles Women in Music; Hollywood Arts, where she serves on the leadership board; the National Association of Professional Women; the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences; and The Women’s Industry Network of Los Angeles, which she co-founded.

A former opera singer, Ms. Cecere is a graduate of the prestigious University of Miami School of Music with a degree in Music Business and Entertainment Industries (MBEI).

In his twenty-five years in L.A.'s music business, Mike Watts has enjoyed an amazing career. His orchestrations and piano and synth tracks have been used by the likes of such film scoring legends as John Williams, John Debney, James Newton Howard, James Horner, Mark Isham, and Lalo Schifrin, among others. He has also worked on many of Clint Eastwood’s films, with "Unforgiven" being one of his first projects.

Watts work on films has been diverse, with films like Lars and the Real Girl, Elf, Sin City, The Black Dahlia, Spiderman 3, Bruce Almighty, and The Devil Wears Prada serving as a sample display of his skill.

In addition to film, Watts has been involved in television, working on shows like The Simpsons, Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, The Academy Awards, and The Grammy Awards.