The movie soundtracking legend helping Kiwi composers get Hollywood gigs

Karyn Rachtman
Photo: Beyond Blue

In the new series Sound Advice, Tony Stamp meets people working at the intersection of music and film.

This week, music supervisor Karyn Rachtman (a part-time Kiwi) talks about working on iconic movies like Boogie Nights and her mission to get music composed in Aotearoa onto American cinema screens.

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Born in California, Rachtman was struck by the amount of musical talent in New Zealand when she first made a home here seven years ago.

To support Kiwis keen to compose music for the entertainment industry she co-created the annual conference and workshop series Aotearoa Sync-Posium.

“I thought how can we upskill and educate the New Zealand community on how people put music to screens and what is expected of you and what’s not? We educate people about breaking into the business.”

Karyn Rachtman’s soundtrack supervision highlights:

‘Supermodel’ by Jill Sobule in the 1995 film Clueless:

This “quirky” song was written specifically by Sobule for the scene in which Brittany Murphy’s character Tai gets a makeover, Rachtman says.

“I always love when my job is to have songs written for the film and you get demos and you get people to write. That’s my favourite part of my job.”

‘Brand New Key’ by Melanie in the 1997 film Boogie Nights:

For a scene where aspiring porn stars Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) Rollergirl (Heather Graham) audition together, the “brilliant” Paul Thomas Anderson agreed to Rachtman’s suggestion of this 1971 song.

In another “insane” Boogie Nights scene the director had a satin-robed drug dealer sing along to Night Ranger’s 1983 hard rock hit ‘Sister Christian’ as one of his associates randomly lets off fireworks.

“How [Anderson] wrote that in his head and knew it was going to be to that song… I was like, why that song because that was always such a goofy song for me growing up. And that was just the most brilliant scene ever.”

‘Tangaroa Whakamautai’ by Maisey Rika on the soundtrack to the 2020 video game Beyond Blue:

Rachtman produced the soundtrack to this “beautiful, beautiful game” – inspired by the BBC Earth documentary Blue Planet with her son Otis (also a music supervisor).

It features Miles Davis’ first ever appearance in a video game and songs by a handful of New Zealand musicians including Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper and Maisey Rika.

Rachtman had just moved to New Zealand when she began working on the Beyond Blue soundtrack.

Rika’s 2012 song ‘Tangaroa Whakamautai’ ended up working so beautifully with the game it was used in the trailer, Rachtman says.

“It was so lovely to see all the comments in the game trailer of people asking ‘What is this song?”

Karl Sölve Steven’s score for the 2024 film Bookworm

Rachtman says it was “a flat-out honour” to have her name attached to this recent adventure comedy directed by Kiwi Ant Timpson and starring American actor Elijah Wood.

‘Bookworm Theme’ is composed by the “incredible” Karl Sölve Steven and features the skills of Australian-born whistler Molly Lewis.

“If you want a whistler, you get her.”

Moniker’s score for the 2024 film Saving Bikini Bottom

Tasked with finding a composer for this SpongeBob SquarePants spin-off, Rachtman’s producers were weighing up demos from Auckland composer Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper and the Wellington collective Moniker (Lukasz Buda, Conrad Wedde and Samuel Scott).

Eventually Moniker got the job and country singer Tami Neilson was enlisted by Rachtman to sing like “a squirrel from Texas” on the film’s country-fied theme song.

Thanks to funding from the NZ Film Comission’s Screen Production Rebate the NZSO performed the Saving Bikini Bottom score, Rachtman says.

“For the most part, all the music was done in New Zealand for Saving Bikini Bottom.”

Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper’s score for the 2025 film Plankton

This upcoming Netflix film will make SpongeBob fans very, very happy, Rachtman predicts.

After Bridgman-Cooper came close to getting the job of composing Saving Bikini Bottom, she says he was actually a perfect fit to write the score for Plankton, which was recorded with the Auckland Philharmonia.

“I’ve never worked on a score before where there were never really any notes to his music … His score was perfect and it was great.”

New Zealand musicians Princess Chelsea and Bret McKenzie also contribute songs to the Plankton soundtrack.

Mark Mothersbaugh’s score for the 2025 film A Minecraft Movie, recorded by the NZSO

American musician Mark Mothersbaugh usually gets the London Symphony Orchestra to play on his film scores, Rachtman says, but for the highly anticipated A Minecraft Movie she convinced him to go with the NZSO.

“[Mothersbaugh’s team] were nervous and it was really interesting. I was nervous because now I’m a board member of the NZSO and also the music supervisor on Minecraft.”

To Rachtman’s relief, Mothersbaugh and the film’s lead orchestrator Tim Davies were both “enamoured” with how the NZSO sounded at Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre.

“The NZSO is a world-class orchestra, I can now say that with such confidence. As a board member now, I would hope that we can get more New Zealand films utilising an orchestra, elevating the level of film within different budgets and also get more films over here to make London Symphony lose some work.”