It seems unlikely that the sound production studio where Richard Martinez works here in the basement of his modest home would factor in the business of making motion pictures, let alone play a major role in two Academy Award nominations for the film “Frida.”
Except for a small space devoted to his equipment, most of Mr. Martinez's half-finished basement, with its gray paneling, old furniture, storage boxes and retired refrigerator at the bottom of a creaky stairway, is more a reflection of subterranean suburbia than Hollywood.
Since 1989, however, Mr. Martinez has served as a music producer on 17 films, including blockbusters like “Alien 3” and “Batman Forever.” He has toiled, for the most part, at home in his own bat cave on digital tape machines, computers and mixing consoles neatly sequestered from the living quarters he shares with his wife, Cristina Altieri-Martinez.
“A lot of real professionals use a computerized music studio now from start to finish, creating in their basements, bedrooms, closets – wherever,” said Mr. Martinez. “The technology continues to shrink in size and gets easier to use.”
Most of Mr. Martinez's film credits stem from a close association with the composer Elliot Goldenthal, whose film scores for “Interview with the Vampire” and “Michael Collins” were past Oscar nominees. This year Mr. Goldenthal's original score for “Frida,” a film directed by Julie Taymor based on the life of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, and a song from the movie ('Burn It Blue', sung by Caetano Veloso and Lila Downs) are both nominees.
Soon after they met in 1985 Mr. Goldenthal started relying on Mr. Martinez's computer expertise and sound production assistance for his various projects. After working on several theater works together, all directed by Ms. Taymor, they were asked to tackle the film score and soundtrack for “Drugstore Cowboy,” which starred Matt Dillon. (Ms. Taymor and Mr. Goldenthal have a house in Garrison, in Putnam County.)
Bigger film projects then were offered to Mr. Goldenthal, and to meet the demands he assembled a four-person team that included Teese Gohl as supervising producer, Robert Ehlai as orchestrator, Joel Iwataki as sound engineer and Mr. Martinez, who is known as Rick, as electronic music producer.
“A lot of composers want to focus on writing their music, and that's what this team allows Elliot to do,” said Mr. Martinez. Starting with “Alien 3” in 1992, Mr. Goldenthal's team has completed the music to films, cable TV movies and two more of Ms. Taymor's theater productions. Mr. Martinez said he thought “Frida” was perhaps Mr. Goldenthal's “best film score, entertainment-wise” so far, and he also confessed that working on the film's music, which prominently features the guitarist Francisco “Pancho” Navarro and the singer Chavela Vargas (once Ms. Kahlo's lover), had kindled in him a renewed appreciation of his own Mexican heritage.
Chief among his duties as an electronic music producer, said Mr. Martinez, is collecting a palette of acoustic and electronic sounds from the library of digital samples he has amassed for Mr. Goldenthal to compose with on his own keyboards and computers. As Mr. Goldenthal completes each part of his work, it is archived by Mr. Martinez onto other computers and copied for the orchestrator and musicians. During the actual recording and mixing of the music Mr. Martinez oversees the computer technology that is used, and then later he prepares a database to track the music cues when the film is being edited. The entire process of music recording for a film can take more than six months “and is pretty insane at times,” he noted.
“Every project we do requires a different approach, but one thing that's always consistent is the framework that Rick provides,” said Mr. Goldenthal by phone from Los Angeles. “In essence, he's giving me all these new instruments to work with. He keeps coming up with surprising combinations of sounds.”
A good example of the sort of aural magic that Mr. Martinez conjures up can be found at the beginning of “Frida” when ethereal tones produced from a glass harmonica and Mr. Martinez's own crystalware segues into notes from an accordion and acoustic guitar.
A native of Chicago, Mr. Martinez, 51, grew up in a musical family: his grandfather, a Mexican immigrant, led a popular mariachi band, several aunts and uncles performed regularly, and his father gave up a career as a trombonist for steady employment as a paint chemist.
After attending the Berklee College of Music, Mr. Martinez lived in Boston before moving to New York in 1978. He spent two years on the road as a keyboardist for Blood, Sweat & Tears, toured another two years with Harry Belafonte and worked around the city until 1986 when he met his wife, then a divorced advertising sales director living in Scarsdale with three young children.
As he mastered the difficult art of parenting, Mr. Martinez also developed his already keen interest in computers and sound technology to the point where composers and musical artists were soon hiring him to design personal state-of-the-art music studios for them.
While Mr. Martinez has worked with a number of composers besides Mr. Goldenthal over the years, most recently with Michael Small on the “Nero Wolfe” series on A&E, an itch to write his own film scores, first realized in 1996 for the Steven Soderbergh-produced film “The Daytrippers,” has become more of a preoccupation lately. He wrote two tangos for the film “Bossa Nova,” directed by Bruno Barreto, and presently he is writing the score for a documentary about the historian and advocate Howard Zinn.
Sitting in his basement, Mr. Martinez said he was happy in his work space, but nonetheless he hopes someday to have a “really posh studio” above ground. Mr. Small, though, doesn't believe the move will happen.
“I asked Rick about clearing the basement out and finding a new place to work, but then I realized that all of the memorabilia and old equipment, the couch he shares with his dog, the stuff he can't throw away, it's part of his creative process,” said Mr. Small.