Biography
Benjamin Speed is a maverick screen composer, music producer and all-round renaissance man. He spent his musically formative years as Mister Speed, a loud-mouthed braggart, extreme stunt performing singer, MC and songwriter in Australian band The New Pollutants; an experimental and darkly zany hip-hop duo influenced by 8-bit computer games, 1950's/60's pop music and old film soundtracks. As The New Pollutants, Benjamin devised and performed a critically acclaimed live score to the 1927 Fritz Lang silent film 'Metropolis', which merged classical scoring, electronic experimentalism, industrial soundscapes and pop sensibilities to the film's narrative and had a highly successful festival performance run including the Commonwealth Games Festival, The Sydney Opera House, Adelaide Film Festival, MONA-FOMA Festival, and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) among others.
This experience ignited a fervent passion for film composition, and since his foray in to the world of the screen, Benjamin has scored over 50 films, most recently including 'The Portable Door' starring Christoph Waltz and Sam Neill, and 'Monolith' starring Evil Dead Rise's Lily Sullivan. Earlier in his career he composed for '52 Tuesdays' which won the Berlinale Crystal Bear and Sundance Film Festival Best Director awards, and documentary 'Embrace', directed by 2023 Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt, which became an online sensation and spurned the follow up 'Embrace Kids'. Since moving to Los Angeles, Benjamin has also worked with directors Robert Stromberg, Louis Leterrier and The Jim Henson Company on a Netflix series adaptation of 'The Dark Crystal' and composed on 'At Last' by famed Chinese comedian/personality Liu Yiwei. Working with Closer Productions, he composed for the socially impactful documentary 'In My Blood It Runs', hit series 'The Hunting', and was nominated for Best Music at the 2023 AACTA Awards for his score to 'Aftertaste'. In his career he also scored the multiple award winning animated film 'The Cat Piano', narrated by legendary Australian musician Nick Cave; the Australian Documentary Prize winning 'The Snowman'; The AFI Award winning 'A Northern Town'; The MTV 180 Project winning 'Dungoona'; the Comic-Con winning 'Street Angel'; and three Tropfest Australia finalists, 'Carnivore Reflux', 'Glass' and 'The Maestro'.
Benjamin has won one and been nominated for three APRA Screen Music Awards, won Best Score at the St Kilda Film Festival and was nominated for an MPSE Golden Reel Award for Music Editing. He also holds a Bachelor degree in Music (Technology) from the Elder School of Music and a Masters of Arts (Screen Music) degree from AFTRS. Other than music and screen stories, Benjamin loves Settlers of Catan, playing soccer, and drinking ludicrously sized mugs of unreasonably weak tea. He also is obsessed with the notions of unexplained scientific and sociological phenomena; interdimensional time and space travel; and has been waiting for a neural-linked helmet to translate musical thoughts directly into sonic realities for the past 20 or so years.
"When I was born, I was named by my brother and sister after Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and Peter Rabbit. From day one I've been a dreamer and my dreams are a big influence on me. As a teenager they began to literally manifest in my waking consciousness which has immensely shaped my creative style and life philosophy. I use dreams to gather ideas and refine my music, as well as to help guide my most important life choices. Ultimately my greatest wishes are to transcend time and space by going inside my own mind, and to have the music I created shot out into space as one of the examples of human artistic endeavour." - Benjamin Speed
2 wins and 10 nominations
