Ian Hultquist on Dead City, One Of Us Is Lying, Assassination Nation and Frequent Collaborators

July 16, 2024

Soundtracks, Scores and More Staff

To a 9-year-old kid in suburban Illinois, the world of Hollywood film composing was so foreign and faraway. Ian figured composers like John Williams had decades and decades of experience as actual musicians, and so for now Ian would just try to play their melodies on his alto sax and emulate the punk bands he loved with his guitar. When he finally got to Berklee, however, he had the realization.

BY JASON LAZARCHECK

 

 

Ian Hultquist’s career in music involves everything from alt-pop to zombies.

As a composer, Ian most recently scored The Walking Dead spinoff Dead City (AMC+) and the series One Of Us Is Lying (Peacock). He’s worked on dozens of films, including Assassination Nation, Die in a Gunfight, and Yes God Yes. 

He’s also co-composed shows and movies with Drum & Lace, aka Sofia degli Alessandri-Hultquist. As husband-wife collaborators, Ian and Sofia co-scored the TV series Dickinson, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Good Girls, and movies such as Night Teeth and Rosaline.

That’s when I really started trying to write my own songs as well as playing music with other people, forming bands and my first foray into collaborating. And that just stuck with me and became a part of who I was and what I did.

Ian studied film scoring at Berklee but his journey to becoming a Hollywood composer first took him around the world, touring as a founding member of the popular indie pop band Passion Pit.

Between that group, Ian’s work with numerous filmmakers, and his co-scores with Drum & Lace, he clearly welcomes collaboration with other artists. This goes all the way back to his middle school years.

That’s when I really started trying to write my own songs as well as playing music with other people, forming bands and my first foray into collaborating. And that just stuck with me and became a part of who I was and what I did.

Ian grew up in Highland Park, a suburb north of Chicago. His family moved there when he was 8 or 9, and that’s where he first started to explore music. Around when he was 12 or 13, Ian got his first guitar, because he wanted to be able to play all the songs he was hearing on the radio. Green Day, Blink-182, and Incubus. New metal pop punk. 

I wanted to be the next Nigel Godrich. My grades were not good enough to get into that program so I had to explore a bit and eventually came across film scoring, which was a very “duh” moment for me, because as obsessed as I was with music, I was more obsessed with film, watching movies, talking about movies. And it never occurred to me until two years into college that I could combine those two together.

I would be on the phone with friends in 7th grade and they would be like, “Can you please stop strumming your guitar in the background? It’s very distracting…” No one in my family was a musician. So it’s not like I grew up with piano lessons or anything. I think my ear was attracted to it, I guess. My dad would play The Beatles a lot and Bob Dylan. And then in 5th grade I started playing alto saxophone in the school jazz band, and I think that was my first official “I’m going to play music.” But I never even really thought of myself as a musician.

 

Once Ian started collaborating with friends in bands, that was when music stuck with him all throughout school.

It was always around me, kind of an extension of me. Just constantly playing with different friends, making horrible rackets in the basement, shaking the floorboards upstairs. And then continuing playing in school groups as well, in jazz band and whatnot. But I was never a soloist. I never wanted to be a soloist. I really liked being part of the group, part of the overall sound, and I was more interested in the arrangement of things, instead of “Look at me rip a solo.”

In addition to playing music with friends, Ian also liked to draw. When it came time to start looking at colleges, he considered art school but got into Berklee College of Music in Boston. He originally went there thinking he wanted to be a producer.

I wanted to be the next Nigel Godrich. My grades were not good enough to get into that program so I had to explore a bit and eventually came across film scoring, which was a very “duh” moment for me, because as obsessed as I was with music, I was more obsessed with film, watching movies, talking about movies. And it never occurred to me until two years into college that I could combine those two together.

Ian didn’t imagine he’d have a career in film until he was halfway through college, but he distinctly remembers when he went to see his first movie in theaters. 

I went to see Honey I Shrunk the Kids when I was like three-and-a-half, and I think that was a very formidable moment, and it just stuck with me. And all growing up I was constantly seeing movies. Both my sister and I, we were raised by all the movies we watched. Memes didn’t exist yet but we basically talked like walking memes, because we would recite lines from movies to each other all the time. I really feel like that, I think more so than music, was what sucked me in and drew my attention. But once the movie was over I’d go back to playing guitar.

In addition to Ian’s childhood obsession with movies, he also appreciated movie soundtracks from a young age. Even if he didn’t yet see film composing as a possible career, teenage Ian connected to film scores and one iconic composer and theme in particular.

I was very aware of John Williams, because when I was starting to play alto saxophone, the only thing I could play was the Jurassic Park theme, and I think I had a book of top TV and film melodies that I would play on saxophone, so I think I was exploring the world of film scoring very early on but not realizing what it was really or thinking, “Oh, I could make this something that I do.” 

To a 9-year-old kid in suburban Illinois, the world of Hollywood film composing was so foreign and faraway. Ian figured composers like John Williams had decades and decades of experience as actual musicians, and so for now Ian would just try to play their melodies on his alto sax and emulate the punk bands he loved with his guitar. When he finally got to Berklee, however, he had the realization.

“Wait, I can study film scoring.” This should have been obvious for a very long time. I don’t know why it took this long to figure out. Once I figured that out, this should have been my move all along, because it just makes so much sense. It’s what I love.

There’s a big difference between making the decision to pursue film scoring and actually scoring films. Ian needed to acquire new skills to become a composer. He made the most of his classes at Berklee. His professors would have students work on scenes from TV shows.

There’s an infamous X-Files scene that everyone from Berklee at the time had nightmares about, having to score. Or scenes from Alias I remember.

Even then at the time, however, some of the curriculum felt dated and didn’t reflect the practical realities of film scoring, such as contemporary tools and software. On the other hand, Ian was amazed by the music technology classes he took.

I was really lucky. I lived downstairs in the house I was in from two BU students, and one of them, Eli Stonberg, was a filmmaker and already starting to make some short films, and he let me score them. And then I met a couple other people from there who let me score some stuff. So I was already starting to get my feet wet in that a bit, just kind of getting experience, trying things out. Not really knowing what I’m doing, just being like, “I’m going to try writing music for your story, and see what happens.”

Those really got me started with figuring out how to produce music. How to use our computers as instruments. That stuff is invaluable at this point, because that’s what we all needed to do… The classes that were most interesting to me were the ones where you actually studied film and theory and talked about story, and those were the ones I feel enriched my experience the most.

During his college years, in addition to his classes, Ian found many ways to collaborate creatively, honing his skills as a composer by scoring dozens of student films and independent projects, as well as continuing to play in rock bands.

I kept on playing music with people when I was in school. I would just make friends with people in the dorm or around school, or from other schools, like Emerson was nearby and there was a lot of really amazing creative people there, and we would just jam all the time. We would form a band for like two months, play one show, and get bored and do something else, and just repeat that cycle over and over with different formations.

Ian’s collaborations in various Boston bands and his schoolwork at Berklee contributed to his growth as a musical artist, but the best way to learn about film scoring to score films. Ian began to work with young filmmakers in Boston, scoring their short films outside of school. He took on as many projects as he could find, and he didn’t have to look far.

I was really lucky. I lived downstairs in the house I was in from two BU students, and one of them, Eli Stonberg, was a filmmaker and already starting to make some short films, and he let me score them. And then I met a couple other people from there who let me score some stuff. So I was already starting to get my feet wet in that a bit, just kind of getting experience, trying things out. Not really knowing what I’m doing, just being like, “I’m going to try writing music for your story, and see what happens.”

 

Ian is clearly open to new discoveries and whatever the next collaboration will be. But he’s also deeply driven, and he juggled a lot in his 20s. Even as he made great progress with his film composing, one of his many Boston-area band formations was not like the others, and Ian decided to ride that wave.

Passion Pit started at the end of college… as one of those “let’s start a band for a couple months and then break up and do something else,” and then it just stuck. I had met Michael Angelakos through friends of friends, just playing music together. We’d already been playing in a couple different groups, trying out different things. And he had written most of the Chunk of Change EP at first, sans a couple songs. And he showed it to us, and we were like, “Oh, this is great. Let’s figure out if we can figure out how to play these live, and see what happens.”

Ian ends a lot of his anecdotes with the phrase “see what happens.” In this case, it meant putting his pursuit of film scoring on hold.

At Berklee, they basically told you, if you want to pursue this once you graduate, the second you walk off that graduation stage, move to LA and email every composer to see if you can be their assistant or intern or whatever it is. And then you’ll work for them for ten years, you might start ghostwriting, and eventually maybe you’ll get a credit. And I was like, “No. I don’t want to do that. I’d rather see where this band goes, for now, and then see what happens.”

In Passion Pit, Ian played guitars and keyboards, and it was his first real introduction to synthesizers. The band caught on very quickly within the Boston music scene, and Ian thinks they got somewhat lucky with their timing.

It was the right mixture of dance and indy and electronic but with really big pop attitude. So people got excited about it very quickly. To the point where when we graduated, instead of me pursuing scoring more, I was like, “I’m just going to be in this band, and see what happens,” because, as much as I love film, there was also music, and being in a band, was just what we all wanted to do.

Passion Pit toured the world, playing everywhere from Lollapalooza to Saturday Night Live, and they made a chart-topping album in 2012 entitled Gossamer with several hit singles including “Take A Walk.”

So I would be in hotel rooms or sometimes in green rooms backstage working on a commercial demo and then going out to play a show and then coming back and finishing it. Sometimes I’d be in my bunk with my laptop trying to write music in Ableton. 

The band really took over Ian’s life for the next few years, without question. Then, during their first break from touring, after almost three years straight, and that’s when he decided he really wanted to do scoring, and he refocused his efforts, seeking out collaborators.

I just start cold-emailing friends. Anyone I went to high school with, people I met in college that I knew might be in LA working in the industry in some form or fashion. A lot of them were assistants to people. Might be in the documentary world, that might be in the narrative TV world. And thankfully a couple actually wrote back to me and were like, “Actually, yeah, we’re doing a short film, completely no money but if you wanna do it, hey, we’d love to have you.” And that’s when I first got my hands on some scoring projects that were of slightly bigger stature. Granted, I was literally doing them for free, but at least they felt professional at the time. 

He was doing as many short films as he could. He got into commercial writing, doing a lot of commercial demos, which helped him learn how to write quickly and try to make his productions sounds as good as they could. And he continued that while Passion Pit was back on tour.

So I would be in hotel rooms or sometimes in green rooms backstage working on a commercial demo and then going out to play a show and then coming back and finishing it. Sometimes I’d be in my bunk with my laptop trying to write music in Ableton. 

Ian carried on doing that in 2012 while he and the band were on tour for the big new album, Gossamer. Once, when Passion Pit was doing a music video shoot with a slightly bigger budget that included a cast, Ian connected with another collaborator.

One of the actors in it was David Dastmalchian and I immediately recognized him from The Dark Knight because I’m a huge Batman geek, and we just became friendly and started talking that day, bonded very quickly. I remember walking around with him and just being like, “Yeah, I’m in this band but what I really want to do is scoring.” And he was like, “Oh, that’s really amazing. I also write and I have this script for a film called Animals that I’ve been trying to get made for years. Maybe if anything ever happens with it, I’ll give you a call.” And I think I clung to him and was like, “Is Animals happening yet? You ready? You want to do this?” And we just became friends.

It took a year or two, but when Animals actually went into production, they hired Ian to do it. This was his first narrative feature, and it’s a special movie for him, not just because it was his first, but because of the memorable collaborations. According to Ian, everyone learned lessons on that movie, including Collin Schiffli, as it his first narrative feature as director. Because it was the first movie for everyone, the collaborators were all involved early on in the process, and together they spent a long time talking about the film, long before production.

I remember I was writing music for it a long time even before they thought about shooting. I was so inspired by the story and so excited by the prospect of it. And one of the big conversations we had was we wanted the score to feel like it’s part of Chicago, as part of the city. I remember in January 2013. Bitter cold January in Chicago. Collin was doing location scouting, and I was like, “I’ll come with you.” And Sofia actually came with us, as well, and we were just field recording around the city. So we went to Lincoln Park Zoo and got field recordings of big cats. Field recording of the city ambiance. And I tried to inject that into the score as much as I could.

Of course, Ian knew he couldn’t have the entire score rely on that. Those ambient urban and animal sounds are definitely in the soundtrack quite a bit, but Ian also composed emotional instrumentation, and he used the same instruments he played in Passion Pit: guitar and synthesizer. 

Actually I remember David saying, “I don’t want strings in this movie. I think no strings.” So that’s why it is very guitar, synth, and ambient field recording based…

Unlike most projects, Ian was able to work on the music for such a long time, to stew on the same story and really absorb it. Every couple weeks he’d send in a new piece. And then in the summer or fall of 2014, they were finishing the edit.

All of a sudden it was like, “Oh, we need to submit to a festival… So we need the score in, like, two weeks.” I remember being at The Standard hotel downtown and being like, “I need to write all these cues immediately.” I had my guitar with me, thankfully, and I had my laptop, and I had a little microphone sitting on the desk, just trying to record as much as I could quickly, which was a nice real-life experience of writing on the go… That was the score.

From Animals, Ian composed more and more. He chose to leave Passion Pit to focus solely on film scoring. Initially, he got more documentary work than narrative work, but he landed his very first TV project, the third season of a show called Full Circle for DirectTV.

Around that time, Ian scored several of Erin Lee Carr’s documentary projects. He first collaborated with Erin in 2015 on a crime doc about thought policing and the NYPD “Cannibal Cop.” Then he scored Mommy Dead and Dearest, the HBO documentary about the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard by her daughter Gypsy Rose, the iconic case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Ian would go on to work with Erin several more times, including the HBO docuseries I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter.

 

Then, Ian’s relationship with another key collaborator took both their careers to the next level.

Ian and his wife Sofia have been working together musically since they met at Berklee, helping prep, arrange, assist, perform, produce, and mix each other’s individual work. For the first time, however, they began co-scoring projects.

Their first co-score was The First Monday in May, a documentary about the fashion industry, and Ian and Sofia’s complimentary skillsets and experiences served the project well. Ian had worked with the director Andrew Rossi on another doc, Ivory Tower. And Sofia had carved out a niche for herself as a composer within the fashion industry, writing bespoke music for fashion presentations and films.

Ian and Sofia continued co-scoring documentaries, including Erin Lee Carr’s At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal. Then Ian and Sophia got a call for their first big TV show: a period streaming dramedy about a certain young 19th-century poet named Dickinson.

AppleTV, out of nowhere, was like, “Hey, we want you two to do this.” “OK. Yes, please!” Yeah, it was amazing. I think they had started with someone else and it just wasn’t working for them, for whatever reason, and we came on a bit late. I mean, it was wild. We didn’t even demo for that show. They just had a gut feeling, for some reason, and were like, “Let’s hire them.” And it ended up being a 3-season piece of art, basically.

In Dickinson’s second season, Ian and Sofia had a unique creative challenge: to take one of Emily Dickinson’s poems and turn it into a song.

They were like, “Before you start that, we actually need these pop songs, like, immediately.” So that was the first thing we did for that movie.

It basically starts with the story, and Alena Smith, the writer/creator, saying, “In episode 6, it all takes place at the opera and there’s going to be a moment where Emily goes into her own head and sees Sue onstage singing “Split the Lark,” and it needs to be an overwhelmingly romantic incredible ballad and it needs to make us all cry. Go.” That’s how it starts. And we’re like, “Uh, OK.” And then like any songwriter, I have the lyrics in front of us, and I sit with my guitar or Sofi’s at the piano and we just start pinking around and trying to come up with chord progressions and melody. From there, we’ll start fleshing it out more and more.

The song had to be done before production, because the actress had to perform it onstage. Ian is no stranger to live performance (neither is Sofia, who entered Berklee as a vocalist), and composing “Split the Lark” was fun because it felt highly collaborative. Everyone was involved, from the TV episode director, who composers don’t often work with (they’re mainly working with the showrunner), to production design to the music supervisor, Devoe Yates, who was heavily influential in making it all happen. And, of course, Ella Hunt, who plays Sue. She recorded vocals in New York, and Ian and Sofia were living in Los Angeles at the time. It was a really special fun moment for the whole team.

 

From Dickinson, Ian and Sofia took over scoring the NBC comedy series Good Girls. Next, they co-scored I Know What You Did Last Summer, the Amazon series. Then the duo scored their first narrative feature, another period dramedy: Rosaline.

This retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet also involved some unique songwriting or, rather, song covers. Karen Maine, the movie’s director, wanted to try and take some existing pop songs but “Renaissance them up.” So when Ian and Sofia were brought on as composers, they were all ready to come up with themes, but the filmmakers had a more urgent assignment.

They were like, “Before you start that, we actually need these pop songs, like, immediately.” So that was the first thing we did for that movie.

Ian and Sofia worked with Maggie Phillips, the music supervisor, and the production company 21 Laps to get everything in place right before they started shooting. Ian recalls doing the Robyn song “Dancing on My Own” and the Enrique Iglesias song “Escape” first. For him, it was almost like going back to school.

What’s the arrangement of this? What’s the chord progression? What’s the melody? How do we apply it to Renaissance instruments? And then you’re working with the filmmakers: Well, if this is on camera, then what can we afford? Can we have a full orchestra onstage? Can we only have a couple of musicians onstage? What instruments can you actually find to shoot with that day? Because they have to be Renaissance appropriate.

One big thing that I think any composer would say is, “It’s not your movie.” I think usually you learn that early on. Hopefully. Some don’t. But it’s not your movie. It’s their movie. You’re helping tell the story. What you think is not always necessarily the best way to go about it.

These conversations with collaborators involve creative problem-solving, and for Ian, this is always fun. Normally on other shows and movies, he’s just scoring. This unique challenge on Rosaline kept things interesting, even more exciting than on a normal day. 

As exhilarating as collaboration is for Ian, he’s thoughtful about the composer’s role in the storytelling process.

One big thing that I think any composer would say is, “It’s not your movie.” I think usually you learn that early on. Hopefully. Some don’t. But it’s not your movie. It’s their movie. You’re helping tell the story. What you think is not always necessarily the best way to go about it.

Despite this practical reality, Ian always brings his best effort to every collaboration. He’s dedicated to serving the story on day one and listening to the filmmakers throughout the process.

I’ll get involved with a project. I’ll know the story. I’ll read the script. And I’ll have grand ambitions about what the score might end up being. But in reality, it might just need to be super minimal and stay out of the way and just let the dialogue do its thing. And not be some grandiose crazy score. I like to think I’m a good team player. I like collaborating. The projects I feel most fulfilled by are the ones where it really feels like a collaboration between all the filmmakers and artists.

Some aren’t as communicative, and Ian is just left to do his own thing, but those don’t enrich him as much. He’s also had experiences where the filmmaker didn’t quite know how to fully collaborate with a composer yet. He’s worked with a number of first-time directors and first-time showrunners, and at this point, he has more experience than they do, working on projects.

Sometimes, if they’ll let me, we can guide them. “This is usually how this works. We’re here. This is a two-way street.” It is interesting. Communication is really what this job is about. Any musicians, any composer can write music, but can you communicate it clearly? Can you make it so everyone understands? Everyone is on the same page and we all feel like we’re telling the story the way we want to tell it together? That’s what really is the hard part about it… When it actually works, it’s the best feeling. But it’s hard to get there.

One of Ian’s recent solo composing jobs has been on the TV series One of Us is Lying on Peacock. He doesn’t have a hard-and-fast approach to working on any of these different shows. He makes up the rules as he goes along.

There’s certain languages we can use on one show that won’t work on another show. One of Us is Lying, for example, was always about keeping the tension and the pulse going. So every cue almost is just bass harps going, just keeping stuff moving forever, having very few moments where we can be slow and ambient. Whereas Dickinson is interesting because it’s all over the place. We have some stuff that are comedy cues. We have some stuff that’s a love cue. We have some stuff that might be a little tense and weird. On that one, the rules were more what sounds like this show and what doesn’t, but as far as what we could write, rhythmically, it was anything goes. 

It’s my first foray into an existing universe, but a big statement right off the bat was: “This is its own show. We want this to sound like its own show.” So there was no themes carried over from the original show. There was no similar instrumentation, as much as I could. 

Ian has also entered the Walking Dead universe, scoring the Dead City spinoff for AMC. This show is also about keeping the tension up, but without so much synth. So Dead City can’t sound like One of Us is Lying. It can’t sound too melodramatic. It can’t sound too saccharine. It has a lot of warning signs that go up.

“You can’t do this. You can’t do too much of that.” So you have to find a way through those musically while still feeling like it’s the same show and it’s all part of the same overall universe. Not to say I sound like The Walking Dead, more so it sounds like Dead City. It sounds like the world of Dead City.

The series is Ian’s his first major project based on “IP,” but Dead City is its own unique part of the world of The Walking Dead, not an adaption of existing material.

It’s my first foray into an existing universe, but a big statement right off the bat was: “This is its own show. We want this to sound like its own show.” So there was no themes carried over from the original show. There was no similar instrumentation, as much as I could. 

Ian wrote new themes for all the characters. He really wanted to start fresh. As he went on, he remembers at one point AMC got a little nervous, worried the Dead City score needed to sound a bit more like the original Walking Dead. Ian was able to stick to his guns and let Dead City do its own thing. The score turned into a unique sound that is different than what anyone’s heard in that universe before. And it really works. 

 

If you’re trying to build something that can hopefully last for a couple seasons, it needs to stand on its own ground. It can’t just be the same thing over and over.

Ian writes music for his TV and film projects on both keyboards and guitars, and sometimes it just depends on which he’s in front of at the time. A lot of the work he does is synth or sample based, so he has a keyboard built into his desk. But some of his scores end up being more guitar focused, and so there’s a row of twenty guitars next to him.

I have certain familiarities, whether it’s on a keyboard or guitar. I have shapes that my fingers just always jump to. And I also have certain ways of writing, depending on what instrument… It always depends. I think if it’s a matter of, like, “write a song,” I usually will jump to a guitar, just because that’s what I’ve known for most of my life. But I could just as easily have written on piano too. I’m very lucky to have the advantage.

Both instruments represent chapters of his life in rock bands, from the major studios and international arenas where Passion Pit played to the suburban basements of his adolescence. Regrettably, Ian doesn’t have his old alto sax anymore. He, Sofia, and their 3-year-old moved to London last winter, and he sold it right before they moved.

I had it all these years. I can’t play it at all. It was just collecting dust. I wish I could, though. If I could go back to 13-year-old Ian and say, “Guitar is fun, but do not forget how to play sax. Remember how to read music. Cuz I completely forgot that too, because I was reading guitar tabs for a long time. Sofi and I talk about the advantages we would have if we grew up playing proper instruments a bit more. A string instrument or a woodwind instrument. I keep thinking maybe I’ll pick it up again, one day. I’ll try to relearn it, because it’s just such a cool texture. Maybe a tenor sax… I would love to add more stuff to the arsenal.

That includes producing. In addition to composing, Ian is getting more and more interested in actual filmmaking, and he plans to produce a short film with a friend. This stems from his deep love of film and storytelling but was partly inspired by his wife’s creative ambition. In the midst of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Sofia took charge of her own creativity and strove to do something new.

As this strike has been going on, Sofia has written a new record, and I’ve been over play playing drums and thinking, “Hmm, I want to try making an actual movie,” because I just never get to do that. I’m always at the end of the process or very much held outside the inner workings.

Ian is increasingly curious about physical production, from the nuts and bolts of planning a shot list to how to take these pieces of a film and turn it into one piece of art that makes you feel something. He likes to stay up with current movies as much as he can. And now maybe he can have one of the next projects be his own movie for once.

She’s got an ear for music. She’s got an ear for movement. And she’s super into it. Lately she’s been listening to a lot of pop songs. She’ll listen to Taylor Swift and Kesha. Whatever gets her jumping up and down and dancing is what’s she into…

In addition to making an indie short of his own, Ian would also be open to the biggest action movies, including a superhero blockbuster.

I think the thing for me about that is hopefully getting a budget to really play with a big orchestra, because I so rarely get to do that. I really get hired a lot for synth stuff, which I totally understand, and I guess I have a knack for, but deep down I just really really want to work with a lot of people. I want a big sound. In a room. I want to feel it reverberating. As a composer, that’s what would really make me jump out of bed, excited.

A big sound with a lot of musicians. Or a short film with a friend. No matter the scale of the project, Ian will continue to seek out great screen stories and compose compelling music through his collaborations.

He has one other significant “collaboration” with his wife, and that’s their 3.5-year-old daughter. Ian plays all kinds of music for her, including The Beatles, like his father would play for him.

She’s got an ear for music. She’s got an ear for movement. And she’s super into it. Lately she’s been listening to a lot of pop songs. She’ll listen to Taylor Swift and Kesha. Whatever gets her jumping up and down and dancing is what’s she into…

While he and Sofia don’t have as much free time as they used to have, Ian thinks that raising their daughter helps them keep a better schedule and work-life balance.

We really try. When she’s home from nursery at 5, work is done until she goes to sleep and if we’re really busy once she’s asleep, we’ll go back to work for a couple hours. And then weekends we’re pretty much off. We don’t go in the studio. I lock my door. I don’t come back in till Monday. So I think that’s been really good. We’ll see if we get to a point where we’re really busy, we’ll see what happens.

Based on his journey so far, what happens next in Ian’s career will be just as unique. The projects he juggles could be TV or film, big blockbusters or indie shorts, alt-pop or zombies, and Ian Hultquist will be ready for them all. And we’ll all be lucky to see what happens.

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