Oscar Night in Shanghai: Academy Award-winning composer Alexandre Desplat hits Shanghai

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Academy Award-winning composer Alexandre Desplat joined the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra for a performance in the Chinese financial capital. The composer is perhaps best known for winning Oscars for the soundtracks to both "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and last year's "The Shape of Water". Sun Caiqin has more.

The Frenchman opened his first concert in Shanghai with the song from the 1996 film "Un Hero Tres Discret". The orchestra played 11 songs on the night, including some from more recent films like "The Grand Budapest Hotel", "The Ghost Writer", "Girl with a Pearl Earring", and the recent hit "The Shape of Water". He said writing music for a film involves a different process.

ALEXANDRE DESPLAT COMPOSER "Filmmaking is teamwork, so the freedom of making a soundtrack is limited. The director will usually make a theme first, and then composers like me create based on the theme. So the biggest challenge for a film score composer is how to put the music you like into the limited theme."

He said working with directors who trust him makes a big difference and cites Wes Anderson as someone he enjoyed working with.

"Wes Anderson and I really communicated well and we understood each other. When I compose a score for his film, we both sit in a studio and make eye contact with each other, and then we can make the music that we both like very fast." Desplat's wife Dominique Lemonnier, a violinist, helped select the music list for last night's performance.

DOMINIQUE LEMONNIER DESPLAT'S WIFE, MUSICIAN "We wanted to cover his music from different types of films over the past 20 years, including commercial films like ‘Godzilla', as well as ‘The King's Speech', which was a really important turning point in his career."

The orchestra also performed tracks from "Imitation Game", "Birth", and "Harry Potter". Desplat also cooperated with director Ang Lee in 2008 for the film "Lust, Caution". SCQ, ICS FOR CGTN, SH.