Film News (was baby turtles).

Last post I mentioned that I was involved in a film soundtrack, but was not sure of what I could and could not share with outsiders. Things are much clearer now.

The Correspondent is based on a book by Peter Greste called The First Casualty. The detailed story is available here, but essentially he was one of several reporters imprisoned in Egypt under charges of terrorism, a harsh response to his investigative journalism for Al Jazeera. The events in the film are factual, but have been enacted and filmed in a narrative (e.g. some events are telescoped or implied to fit the film duration).

My role is music composer, part of a larger team involved in sound production. There are sound cues recorded on set, location and Foley and loop group to give the texture of places – prison doors, calls to prayer, crowds and protests etc. So generally I’m providing cues to his internal state of mind, colouration of emotions and other things that are not sounded by events on screen. Sometimes I pick up a sound happening on screen and take it into synthesis e.g. TV voices moved into a spectral cloud.

The director Kriv Stenders has asked for music which is harsh, sad/joyous, alienating, textural, dronal – often heavy synthetic tones through treatments. I’m watching the reels in progress and acting out settings such as volume, timbre and filtration to ‘paint’ the mood on screen. I don’t use modular synthesis or synthesisers where I can’t recall a patch. Anything I do has to be able to revert to an earlier version at any moment! So all my adjustments are recorded to MIDI in Nuendo in lock to the vision.

Even though there’s a lot of analogue grinding involved there’s always gentleness to a human being taken though a major life journey. There are specific melodic moments that relate to key points on screen – e.g. the opening music reappears at the end but with two extra lines of melody to express the journey taken.

The story takes place in two parallel places and times, so there’s some complexity in when we are in the now or in memory. I might have to work with a scene where he remembers an event – so it’s in the past, but in his present mind. This is expressed on many levels by many teams – lighting, acting, sound, grade – the music just has to be aware when to step up or step back.

The composer has to accept that some really great ideas don’t make it and entire scenes get cut out – along with the ‘I fucking loved this bit’. The director is the director.

We’re working on a first draft of the film to go to festivals. I’m currently working on cues for reel 3. Cues can take many versions to get approved, so you’ll see 24bit WAVs called things like 240507 Enters the Cell 01230800 to make sure it’s dated and time stamped just in case the third version gets put back after the fifth one fails.

I’ll let you know what’s up in a week or so!