Behind-the-Scenes: The Sound a Soul Makes
Developing an Original Score
One of the most fun parts of collaborating with great people is their ability to synthesize the story you’re looking for in their own field of expertise.
And the only person in the world I’d trust to craft an original score for The Sound a Soul Makes was Christy Carew Marshall.
Except this time, instead of having a film to work with and then choosing which scenes to add music to — we were going backwards. The entire film would be built based on her music.
No pressure Christy.
To kick things off, we talked a lot about the story, why I wanted to tell it, and what I wanted the piece as a whole to feel like. Looking back at one of our first emails, I think this line summed it up best:
“The idea I want to focus on is simply: the love, grief, and gratefulness of knowing someone — if even briefly.”
Functionally, I broke down the story into the core emotional beats, shared dance and music references I liked for different parts of the film, and shared the thought processes and symbolism in each part of the story.
However the real magic was simply giving Christy full creative freedom to explore the story on her own.
In terms of how I give those notes, I always try to communicate in high-level creative terms or analogies because I absolutely respect that she is the master in her field, and my job as the director is simply to share how I feel now vs where we want to be. How we get there is entirely up to her.
Of course Christy came back immediately in the right direction, so from there it was simply a process of iteration on story beats, dialing moments up or down, and finding the right amount of runway for certain segment.
And this is the part of the collaboration that I always love the most with Christy, because she translates ideas and emotions so deftly into her music, it really is like magic.
And I also have to say that this score, even after almost 2 years, is still one of the most powerful soundtracks I’ve ever heard anywhere, and I am utterly in love with it.
THANK YOU CHRISTY!
To listen to Christy’s original score for The Sound a Soul Makes, click here: https://soundcloud.com/.../the-sound-a-soul.../s-cV6GFeSFg5q
To learn more about the project, click here!
Other “Behind-The-Scenes” posts in this series:
- Developing the Concept: Poem to Script
- Developing the Choreography
- Developing the Cinematography
- Developing the “Rig” [COMING SOON]
