Thunderous farts and the roiling sea, booming foghorns and the menacing squawks of predatory seagulls—the Melvillian world of Robert Eggers’s supernatural-tinged film The Lighthouse offers a composer many sources of sonic inspiration. Mark Korven, who reunited with Eggers following their collaboration on the director’s 2015 feature, The Witch, admits that the environment of the film dominated their early conversations. “We did discuss nature a lot,” he says, “and also the world the characters inhabited. There might be a rusty old cornet lying around the lighthouse or maybe a bashed-up accordion. Rob felt strongly about a brass score because there was […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019Transcribing a verbal interview can calcify its fluidity. Congealed to text, the spontaneity of a subject’s ongoing efforts to articulate their process is reduced, encouraging readers to mistake the record as definitive. Some interviewees ponder the permanence of their words anxiously and fear fumbling, saying what they don’t mean, or what they might not in a month or a year. But composer Mica Levi’s (Marjorie Prime, Jackie, Under The Skin) oral replies retain their suppleness on the page. Her understanding of her score for Alejandro Landes’ Monos, about a group of teenage commandos flummoxing their military responsibilities atop a mountain […]
by A.E. Hunt on Sep 13, 2019It’s a fraught moment for any director — “locking picture,” with all the finality the term signifies. But, as a panel on “Scoring for Television & Film” at the recent Independent Film Festival Boston (IFFBOSTON) revealed, for composers it’s a vital stage in their process of scoring a film. The panel was moderated by filmmaker and musician Tim Jackson, and the panelists were composers Mason Daring, John Kusiak and Sheldon Mirowitz. The discussion covered how they got into the business, how they write music, the differences between drama and documentary and much more, but Daring’s fairly lengthy exhortation on locking […]
by Michael Murie on May 10, 2017The following is a guest post, presented by ASCAP Composer Spotlight, by Alex Steyermark, the director of The 78 Project, Losers Take All, One Last Thing and Prey For Rock & Roll. Steyermark has also worked as a music supervisor and music producer for such people as Ang Lee and Spike Lee, and is a member of the Columbia University Faculty, running the ASCAP/Columbia University Film Scoring Workshop. Dogme Manifesto and current filmmaking trends notwithstanding, if you’ve decided that music is something you want for your film, and you’re at that point in your production where your musical needs are […]
by Alex Steyermark on Aug 9, 2013