Music
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Sequential Notes: Angela Schanelec on Music
Since her debut feature, My Sister’s Good Fortune (1995), Angela Schanelec has steadily established herself as one of the Europe’s most idiosyncratic filmmakers. Across nine features, Schanelec’s style has evolved but retained consistent qualities: stark, clean visuals and crisp editing combined with elusive narrative techniques that crescendo into unexpected moments of emotional catharsis. A subject of hardcore cinephile fandom since her 2019 feature I Was at Home, But…, Schanelec seems to be gaining broader acceptance. Still, the peculiarities of her approach can be off-putting for general audiences. I first encountered Schanelec’s work at the Locarno Film Festival, where I was […]
by Graham Swon on Jun 27, 2024 -
“We Set Out To Make a Documentary in Six Months, Get the Music Out There, Play at Sundance and It Ends Up Taking Us Six Years”: Directors Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz on Karen Dalton: In My Own Time
Filmmakers Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz were deep in Missouri, working in the prop department for Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone, when they both became consumed with the legendary 1960s-era folk singer Karen Dalton. The artist, who died of AIDS in 1993, only 55 years old, was famously described by admirer and peer Bob Dylan as someone who “sang like Billie Holiday and played guitar like Jimmy Reed.” Her hallowed status on the Greenwich Village scene that launched Dylan and many others never elevated her to mainstream success. Drug addiction and emotional turmoil took a heavy toll, yet Dalton left behind […]
by Steve Dollar on Oct 4, 2021 -
“Each Film Speaks with its Own Voice”: An Interview with Composer Nathan Halpern
It’s been quite a year for composer Nathan Halpern. He had four films at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival—the feature-length documentaries After Parkland and One Child Nation and the narrative features Goldie and Swallow—and while he hasn’t slacked in his new output, all four of these projects have gone on to impressive post-festival activity. One Child Nation (directed by Nanfu Wang, a previous collaborator of Halpern’s) premiered at Sundance in 2019, and was acquired by Amazon Studios for a theatrical run in August; it’s now streaming on Amazon Prime. And three of the films are hitting theaters right now: After Parkland (directed by Emily Taguchi and Jake […]
by Randy Astle on Feb 27, 2020 -
Tribeca 2018: Composer Ariel Marx on Scoring To Dust
Ariel Marx is a film composer to watch. It’s early in her career, but her credits already include an impressive variety of dramas and comedies on both film and television. She’s assisted on projects like Wonder and Amazon’s Z: The Beginning of Everything, and her own scores have been in the films West of Her, By Jingo, and The Tale, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year and runs on HBO next month. She’s even worked in augmented reality with Armen Perian’s The Angry River, a piece about human traffickers that changes with the direction of the viewer’s gaze — an impressive challenge for a traditionally linear form […]
by Randy Astle on Apr 24, 2018 -
Commissioning Music for Short Films – 10 Questions a Director Might Ask
The following is a guest post written by composer Kim Halliday, a U.K.-based composer who has written music for shorts, features, documentary and fiction. You can find his work at www.kimhalliday.com, under “Kim Halliday – Music” on Facebook, and @hallidayk on Twitter. Many film composers learn their trade by scoring short films. Many continue to score short films, and many never get an opportunity to score a full feature. The truth is that there are many challenges for a composer with a short – how do you get coherent themes into so few cues, for example, and how do you […]
by Kim Halliday on Feb 3, 2014 -
Editing & Music: An Interview with Three Editors at the Sundance Film Festival
Music in cinema continually captivates audiences. Scores and soundtracks can become as renowned as a film itself and play a large part in an audience’s emotional engagement with a movie. Awards are distributed honoring Best Original Song, Best Original Music Score, Best Film Music, and Best Music Direction at multiple film festivals and award ceremonies. But music has also always been a fascinating subject for movies as well. Struggling musicians to sensational bands, and everyone in between, have been captured in film. The Sundance Film Festival is often the first venue at which these movies premiere, and this year is […]
by Alexandra Byer on Jan 20, 2014 -
Arcade Fire’s Interactive Music Video, “Reflektor”
One could argue that Arcade Fire is an MTV band for the new generation. Content wise, their songs have few similarities with the likes of ’90s hits like “Buddy Holly” or “Virtual Insanity,” but their recognition of the music video as a malleable and significant platform is refreshing in the YouTube age of sex-soused, auto-tuned pop. Harnessing new technology, the Montreal-based collective has pushed the limits of the medium far beyond the capabilities of their predecessors, thanks to frequent collaborations with Vincent Morisset. Mr. Morisset, who describes himself as “a web-friendly director…looking for new ways to tell stories,” has worked […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 10, 2013 -
How to Find a Great Composer for Your Film
The 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 -
Walter Murch on Editing and His Translations of Curzio Malaparte
While editing The Unbearable Lightness of Being in France, Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch came across a reference to Italian writer Curzio Malaparte’s description of horses being suddenly flash frozen in Lake Ladoga during the siege of Leningrad. He became intrigued by the startling image, and tracked down Malaparte’s 1944 novel Kaputt, the book the image came from. Over time Murch, best known for his work on films such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, read all of the obscure Italian writer’s translated writings, then brushed up on his Italian to read untranslated work. He eventually […]
by David Barker on Jun 3, 2013 -
Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best Writer/Director/Star Ryan O’Nan
No one can say actor/musician Ryan O’Nan didn’t pull his weight in his directorial debut, Brooklyn Brothers Beat The Best, which makes its theatrical debut on September 21 via Oscilloscope Laboratories. Besides directing, writing, and starring in the film, O’Nan wrote and sang most of the songs on the soundtrack (album out 9/18 on ATCO Records). A 2011 IFP Narrative Labs project that premiered at Toronto last year, Brooklyn Brothers is the story of two ne’er-do-well musicians who make an unlikely alliance, embarking on the kind of quixotic journey that’s tailor-made for a buddy movie. But O’Nan’s film finds itself […]
by Jim Allen on Sep 18, 2012
