DROWN - Movie Soundtrack (Part 2)
Continuing the story of my first commissioned film soundtrack.
Over the following weeks, some more QuickTime clips came through Dropbox, and I added music to them to suit the moods and themes in these early clips. Some already existing ideas went into the mix, some ideas were expanded upon, and others were composed as I watched the clips. Some ideas were suitable, and therefore kept, and some others weren’t.
It pays to not have a thin skin when it comes to creating commissioned music. I had been musical director for an Osaka-based fringe theatre group for some years prior to moving to Japan, and those Skype sessions were long explorations of shortening, lengthening, completely changing music and sound effects cues.
Sticking with Dean’s original attraction to the music I had on my YouTube channel, the music for Drown started to take on a definite 1980s electronic vibe, which excited him even more. Having spent my late teens and early twenties up to my neck in music in the 80s, I had some very clear memories (and some not so clear) of pop and non-pop music from that fertile era.
I started sourcing Tomita (remembering his performance in Sydney in 1988 - very atmospheric), Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Visage and Ultravox amongst others. Dean introduced me to some current artists who were directly influenced by 80s sounds, like Kavinsky, and Sunlounger.
Next I found a website that offered free downloads of VST effects and instruments, so I trawled through that looking for any soft-synths that had sounds and arpeggiators that captured, or were close to the synths of the day, like Gemini 1 by Meesha (great mono synth with a step sequencer), Logana by SAR VST (very mid 80s New Order), Polly8 by Osiris Synths and my favourite, Cynthia by NineCows (a wonderfully mad emulation of the EMS Synthi AKS, used by Pink Floyd on their track On The Run from Dark Side of the Moon.) I even found one that sounded like my old Casio CZ-101. (Sadly, I can’t list all the names of the soft synths here because after Drown, my computer died and I lost most of them, but these were the most memorable.)
Meanwhile, in Sydney, Dean was having small theatre views of some clips that had been shot with the producer, taking notes on what was working and what wasn’t. There were big Skype discussions about the moods of certain scenes, followed by my spending any spare time in the headphones creating these moods. I was making them longer than necessary, mainly in order to let each piece ‘breathe’ and find its ‘character’. Then when the core character or motif became clear, I would edit it down, or condense it to suit the clip.
By now, the Dropbox is getting pretty full. There are now hundreds of MP3s of ideas and the beginnings of themes and moods. The ideas, themes and moods that were looking like contenders for certain scenes were now being referred to as ‘cues’.
In September of 2012 casting for the main roles began in Sydney. In October, I started making long-form arrangements of ‘80s-style dance tracks, with one eye on Giorgio Moroder and the other on my recollections of dance clubs in my hometown of Wagga Wagga in the actual 1980s.
Shooting began on the beaches of Mona Vale in December 2012, and with a few new clips Dropboxed, my tracks started to become more cohesive. Some of the moods were refined down to long atmospheric, brooding synth pads. Now, I was starting to develop separate moods for the outer worlds of the characters’ milieu, as well as their inner, more personal worlds, connecting the two sides with some simple motifs.
It was at this point that a super secret FTP (Filezilla) link was established for Dean to send me edited scenes with burnt in timecode for me to use as a reference to where we were up to in each scene, as well as to instruct them specifically where a track might go. The FTP was for the transfer of the large video files (and later, my large 24-bit 48kHz WAV stems), but Dropbox was still our common pool for dropping MP3s into for the editor to work easily with. The cues for the scenes that were being edited and sent through the FTP were getting more finalised in terms of lengths and intensity of mood. It was incredibly exciting and rewarding to see some of the scene assembles with music embedded coming through the FTP link. Of course, changes to lengths and pacing of scenes was to be expected, so the consensus was still to keep making tracks along the previously discussed lines, leaving room for stretching or contracting lengths. Leaving room for ideas (both mine and Dean’s) to emerge and evolve was an important point, with the pacing and even the tempo of the music occasionally influencing the pacing of the editing.
By this time, timings were starting to tighten up, and over the new year period I began to receive scene compiles (two or more consecutive scenes edited together) to illustrate how some of the music is to be used as transitions between scenes. I was also exploring some character and environment-based motivic development. For example, for the main character, Len, I created a 3-note melodic motif (it was a minor-sounding sequence of Bb-C-G), reflecting his simplicity and darkness. This motif would appear in various atmospheric cues when the story needed to focus on him, working kind of subliminally.
Around April 2013, the crew in Sydney were working up trailer for the movie, and by June and July, the whole film was mostly structured. I continued making cues as well as deconstructing finalised cues to be used as linking moods and atmospheres. And it was around this time that I started dropping 24-bit 48kHz WAV stems and mixes into the FTP for sound post production. (A ‘mix’ is the complete song mixed out as a WAV file or MP3, or whatever other format you use. A ‘stem’ is just the drums, or bass, or keyboards, or guitars. So by giving the post production studio a mix and all the stems that form that mix, they can lay them into the edit, allowing some control over the balance between the various elements. Of course, with some of the atmospheric cues, it was just the mix.)
August 2013 saw the Sydney crew shooting some pick ups. Most of the music was completed with a small amount of editing, lengthening, and shortening, and more deconstructions of the full ‘songs’ for use as atmospherics.
By September, the London agent, High Point Films & TV, announced that Drown had been accepted into the Toronto Film Festival with an article in the online film magazine ScreenDaily.
Post production really kicked in from October through November, and in December it was decided that locked picture was to be delivered by February 2014, with all music delivered as stems by April of that year. It doesn’t happen overnight!
The final cue in the film, the end credits music, was based on a piece I wrote on my Yamaha CJ-818 in the mid 80s. A simple arpeggio on an A major chord, followed by an A major 9th, then G and then D. A very simple idea that went down on my Yamaha MT-1X four-track cassette recorder (and ultimately digitised when I got my first computer) and stayed un-used for decades in a folder. I had, at some point in Melbourne, expanded the original idea, recorded drums, guitars and bass and it was my good friend Rick Ralli who still some years late, and me being in Japan, suggested some lyrics. So, I Dropboxed some stems for him and his writing and recording partner and they worked on it until finally Dropboxing me their vocal track stems, with cues as to where they start in the song. I laid them into the project and they sounded amazing, and with some mixing and self-mastering, this track become ‘Sway’, and was used for the end credits roll.
So, after almost 2 years of concentrating my composing and recording efforts on a single focal point, I realised that I had acquired a number of positive things: a working knowledge of the process of film soundtrack composing and recording; an ability to work to specific mutual goals, as well as to a (small) budget and to a (sometimes flexible) timeline; new skills in using internet technology to collaborate with other creatives on a musical project; and an invaluable proficiency in music production.
For the next year or so Drown made the rounds of film festivals around the world, eventually winning a swag of awards at 2015 FilmOut in San Diego, including Best Soundtrack!
