Scoring...

I have been working on the score of Warmth for the past two weeks now, and finally realise how challenging it is to compose a score for a film, as opposed to dance, theatre, or even songs. It may also depend on the role the director allows music to play in the film. My part came much later in the process, so the music can only be descriptive. That is the hardest for me. I have read how Bernard Herrmann used to compose his scores for Hitchcock: he would discuss the role of the music at length before the shooting, he would be present during the shooting. His music would influence way the editing or even the story would be told.

As I said to a friend yesterday, I feel I am just writing musical prêt-à-porter for the film. Jay is open to what I may suggest to him, but since the film is already shot and edited when I came into the picture (no pun intended), he had also already built a map of musical references in his head, consciously or not, which makes it trickier for me to find my place in the film.  

I encountered a similar situation during my last failed collaboration with Jo two years ago: the music of Captive Queen was to follow the structure of Sibelius’ work bar by bar, which left me no room for expressing myself musically. Captive I was too. I also know that I didn’t have the technical compositional means to rise up to the challenge. A Stravinsky I ain’t, alas!

Jay has faith. I am still searching for new ways to give the film a truly personal sonic mood, away from the usual boring and formulaic cute piano music, and make Jay proud of his new work.