TALKING MOVIE MUSIC
VIFF scores Blanchard for summit
From silent film piano players to full surround sound, music has always played a key role in the cinematic experience.
At this year's VIFF AMP Summit, film industry heavyweights involved in making music matter in movies will lecture, lead master classes and more. Among those making appearances are multi- Grammy Award-winning composer/ bandleader/trumpeter Terence Blanchard and Stranger Things music supervisor Nora Felder. There also will be live performances from artists such as Harlequin Gold, PIQSIQ and others over the course of the online event.
The explosion of new content to feed all of the streaming services has resulted in demand for soundtracks and this shows no sign of slowing down as the COVID-19 pandemic puts more pressure on providers to keep the new product pumping out. This means opportunities galore for musicians, music supervisors and others involved in the creative process of putting together sound and image.
Each of these sessions should open a window into the world of music in movies for professionals and potential participants alike.
Keynote speaker Blanchard (Friday, 5:30 p.m.) has been Oscar-winning director Spike Lee's go-to composer since 1991's Jungle Fever. Most recently, Blanchard scored Lee's Da 5 Bloods. He also provided soundtracks to One Night in Miami, the directorial debut of Emmy Award-winning actor (Watchman, American Crime, Seven Seconds) and Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winner (If Beale Street Could Talk) Regina King, as well as actor/director Halle Berry's MMA flick Bruised. He is also behind the music for the new HBO series Perry Mason.
Each of these projects drew upon a different area of the Grammy-winning jazz artist's skill set.
“Honestly, I wasn't a big movie fan at first, but I've certainly become one over time,” said Blanchard. “Jazz has a long history of expressing the cultural struggle and screaming to have equal treatment under the law — think of John Coltrane's Four Little Girls or Max Roach's Freedom Now — and that is something we are seeing more and more in the film world. Regina King and Halle Berry's films are both excellent and really do something to expand the vision of the world as being more than what has been the view of a small group for a long time.”
For all their similarities in outlook, Blanchard says that he and Spike Lee did not speak the same
language or share any creative vision when they began working together.
“We didn't get each other at all and we really pushed each other back and forth, although it's obviously worked itself out into something special now,” Blanchard said. “People have pointed out to me that it forced me to understand different ways to score to suit how Spike likes to tell stories and we now have developed a unique style and sound. I never saw it that way, and still don't really know what it is, but I know that I score his films differently than with anyone that I work with.”
Today, he says that the pair don't “pine over” much as they make films together. They trust one another enough to give each other space. It took a lot of work to get there.
“I am really anal about everything, dotting every I and crossing every T twice, if needed,” Blanchard said. “That means Spike knows it's covered and he can concentrate on other aspects of his amazing storytelling. And he keeps on blowing my mind with what he comes up with too. The first time I saw Da 5 Bloods I was stunned by how next-level the story was.”
With Perry Mason and other series he has scored, Blanchard came at the work from a very different angle. It was the first time he worked on a TV show that was so much more like a movie, but he thinks that is how a lot of the new TV is going.
“I loved seeing what they did with the whole story of how Perry Mason came to be, from this young, PTSD damaged PI to the development of the other characters in `Perry Mason's World,'” he said.
“I got to experiment with a wide range of sounds that became part of that world too, but it became crystal clear what fit and didn't as it went along.
Space, rhythm, it's all important to consider.”
Taking it to the next level adding in the storytelling too, Blanchard has a new opera titled Fire Shut Up In My Bones, which will open the 2021 season at the Metropolitan Opera. Based on the memoir of the same name by noted journalist Charles M. Blow, it is the first work by a Black composer to open a season for the company. The work was scheduled for this fall, but the Met has shut down for the first time in its 140-year-long history.
Blanchard's father was an opera singer. In 2013, Blanchard penned his first opera, Champion.
“I can't put into words the kind of emotion I feel by having it come full circle and having the Met premiere it,” Blanchard said. “In recent decades, opera has been moving forward, becoming more contemporary and relevant. The stories of the original operas were relevant to people's lives and they need to be that way again to, hopefully, reflect the ways the world culture is changing.”
As the world changes, there is bound to be benefit in playing with nostalgia too. That is certainly what Picture Music Company CEO and music supervisor Nora Felder did putting together the wildly successful soundtrack for Netflix's sci-fi/thriller series Stranger Things.
Set in Hawkins, Ind., the adventures of a team of tweens taking on the supernatural challenges of the Demogorgon as well as the human horrors cranked out of Hawkins Lab has mixed in everything from the Cars and even REO Speedwagon with the Red Army Choir to grab listeners and viewers alike. Felder, who has credits including Ray Donovan, Californication and What We Do In the Shadows, will lead the AMP Masterclass with host Sony Pictures Entertainment's senior VP of TV music Tony Scu
dellari (Oct. Saturday, 1 p.m.).
“I don't go look and follow what the trends are or aren't, but I guess that there has always been an appetite for honing in on an era like the '80s or '70s,” Felder said. “But any time something hits, there are usually a host of others that follow and there are some shows going for the '80s now. For the longest time, soundtracks just weren't selling, but the one for Stranger Things Season 1 was a huge hit, so maybe it's changing again.”
Excluding musicals, Felder says that because of lower budgets, labels and studios weren't dumping loads of money into soundtracks for long enough that it allowed indie artists to get a foothold in film and TV. The net result was the explosion of curated offbeat collections such as those found in Quentin Tarantino films to series hits such as the Get Down or Stranger Things. Felder expects to hear a lot of great music coming out of the pandemic shutdown, because artists are stuck at home and need an outlet. Her job is to bring their work to the right show for that symbiotic reinforcement that equals cinematic magic.
“It's a very left brain/right brain job where you need to be ultra-organized around all aspects of the production process as well as that creative research,” she said. “One of the benefits of the pandemic has been that I'm able to have much more in-depth listening sessions for my varied projects and in general. But there is also the unknown of `when is work starting up on any of these projects' and other big issues.”
At a point in her career where she can be more selective, Felder says you never know how things will work out. Reading a great script doesn't equal a great final result as so many factors — acting, budgets, etc. — can compromise the final product, but she feels she is at a place where she knows she can bring her best to any contract and be confident that she did her best.
Like Blanchard, she says it took time to gain the trust of the people she works with and the skill set to produce the string of wins she has to her credit today.
Everyone starts somewhere; VIFF AMP aims to provide crucial professional insights into how to sharpen the tools in your kit.