Moon Bird Music
Mon, Jul 6th 2009, 08:26
Coming as we do from the guerilla school of filmmaking we have a tendency to try and do as much as we can in one of our films. That means the story, the design, but also the voices and the music too. Perhaps we are Jack-of-all-Trades, or maybe just control freaks?
In The Moon Bird we made a decision early on that we would make this a non-dialogue film. There were three main reasons: (1) it immediately makes the film more international which is important when you're entering loads of film festivals (2) it presents a challenge to us as filmmakers - we have to create a story that can be followed through visual storytelling alone and (3) initially we thought it would be nice to get a big name actress to do narration and voices, but they were going to cost a third of the budget.
So... this time we're not doing the voices, and neither is anyone because there's no actual talking. But what about the music?
Sometimes we're quite instinctive about our soundtracks and we'll go into the studio quite late on with some ideas and see what emerges on the day. But other times we'll start looking at the music a long time beforehand and try to take a more considered approach.
This was how it worked with Pedro and Frankensheep. We talked with Exec Producer Gillian Scothern and Producer-Creator Phil Cooper about the kind of music we needed for the series. There were titles and credits songs, background music and then feature songs sung by Hector and Hugo the sheep ticks. In this case the music was created over a series of weeks and months. You can listen to some of the Pedro songs on our music player.
And this is also the approach we're taking to The Moon Bird. We've already created seven basic themes for the film. Over the coming weeks we'll test and develop more themes, and work some of them up to finished tracks. The test themes are useful for adding flavour to the animatic which we're creating at the moment.
We've found that music and soundscape should not be underestimated in a film. Sometimes in a comedy, you might have been working on a scene for so long you're not sure if it's funny anymore. Add the sound effects and music and suddenly it comes alive again. And in a piece like Moon Bird, which is darker, we hope that the music will convey a powerful sense of mood and atmosphere.
The music we've created isn't song-based as such. We have gone for a much more expressive form of soundtrack which is really using a few simple sounds and instruments together to create a sense of wonder, or dread, or discovery, or discomfort. Here's a sample of one of the themes we've produced.
To polish the music, we always head down the road to Bidford on Avon to see our friend Paul Johnston at Rhythm Studios. He's been mixing the sound for our films (and bands) for years. He gives that final touch of magic, plus he understands Midi which is like some kind of weird alchemy.
