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Writing the music before shooting the film

April 21, 2014 Projects, The Nines

Alex Wurman, who composed the music for my film The Nines, has the soundtrack up on SoundCloud. Take a listen.

The composer often comes on board a project while it’s in post, but for The Nines, I needed Alex to write the main theme of the movie before we’d shot a frame. That’s because during one scene in Part Two, Gavin (Ryan Reynolds) plays the theme on the piano. It’s a major plot point, and I knew we couldn’t fake it. So Alex and I spent a few days hashing out the musical idea of the story.

When talking with a specialist (a composer, a cinematographer, a choreographer), I’ve found it best to describe feelings rather than functions, using similes rather than concrete vocabulary. So I said things like:

  • broken clockwork
  • skimming across a summer lake, but there’s something dark under water
  • an unanswerable question
  • something half-remembered, and you’re not sure if it was something positive or negative

This got us to the main theme, called Knowing:

The theme shows up all over the movie, often on piano, but sometimes pushed to other instruments and other tempos.

I love Alex’s music in The Nines, but if I had it to do all over again, I would have found a way to get bigger with the music at the end. Right now, it all feels a little too delicate and same-same.

We had a very limited budget, but the visuals would have better served with some serious strings. In my head, I can hear this theme re-orchestrated, and it’s what the film wants: the boldest expression of the musical question and its answer. To achieve that, I would have re-prioritized other elements to free up some money.

Related Posts

  1. Music of The Nines
  2. Sundance panels
  3. Temp Music

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