Makeover Movie - Exploring Montage of the Past
The Creative Brief
The director of Makeover Movie, Sue Ding, approached me with a project about makeover montages from Hollywood rom coms and asked me, “Can you write a score like it’s 2006?” That question pretty much encapsulates the creative approach to this soundtrack, a project that spans an iconic era of filmmaking and pays homage to Hollywood classics from the early 1940s all the way to the mid 2000s. The goal for this score was to channel the musical DNA of those eras in a way that felt authentic and felt authentic to the time period.
Developing the Concept
This project was a real exercise in time travel, moving between classical 1940s style orchestral arrangement to synth forward 2000s era styles. The director really wanted to honor the source material, so naturally I went back to study the classics. My approach for this film was to find a balance between incorporating the sounds and textures of each era while serving the story and responding to the playful pace of the edit. Many sections of the film needed to carry the sparkle and optimism of 2000s rom coms, so for those areas (Intro) I utilized an orchestral palette of woodwinds, strings and mallets. For the more classic Hollywood sound (The Staircase), I wrote with full orchestral sections and chose the french horn as the main lead melody. In contrast, for the more synth forward areas of the film (The Reveal) I relied heavily on more modern drum samples and synth bass to drive the arrangement.
Iterating to Picture
This film had many versions and many iterations. There were 20 cues overall and many of those cues had five or six versions before we landed on something that felt exactly right. The revision process was a combination of getting sounds that were period authentic and making sure that the emotional tone was right for each section.
Takeaways
This project was incredibly rewarding because it pushed me out of my comfort zone and into genres and styles that I really had to work hard to get right. Channeling the energy of the mid 2000s was fun for me because it was an era that I lived through and got to revisit again through the lens of classic Hollywood scores. In addition, the challenge of writing orchestral pieces that felt as romantic as a 1940s Hollywood film was one of the highlights of my career so far.