What do you love about film music?When I was very young I hated cinema because my parents wanted me to watch only cinema for children, so I wasn’t interested in cinema and not at all by the music for movies. Ten years ago, I had a house in Corsica, and in France we have a lot of documentaries about Corsica on TV. Did you have to keep going back and changing your music because of the editing of the film? It’s another world of a movie, another part. I tried to do something very special with the strings so there are a lot of glissandi and microtonalities. Opera “The question for the composer is how dark to go. I’m very proud of this sequence; it works perfectly because the music is in the same scale that the characters appear as. After I write the score I eventually return to the sequence and use my software and samples to create demos with Logic Pro, Vienna Instruments (VSL), and other samples. FilmInFocus' Scott Macaulay sits down with Coraline director Henry Selick to discuss stop motion, 3D and the future of animation. It was very easy, very quick and easy. Sometimes it’s very interesting to create contrast, to have two or more voices independent of each other or counterpoint with the music. Forever a Feisty Eleven Year Old, Coraline Turns Eight, A remembrance of LAIKA's first stop-motion animated masterpiece. He was asked to write the score for Coraline after Henry Selick used some of his other music as a temp track and liked the feel of it. The rights belong to Focus Features, LAIKA, and Bruno Coulais, respectively. But I don’t think I changed my mind too much. Exhibitions are very important to me, along with the light and reading. Henry, he had his whole movie in his head. I write the melody for the score, the harmony, details of the instrumentation. After producing the magnificent soundtrack to Winged Migration (2001), Coulais significantly reduced his contributions to film music and concentrated on other projects, such as the creation of an opera for children, and collaborations with Akhenaton, Akhenaton’s group IAM and the Corsican group A Filetta, with whom he had worked since he scored Jacques Weber’s Don Juan (1998). You can preview our currently available arrangements for Exploration (from 'Coraline') listed by instrument further down on this page. This changed my music because suddenly the scenes I had to score were so precise, so strange, and so fantastic, that I had to change my music. At the beginning the music is very normal, very quiet, and little by little it becomes scarier. Fortunately for Coulais, not all movies resemble an episode of Friends. For me it’s very important to make my own orchestrations. From working on the film, start to finish, what was the most important part of the scoring process that makes your music work with the film? The film lures you with its extremely unconventional production values, led by Selick's distinctive visuals, and to accompany this striking look, French composer Bruno Coulais provides an appropriately bizarre score in his first Hollywood collaboration. What was different working with Henry compared to other directors you’ve worked with? I was in conservatory then, in Paris, and a director, a great documentarian who was very famous in France, Francois Reichenbach, asked me to write music for a documentary about Mexico. It was interesting to show with the music how she was a scary character but also to give her humanity and emotion. Little by little I sent to Henry my demos of each sequence and very quickly he E mailed me his remarks. How did you get the job to score Coraline? I was absolutely fascinated by this aspect of the film. I don’t like war music if the composer takes a rhythm or a song from, I was recording the symphonic part of the score with the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra of Budapest and I knew that we could find a very good choir there, so we used the Choir of the Hungarian National Radio. In Coraline when you hear the children’s voices it creates anxiety, it’s scary with fear and anguish. After this we wanted to work from the beginning to the end of the film because the music had to change, had to transform, and that’s where the ambience of the film changed, the lighting became darker in the other world. For more on Coraline, see Bill Desowitz’s Animation World interview with Tadahiro Uesugi and his interview with Henry Selick.. Background on the production is supplied by Thomas J. McLean’s article from last year.. For an overview of spatial perception, see Maurice Hershenson, Visual Space Perception (MIT Press, 1999). For me it’s ‘the example’. The opposition between the strong rhythms, the violent music and the softness of the oboe is able to change our perception of the character of the Other Mother. I don’t use words; it’s only musical sounds or expressions. It was very easy, very quick and easy. I worked in, At the beginning I read the script and I composed four or five themes, melodies, and then I met with Henry and he cared for these melodies. It’s not only working on one sequence and then one after another and another, it’s important to keep inside your head all of the music from the beginning until the very end. See full bio » His collaboration with Henry Selick on Coraline started at the beginning of 2007, two years before the film was released, and his next score can be heard in the Disney film Oceans directed by Jacques Perrin, which will be released in April. Also I composed the music for the cat, which is very special. This resulted in the band not having any of their music in the film, with the exception of the aforementioned song the other father sings to Coraline (you know, the one with the hidden message). Experience Sometimes when I don’t have any ideas I have to leave my office and walk around, I go to exhibitions, and it’s very mysterious when my ideas appear during these moments. It was French composer Bruno Coulais calling me at 5:30pm from his office in Paris France, not his studio, but a place of solace where he writes his music and creates his demos. Composer. Mice Circus 13. This is why scoring Coraline was so difficult. It’s a way of discovering the world and it’s why I hate temp music. Neil Gaiman's smash-hit Coraline has all the elements of a great story: a brave heroine, a magical world, a talking cat, some absent parents, and a crazy kidnapper who impersonates people's moms in order to steal their souls. I didn’t want to do that – for me, music had to be very pure. For example, music boxes, sometimes when used in the music for movies they are very strange and scary. Not too much, but for me there is an important correspondence between the lighting and the tonalities of the orchestration. Brendan is an Irish movie with a very low budget, but very singular and creative. First of all I recorded the oboe in Budapest and it was great, but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, not what I expected, so that’s why I asked Christophe to record it in a studio in Paris. I write the melody for the score, the harmony, details of the instrumentation. Very important, for example the bass, the sound that Bernard’s bass brings to this movie is a special effect, very strange and deep. You have a taste for opera, for the human voice, particularly children’s voices, and you can hear this in your score…. Bruno Coulais. The lighting of a film is so important. You can define the color, the tonality of the film with the opening credits because now you have a place where you can imagine the music. In this score you play the keyboards, Christophe Grindel is on the oboe, Helene Breschand plays the harp, and Bernard Paganotti is on the bass guitar. But when I tried to do a bit of music for him, I discovered the pleasure of writing for pictures, and after I never stopped. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. In, When Henry did an anamatic it was only with drawings. I prefer dark characters to happiness or to light characters. Coraline author Neil Gaiman has an ever-growing legion of fans who passionate follow his work. Installation. Composer Bruno Coulais’s love of film is wide and deep, but there is one thing he hates: flat lighting. For me, each movie is different from each other and the musician has to imagine new musical ideas, special music, and that’s only for one film. Neil Gaiman's Coraline is getting a musical adaptation composed by the sharp witted, velvety voiced It was incredible. He is a composer, known for The Chorus (2004), Coraline (2009) and Winged Migration (2001). On Monday January 18, 2010 at 8:30am Los Angeles time it was the beginning of the largest rain storm of the year, it started last night and became stronger as the week progressed. For Coraline herself, Merritt composed for toy piano. And little by little the music becomes quite scary by the end of the movie. It doesn’t directly relate to the story, the story’s not important for me, but film music can be another character. Prokofiev. Composer Bruno Coulais’s love of film is wide and deep, but there is one thing he hates: flat lighting. Afterwards it’s like an open door, the process is very easy. Is there even a world beyond the countryside around the house? Fortunately for Coulais, not all movies resemble an episode of Friends. End Credits 2. In recent years, his ambitious movie music has scored films ranging from a steam-punk French detective film (Vidocq) to an eye-popping and violent documentary about the insect kingdom (Microcosmos). Kids and their fears, what they imagine and the dangers out there, the real danger in what they imagine is intense.”. Until the last moment I had to change to get Henry the score. I wanted the music to be the same scale as the picture, very small. For example I’d compose the music for one sequence, a long sequence, and afterwards they cut the sequence, so I had to always keep changing. Caroline Shaw is a New York-based musician—vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer—who performs in solo and collaborative projects. You can’t just go to bed, go to sleep, and wake up in the real world free. How rare is that? I mix many elements together, the themes, the evolution of the orchestration, and especially the structure because it’s very important for a composer to imagine the complete structure of the score in the movie. He went on to win two more Cesars (for Himalaya, l’enfance d’un chef, and Les Choristes) as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song (for Les Choristes). Over one hundred and forty film scoring projects to his name, Bruno Coulais is a French composer who was born in Paris on January 13th 1954. Henry was great; he set me free and was very positive. Lyricist. Installation 4. You have a memory of the sequence and very often the music becomes closer to the film than when you are always composing with your eyes watching the picture. He absolutely loved working with Selick as he joyfully says, “I’m really a huge fan of Henry, the man and the director too.” As our discussion progresses, the musical philosophy of scoring, I didn’t think about this when I was composing the music, but now I’m impressed by the idea. Print and download Exploration sheet music from Coraline. I’m thinking of all of the aspects, but the characters were important. I always try to approach scoring a film with perfection, but it’s impossible. It’s also very important for me to play the keyboards because it’s much faster to work that way, it’s much easier. I wanted to create fear, the unknown, and a strange atmosphere. Also Helene on the harp was wonderful as well. I was very happy because I’m a huge fan of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Coulais is the real thing, always searching for new philosophies and instrumentation to underscore a film and a composer who doesn’t even know how to deal with an orchestrator because he’s orchestrated every project he’s ever worked on. Coraline (2009) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. At the end, there is a violent scene between the Other Mother and Coraline, and the music is absolutely scary, but I put in a very lyrical and contrapuntal melody with the oboe. In it beginning it sounds very quiet and realistic because it’s a realistic world. This part is so beautiful in Coraline, so strange, mysterious, that it was important for me in the beginning to start scoring the opening credits. You have to spend some time to work with other cultures to achieve this. When I was very young I hated cinema because my parents wanted me to watch only cinema for children, so I wasn’t interested in cinema and not at all by the music for movies. Coulais began his musical education on the violin and piano, aiming to become a composer of contemporary classical music. It was very easy because of my daughter who’s two years old at this moment, so I could use all of her toys, it was very funny. I do my own orchestrations, so this changed with the timings as well. The story follows Coraline Jones, a young girl who discovers a parallel world beyond a secret door in her new home. He is most widely known for his music on film soundtracks. At the very beginning I wanted the music to be quiet but with strange sounds. Coraline was nominated for seven other awards including a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film and won for Best Animated Feature from The San Francisco Film Critics Circle. There were two songs you worked on, you wrote and performed Dreaming with The Children’s Choir of Nice and Teri Hatcher. I mixed very violent orchestral music with an emotional and soft oboes melody, opposing the violence with the softness created an impact between this character and the audience. It’s a metallic percussion where you put water on a kind of basin with a tube and a bowl. © 2020 Focus Features. Cartoon Song "End Credits" is a song from the 2009 stop-motion animated film Coraline that plays during the final credits of the movie (hence the song name). I remember that we had three different tonalities for this song. Three hundred people working all the time, and Henry was able to [stay on top of] all this work. Coraline proves otherwise." Okay, so that last part is kind of bizarre. The world has everything Coraline dreams of, but hides an ominous secret. At the beginning I read the script and I composed four or five themes, melodies, and then I met with Henry and he cared for these melodies. Microcosmos won the César award for Best Music Written for a Film as well as a Victoire de la Musique. 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