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Jonny on Bodysong
It’s common knowledge that despite many requests Radiohead have resisted creating music for films. What drew you to the project Bodysong? Jonny: “Most film score writing demands discipline. You have to use click-tracks, and provide music that makes it’s point in, say, 20 seconds - and even leaves spaces for dialogue. This wasn’t true with Bodysong, which meant I could let musicians play at tempos that felt right. So I had the luxury of just concentrating on trying to put some kind of mood across.”
What was the biggest challenge of writing a film soundtrack of this size and scope? Jonny: ” One advantage of a regular soundtrack is that you can structure the music around recurring themes or characters - neither of which occurs in Bodysong. Also I was very conscious of the exhaustion you get hearing 85 minutes of music that is either too similar or too disparate in style. I was trying to get the balance between them…”
What came first the images or the music? Jonny: ” Both, in a way. Rough drafts of the film came in sections (that grew and shrank in length as the editing progressed) and stuff written for each section that was recorded, then edited to size, towards the end of the whole process.”
How did your very different experiences as part of Radiohead and your classical musical knowledge contribute to the mix of music you’ve created for Bodysong? Jonny: “It just meant I could use a string quartet, and write out stuff for the jazz players to improvise around. It was a revelation to realise that you can rely on good players to make quite simple ideas sound very ‘musical’. The Emperor String quartet were fantastic - adaptable, patient and played beautifully.”
The film images are a mixture of analogue images (some over 100 years old) and digital images, all compiled, restored and edited into a narrative digitally. Does the process you used to create the soundtrack music reflect that mix? Jonny:” I suppose so… I was anxious not to just provide pastiches of older styles of music to accompany older sources of film: and yet, I quickly found out that it was important for some of the music to try and be beautiful - pretty, even - like the footage. And not be embarrassed by that. The dark, sinister moods were easier, but could have swamped the film if music like the string quartet material wasn’t there too.”
There’s more info available at www.bodysong.com
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