The Score
Light and sound are the foundation for this production, and are two of my biggest passions in life. While writing the screenplay for A Place to Fall Down, I simultaneously wrote the creative direction for how I wanted to produce the score. I not only see the scenes in my head visually, but I also hear them – the ambient sounds, the room tone, and even the score. For A Place to Fall Down, I knew a score was the right path; there were elements of sound I needed that didn’t exist.
When I met the extraordinary composer Wink Winkelmann, I knew he was just the person to bring my vision to life. We spent months talking through the story, its inspiration, and examining every moment in the script.
My first note was, “At this stage, and it's early, I'm starting to envision a score that is composed to the whole piece that kinda follows the emotion of the story, loose - raw - reverb - and tightens up as the positive interactions happen at the end, building to something more complete in the final scene. I think in the early scenes it's more abstract and ambient.”
I also enlisted my lifelong friend Thomas Page as a consulting Music Supervisor to help shape the early development of the sound. I’ve known Thomas since middle school and we came up record collecting and DJing in the 90s. We have a short hand as it relates to communicating music and sonics, and he has a gifted and highly-tuned ear for music and sound of all kinds.
After assembling a team of musicians, we went into the studio to record the score and all of its beautiful and bizarre elements. As an avid record collector and former DJ, I’ve been manipulating music one way or another my whole life. My approach to this project was much like how I would hear and mix records; I wanted to record all live instruments in a multitracking session, isolate each instrument so I could essentially pull each sound I needed, and layer additional elements as I needed them. I also wanted a comprehensive version of the score that was turned into two tracks that were complete, traditional songs, using the same pieces from the score.
Scores by their very nature are ambient – some of my favorite scores aren’t necessarily easy to listen to – so I wanted to create a couple tracks that came from the bones of the score, but was something a person could throw on the record player while making dinner or reading a good book. We created two tracks: one four-minute song titled “About Time,” and another, more jazz-inspired jam session called “A Beautiful Disaster.”
ABOUT THE RECORDING SESSION
The score was recorded at the legendary hit factory Westlake Recording Studios in West Hollywood. All live instruments were used, and we recorded a total of three tracks in just five hours.
We recorded the first track, “About Time,” without the musicians having seen the early cut of the film. We then took a short break, showed the team the film, and then went in to record the score itself. It was fascinating to see how the vibe shifted going into this session – the transfer of the emotion of the film to the musicians was instant, and the performance they gave us was extraordinary. It was easily one of the most powerful moments of the entire filmmaking process.
Lastly, we recorded “A Beautiful Disaster,” a track that gave the musicians freedom to instinctively explore the range of all the previously recorded pieces, creating a more jazz-inspired improvisational take on the score. While this was initially intended to be used for the end credits, we ended up using a lot of the unique elements that came from this session in the score itself.
Some of the instruments used to create this one-of-a-kind sound:
1963 Gibson SG Les Paul Custom
1978 Fender Rhodes Home Piano
1969 Les Paul Bass
1973 Les Paul Standard
Learn more about Westlake Recording Studios in the section LOCATIONS MATTER.
