I’ve significantly changed my workflow as I continue to build my movie scoring and music video business. My focus is on refining techniques and processes to increase the artistic aspect of a project while reducing the time to completion with the subsequent financial savings.
3 Benefits of Simultaneous Screenplays and Soundtracks
I first read about this technique when Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and Atticus Ross scored the U.S. version of The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo (2011). While the basic screenplay had already been written, not much information was communicated to Reznor and Ross, so they decided to start writing and recording the score so that the dailies had actual music from them instead of using temporary music. This technique helped David Fincher (director) during filming, and some reports attribute adjustments to filming and editing due to the work of Reznor and Ross.
A year later (2012), Marc Streitenfeld took this further during his work on Ridley Scott’s movie Prometheus. Scott reportedly played pre-production soundtrack work from Streintenfeld into in-ear monitors while the actors were rehearsing and filming to give them a visceral sense of a particular scene.
While these two movies did not have the screenplay and soundtrack written simultaneously, they inspired me to try that technique in the upcoming movie Darker.
The three significant benefits of doing both at the same time, technically writing a section of the screenplay and then composing a section of the soundtrack immediately afterward, or vice versa, are:
- Better audience experience: While vision is the primary sense for humans, from a long-term memory perspective, scent and sound outweigh vision. Sound is so important that there’s a whole medical branch called Music Therapy (a combination of traditional psychological therapy with music). To take advantage of the importance of sound in movies, audio technology in theater and in-home systems has moved from stereo to Dolby 5.1 (6 speakers) to Dolby Atmos and Elipsa (nearly unlimited speakers).
- Note: Scent reproduction in movie theaters first appeared in 1906 (before the introduction of sound in movies) and culminated in the wonderfully named “Smell-O-Vision” during the 1960 film Scent of Mystery. Since then digital scent has been an ongoing technology development since 1999.
- Better screenplays: Once I’ve written a script’s first draft, as a screenwriter, I now incorporate a storyboard and demo music of the actual soundtrack into script revisions or complete rewrites. Having visuals and audio available helps ensure I’m not relying on the characters to tell the story through narration. Instead, the availability of audio and visual cues helps to ensure that I’m writing the character’s dialog and actions so they show what’s going on instead of unnecessarily telling what’s already being represented by audio and visual cues.
- Better actor performance: Many actors report that performing in front of a greenscreen is difficult because they have nothing to react to. Using audio devices such as live playback through speakers or in-ear monitors coupled with LED Volumes technology (please refer to the video below) creates a realistic auditory and visual representation of the scene they’re in. Especially with science fiction-based movies, this can go a long way toward helping actors give their best performances.
Darker | Simultaneous Screenplays and Soundtracks
For the upcoming movie Darker, here’s a flashback scene called Relationtainment. In this scene, we’re showing (through visuals and the music score) the future of virtual relationships throughout a lifetime, featuring Vivien’s (protagonist) husband.
Where has this all Led?
Having audio and visual cues available early in the writing process has made writing screenplays much more fun and faster.
As an artist, that’s a significant benefit. And to the people financing the movie, the cost reductions can make the difference between the project moving forward or ending up in developmental hell.
(Continues after the video)
LED Volumes technology
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