Making the 'Out Past Dark' Score
BY CORA YIHUAN CHUNG
MAR. 1, 2024 8:30 PM PT
Hi! I’m Cora! I’m the composer of Out Past Dark. I want to show you the concept and the method I used to create the magic world of the film.
1. The different line of story
The film is playing around the relationship dynamic. In this film, I used violin and cello to represent men and women in this power game. All the percussion sounds are from these two instruments. High strings and the bicycle sounds are the guide to the mystery. Following the story, you can see the dynamic switch between the couple, and how the music reacts to it. Take the gas stop scene for example, it's a simple percussive dance. But at the end of the journey, after the couple went back to the house together, the percussive dance was tweaked on top of the owl singing spices to add some "magic" to the man's story.
For the mystery part of the story, I processed over 30 owl sounds to a bird choir (persuaded the sound designer). The sound also provides the hint of the battle. The climax of the film is the owl battle in the woods. The audience can hear the sound of the owls (the magic world) mixed with human voices (the reality). It was a fun experiment! I’m very glad that Eddie and Mark gave me this opportunity to play around music and sound! I believe music and sound plays an important part to help the story telling. After the lab with Skywalker Sound, I realized the sound (or even just the frequency of sounds) can also be part of the music (if the sound designer and the director gives me the thumbs up).
2. Playing time and space
The cool part of the story is that you can’t tell which one is real! When I create the music, I want some sounds that people are familiar with, but feeling a bit off. I ended up using very small groups of elements: solo strings(violin/cello), voices, birds (owls), synth sound that I built using the production sound and the elements ahead. It’s all acoustic instruments, but you may feel different.
Pacing and rhythmic are other adventures. At the beginning, the couple was on the road enjoying themselves, then the tension and the conflict started to emerge. You can always hear the motive from the music but show up with different speed or twists.
3. How to help the storytelling through music
As for my classical background, I am still very engaged with natural and acoustic instrument sounds; As a creator, I try to figure out another way to use these sounds to innovate the story telling. In this film, all of the ambient sounds/pad is from birds(owls) and human voices. I also want the string instruments to get a different tone as usual. At the "Back from the Wood" scene, you can not only hear the string percussion reprised with filters and compressions from the convenient store, and also the violin was added with a super low bass amp, the cello playing extremely high notes to display the dynamic swapping and the couple's discomfort. It's also a challenge to myself to develop a new voice to the film.
I hope you all enjoy the film and the music soundscape that we brought! I am truly grateful to be part of this amazing team! The soundtrack album will come out soon, please stay tuned! Thank you so much!
