As promised, below is the interview with film composer Jessamie Kaitler, who recently scored the feature film ‘Damaged’, which won three international film awards:
Best Feature Film – Atlas Awards Film Festival
Royal Reel Award – Canada International Film Festival
Best Psychological/Thriller – POP International Film Festival
Hope you enjoy the interview. @avontheedge
Hi Jessamie, tell me about your journey in to film music. What is your musical background?
I started violin when I was 9 and piano at 12, and was always heavily involved in the music programs throughout school. I first heard Thomas Newman’s soundtrack to American Beauty when I was about 11 or 12, and was just in awe of this strange and colourful music. It wasn’t until years later that I realised this music actually belonged to a film, and that people are employed to write music like this – I then found out my passion in life! From then on I’ve pursued a career in music for media, through online courses, independent learning and an internship.
You took the Berklee Online Film Composition course. What was your experience of studying online?
I took Music Composition for Film and TV and also Songwriting for Film and TV, and they were a great introduction into music for media. Studying online was a great option for me, as in Melbourne, Australia there aren’t a whole lot of film scoring courses around.
The Composition course was delivered over 12 weeks, each week focusing on a different film genre (romantic, action, drama etc). The lectures were released each week including video and audio examples, plus a weekly assignment of scoring a short scene (usually 1-5 minutes) using the techniques learnt. It was a great experience having to churn out a finished piece every week and in such varied styles.
We had one video chat each week with the lecturer and classmates from around the world – usually at 1am over here! It was great to go through the content verbally and ask questions. When I backpacked around the US in 2013 I actually went to Berklee in Boston and sat in on one of the classes I’d previously took online, with the same professor too – a surreal experience!
So, let’s talk about ‘Damaged’, was this the first film that you scored?
This was the first feature film I’d done. I’ve worked on a couple of shorts before, so Damaged was a huge challenge but also a thrilling one.
What kind of challenges did ‘Damaged’ provide and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge by far was being on opposite sides of the globe from Darren and the rest of the crew! The entire film was shot and produced in Nottinghamshire, England, while I was over here in Melbourne, Australia. Darren found me through Stage 32 and all of our conversations were online, through email, voice call and video chat. I would upload my drafts to a file-sharing site and Darren would send through his feedback.At times it was a difficult way of communicating, as email can become quite arduous and we had every tech issue imaginable when video calling! Being there in person would have made things much easier, particularly with spotting cue and clarifying the arc of some scenes. We managed it really well though, keeping in regular contact, giving lots of updates and really just being as clear as possible. It was also useful to screen capture/record what I was working on, so I could solo out instruments and show how the parts were all working together.
‘Damaged’ was a very subtle and understated score but very well done. To me, with ‘Damaged’, you managed to capture the disturbing nature of what the characters had endured and also inflicted on others without making the audience completely turn on them or overly sympathise with them. Was that something the director instructed or something you got immediately from watching the film?
Thank you! I’m glad the score translated that way. I had a lot of discussions with my director, Darren A. Furniss, about his overall vision and the intrinsic qualities of each character, their motives, the reasons for their actions. They needed to be portrayed not as monsters, but as victims of their own human weaknesses. The score was not to be vulgar, overstated, or begging the audience for sympathy, but rather to reflect the fragility of human nature, the crimes we commit and how we justify them.
Darren initially provided a rough cut of the film with the likes of Thomas Newman and Johann Johannson as temp music, which gave me a clear indication of the dark, eerie, understated tone that he was looking for. It was definitely a psychological process as well, delving into the characters’ minds and really finding the raw honesty behind their words. Dave is the alpha male of the cast and quite a dark character, but when he opens up about how much he loves his girlfriend Alice, a solo cello enters. The cello is simple, raw and pure, like the love he has for Alice. There were many points throughout the film where we needed to juxtapose this beauty of their honesty with the surprising and occasionally horrifying stories they tell us.
How long did you have to work on ‘Damaged’?
It took six months to create the entire score, roughly 70 minutes of music. There are six characters and each needed their own theme, so there was a lot of experimentation needed to get the right melody and sound palette for each. Some synth sounds were used for more than one character but other than that, I was basically starting again with every couple of scenes.
Were there a lot of revisions to the music during the process?Fortunately, the style of music that Damaged needed is what comes to me most naturally. Having heard the temp music and having plenty of discussions with Darren, I was able to produce the right sort of ideas and mood, so the revisions requested were generally pretty small, usually in drawing out a theme a little longer throughout a scene, or having the higher register strings come in a little later, etc. My director has a fantastic ear for music, without knowing anything specific about music – so he was able to point out these particular areas where tweaks were needed.
There was one scene that I did need to re-write from scratch, as I’d unknowingly written something incredibly similar to the temp track – it must have been stuck in my head for long enough that I believed I wrote it! The dangers of temp tracks – luckily this only happened once though.
What do you use to compose your music?
I compose in Cubase Pro. I primarily use EastWest’s Hollywood Orchestral Series and SoundIron’s Olympus Choirs, which I run through Vienna Ensemble Pro 5, and Camel Audio’s Alchemy for synths. I export to Sibelius 7.5 for notation when I need to produce a written score.
Other than Thomas Newman, who you previously mentioned, who are your favourite film composers and why?
There are so many amazing composers that inspire me, and I just love discovering new and old soundtracks all the time.
Danny Elfman is a big hero of mine, having forged such a strong relationship with Tim Burton right from the beginning, who believed in him before he’d had much experience in film scoring. Elfman’s scores always invoke such strong and varied emotions, from mystical to heartbreaking, and I just love his use of choir – Edward Scissorhands in particular is such a journey of a score. He recently performed in Australia with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Adelaide Festival Chorus – he sang the part of Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas and was dancing all over the stage, it was insane!
The work and drive of Alexandre Desplat always amazes me – he has such a strong work ethic; it is his passion, his life, and it really shows with what he has produced. His soundtrack to The Imitation Game was one of my favourites of 2014 (along with Zimmer’s Interstellar). I think Desplat scored around 5 features last year – a true mark of his commitment and determination, and a huge inspiration for me.
Of course the old masters, Hermann, Mancini, Morricone, Williams, Goldsmith, the list goes on… Their work has forged such a strong art form of the Film Score that I am constantly exploring and learning from, and it’s such an exciting journey to be on.
What projects are you currently working on?
I just finished a fantasy piece that my local orchestra will be performing, and I have three short films in the works (potentially another feature). Last year I completed ‘Damaged’ and then an internship, which only made me hungry for more knowledge so I’m currently studying Composition and Music Production at the Australian Institute of Music. I’m always writing and expanding my portfolio and can’t wait to see what’s on the horizon.
Look out for Jessamie in the near future, you can follow her on Twitter