Screen International: Perfect pitch

WSA Film Music Days

Experience the best of film music during our symphonic film music concerts and indulge in numerous seminars, composer talks, panel discussions and masterclasses.

Concerts

Thu 20 Oct

8 pm - Korean Composers - music by Cho Young-wuk (Oldboy, The Handmaiden), Jung Jae-il (Parasite, Squid Game), Lee Byeong-woo (The Host, Mother)

Fri 21 Oct

7.30 pm - Listening session & album release: Evgueni Galperine's "Theory of Becoming"

Sa 22 Oct

8 pm - World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony & Concert - music by Mark Isham, Bruno Coulais and Nainita Desai

Industry Programme

Thu 20 Oct

10.30 am - Buyout: A Threat to the European Composer? Organised in collaboration with European Composer & Songwriter Alliance (ECSA).

2 pm - Film Composer & Film Producer: Balancing a Budget. Organised in collaboration with the Belgian Screen Composers Guild.

3.30 pm - Composer Talk: Mark Isham

Fri 21 Oct

10.30 am - Music in nature documentaries with Bruno Coulais, Dirk Brossé and Nainita Desai

1 pm - Creative Partnership: Nico Leunen, Johnny Jewel and Fien Troch

3 pm - Creative Partnership: David Lowery and Daniel Hart

Sa 22 Oct

12 am - WSA Meet & Greet (nominees & guests)

1 pm - Changing the Face of “The Composer”: The Alliance for Women Film Composers

2.15 pm - WSA 2022 Nominees Round Tables

tickets & info

wsawards.com

CONTACT

? UK office MBI, Standard House, 12-13 Essex Street, London WC2R 3AA

Tel +44 (0) 20 8102 0900

? US office 6671 Sunset Blvd, Suite 1525, Los Angeles, CA 90028

EDITORIAL

Editor

Matt Mueller

Supplement editor

Nikki Baughan

Americas editor

Jeremy Kay

Deputy editor

Louise Tutt

Reviews editor and chief film critic

Fionnuala Halligan

European editor

Tim Dams

Senior editor, online

Orlando Parfitt

Awards/box office editor

Charles Gant

Group head of production and art

Mark Mowbray

Group art director

Peter Gingell

Asia editor

Jean Noh

International news editor

Michael Rosser

Senior correspondent, Asia Silvia Wong

Deputy reviews editor

Nikki Baughan

Locations editor

Chris Evans International reporter

Ben Dalton UK reporter

Mona Tabbara Reporter Melissa Kasule Digital content assistant

Ellie Calnan

Sub-editor

Willemijn Barker-Benfield

Contributing editors

John Hazelton, Wendy Mitchell, Mark Salisbury

ADVERTISING AND PUBLISHING

Commercial director/UK, Spain, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand

Scott Benfold

Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Benelux, Eastern Europe

Gunter Zerbich

Director, Asia, France, Middle East, Africa Pierre-Louis Manes-Murphy President, North America

Nigel Daly

Sales and business development executive, North America

Danny De Lillo

Sales and business development executive, North America

Nikki Tilmouth

Production manager

Jonathon Cooke Marketing manager Danielle Cosh Managing director, film and TV group

Alison Pitchford

Chief executive officer, MBI

Conor Dignam

Screen

Music of life

The World Soundtrack Awards continues to showcase the symbiotic relationship between image and music

Always dedicated to celebrating and encouraging collaborative relationships between composers and filmmakers, this year’s World Soundtrack Awards brings an added spotlight to those partnerships through masterclasses with, among others, US film maker David Lowery and his longtime composer Daniel Hart.

The two men have collaborated on seven features to date and will offer WSA delegates a deep-dive into their director-composer relationship, which has grown in stature to become a free-flowing creative exchange, resulting in several powerful scores. The culmination in their partnership thus far came with last year’s medieval fantasy The Green Knight, which was easily one of my favourite film scores of 2021, a mesmerising evocation of Lowery’s narrative.

There is much more in store for attendees of the awards, as usual held under the auspices of Film Fest

Gent. Highlights include several roundtable talks with WSA nominees and film music concerts featuring the selected works of WSA guest of honour Mark Isham, WSA lifetime achievement recipient Bruno Coulais, 2021 discovery of the year winner Nainita Desai, and a concert for Korean composers including Cho Young Wuk (Oldboy) and Jung Jae-il (Parasite, Squid Game).

Desai — who in 2021 also became the first doc umentary composer to be nominated for film com poser of the year — is nominated again this year in the public choice award category, for her score on mountaineering documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible. She joins a hugely impressive line-up of WSA nominees that includes Cristobal Tapia De Veer, fresh off his Primetime Emmy win for the score of HBO’s hit series The White Lotus

Congratulations to all of this year’s WSA nominees. And to all of this year’s delegates, enjoy the music. n s

Matt Mueller, editor

2 Sound and vision

02

Filmmaker David Lowery and composer Daniel Hart discuss the importance of visual and aural symbiosis

4 Living in harmony

World Soundtrack Awards guest of honour Mark Isham on his love of experimenting with sound

6 Thank you for the music

This year’s WSA nominees include new and veteran talents from around the world, working across film and television

10 New adventures

French composer and lifetime achievement award recipient Bruno Coulais on why he still embraces the challenges of making music

11 High scores

Discovery of the year winner 2021 Nainita Desai says documentary scores are finally getting the attention they deserve

12 Sounds of South Korea

South Korean composer Cho Young Wuk is at the vanguard of his country’s creative output

Sound and vision

The World Soundtrack Awards are dedicated to supporting the relationship between a film or television series and its music. Filmmaker David Lowery and composer Daniel Hart discuss the importance of visual and aural symbiosis. Nikki Baughan reports

As the World Soundtrack Awards (WSA) prepares for this year’s Film Music Days event (October 20‑22), it is once again shining a spotlight on the often overlooked work of film and television composers. More than that, however, it remains dedi‑ cated to highlighting and cele‑ brating the rich collaborative relationships that exist between composers and filmmakers.

“We’ve heard many stories about composers having difficulties talk‑ ing with filmmakers,” says Wim De Witte, programme director of Film Fest Gent (October 11‑22), under whose banner the WSAs take place. “As a film festival, we have a lot of directors coming to us so we find it’s our role to bring these worlds [of filmmakers and composers] together — to build a bridge between them, and to give directors and composers the tools to facilitate better communications between the two.”

“We try to help filmmakers build an interest in this world, [to] see the importance of music and of con‑ necting and communicating with their composers,” says Sophie Joos, the festival’s music projects coordi‑ nator, who notes the programme (see sidebar, right) is designed to “build good relationships between directors and composers”.

“We don’t want to push every director into having their film use

David Lowery, filmmaker

a score from the first minute until the last,” De Witte adds. “We sim‑ ply want to give them confidence to talk about which scenes do need music, and what kind.”

Aware the relationship between a film and its score is often cemented in the edit suite, the awards organ‑ isers are also keen to bring editors into the conversation. De Witte points to events such as this year’s masterclass between Belgian editor Nico Leunen, composer Johnny Jewel and filmmaker Fien Troch, who worked together on 2016’s Home. “It’s often an editor who puts a temp track on the first edit, and then the direc‑ tor falls in love with the music and so it becomes more difficult to get something more

(Right) Lowery collaborated with Hart on The Green Knight

creative,” De Witte notes. “We help people to understand how the edit‑ ing process works, and give them the tools to discuss creative choices together.”

Musical language

The idea that there is a rich lan‑ guage to be found between film‑ maker and musician is embodied by US director David Lowery and his longtime com‑ poser Daniel Hart, who will both be attend‑ ing the festival for screenings and a creative partnership master‑ class. (Hart is also nom‑ inated in the best film composer category for his work on Lowery’s The Green Knight, and best original song for the film’s ‘Blome Sweet Lilie Flow’.)

“The rapport felt instant,” says Lowery, who first worked with Hart on low‑budget 2009 film St Nick. The pair have collaborated on all of Lowery’s subsequent fea‑ tures including Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), Pete’s Dragon (2016), A Ghost Story (2017), The Old Man & The Gun (2018), The Green Knight (2021) and Disney’s upcom‑ ing live‑action Peter Pan & Wendy

These titles are strong examples of a natural symbiosis between sound and vision. “I don’t speak the same language that Daniel does,” Lowery says. “I’m the one talking in weird abstractions and he trans‑ lates that into music. But our two forms of expression intertwine. Rather than trying to explain what I’m looking for musically, the mov‑ ing images explain to him what I’m looking for.”

“David’s visual language is very melodic — we seem to approach storytelling from the same aes‑ thetic,” Hart agrees, although he

‘There’s a great comfort to me in knowing there is that backbone to our body of work’

2 October 2022 | Screen International | screendaily.com Film Fest Gent and the World Soundtrack Awards look to strengthen the relationship between filmmaker and composer

acknowledges Lowery’s commit ment to better understanding music composition. “David’s not a musician, and doesn’t consider himself to be one, but he has gone to great lengths to learn music ter minology and instrumentation in a way that allows him to express him self musically.”

After years of collaborating with Hart, Lowery has seen a notable effect on his own approach. “[Dan iel’s work] changes the edit, for sure,” the filmmaker says. “Some

thing I discovered on Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was I would send footage to Daniel, he would write music and I would recut scenes so they better fit that music. That’s how it’s been ever since — a piece of his music will help guide the rhythm of the film itself. As we’ve become more in sync, and our process has become more refined, I’m now cut ting for what I know might be com ing, musically.”

Supportive relationship

The strength of the creative bond between Lowery and Hart was par ticularly valuable on 2021 feature The Green Knight, with the film maker taking advantage of delays caused by the Covid‑19 pandemic to continue working on the edit. That meant Hart had to revise a lot of his score to make it fit the newly recut scenes.

“There were other sections of the film that got rewritten from scratch, two or three times,” the composer says. “It was hard to keep reimag ining. But looking at it again, some things just didn’t work the way we thought they should.”

It is clear that neither Lowery nor Hart take their bond for granted. “It’s rare,” Hart says. “We see things so similarly. And David has fought for me and my music. I think he has more confidence in me than I have in myself.”

“It’s vital,” Lowery adds. “Espe cially when there are a lot of voices in the room, it’s important to pre serve [our relationship] to make sure it’s never put in jeopardy. Dan iel and I have worked together for over 10 years and there’s a great comfort to me in knowing there is that backbone to our body of work.”

For De Witte and Joos, providing a space where directors and com posers can start to build this kind of strong creative relationship is an essential part of the WSA offer ing. “The most important thing is that composers connect with their peers,” Joos says. “We always have feedback that there’s a spe cial atmosphere here in Gent; they appreciate having the time to talk to people and be inspired by their fellow composers.” n s

IN FOCUS INDUSTRY PROGRAMME

Along with a Creative Partnership masterclass from filmmaker David Lowery and composer Daniel Hart, in which they will discuss their long-term collaborative relationship, there will also be a masterclass with editor Nico Leunen, composer Johnny Jewel and filmmaker Fien Troch, who all collaborated on Troch’s 2016 film Home (both masterclasses take place on October 21).

In tandem with Film Fest Gent’s focus on South Korean cinema, this year’s WSA film music concert (October 20) will see the Brussels Philharmonic perform scores by composers Cho Young Wuk (Oldboy, The Handmaiden), Jung Jae-il (Parasite, Squid Game) — who appears on the festival’s official poster, the first time a composer has been featured — and Lee Byeong-woo (The Host, Mother).

On October 22, the Brussels Philharmonic will also be performing a concert of selected works of WSA guests of honour Mark Isham (who will give a composer talk on October 20), Bruno Coulais, and last year’s discovery of the year award winner (and 2022 public choice award nominee) Nainita Desai. Coulais and Desai will both participate in a panel about music in nature documentaries alongside Dirk Brossé, music director of Film Fest Gent (October 21).

The WSA industry programme also includes talks about the relationship between a producer and composer, organised in collaboration with the Belgian Screen Composers Guild; the threat of music buyouts (when a composer is paid a flat fee for their work and gives up all intellectual property rights), organised in collaboration with the European Composer & Songwriter Alliance (ECSA); and women in composing, held by The Alliance For Women Film Composers.

All attending nominees will take part in roundtable talks, two of which will be hosted by Screen International, as well as a meet-and-greet session with WSA guests.

Nikki Baughan

The drive to inspire, both creatively and collaboratively, informs Film Fest Gent and the WSA programme

Nah Inu

‘David [Lowery]’s visual language is very melodic… [we have] the same aesthetic’

Daniel Hart, composer

Cho Young Wuk Jung Jae-il Lee Byeong-woo

Living in harmony

As he celebrates 40 years as a film composer, WSA guest of honour Mark Isham tells Dan Jolin why he loves experimenting with sound

For Mark Isham, music came before memory. There was never a point where he decided that crafting evocative soundscapes, cinematic or otherwise, would be his life’s work. Music was always simply there. His father was an amateur violist and his mother a professional violinist, with whom he travelled as a child from New York City to Europe where he witnessed orchestra performances and symphony rehearsals.

It was during one of these Euro pean trips that he remembers fall ing in love with a particular instru ment, a particular sound. “The trumpet was the high trumpet in those days — the clarino,” he rem inisces over Zoom from his Florida home, though his base of operations is in California. “It was the most glorious sound. It hit me emotion ally and made me think, ‘If I could create this effect for others, that’s something worth doing in one’s life.’ It was the call of the heroic, the call of the triumphant.”

Six odd decades and almost 200 composing credits later, that call has, in a sense, been answered, with Isham’s honouring at the World Soundtrack Awards. He has been lauded throughout his career for his innovative entwining of electronica and jazz with traditional orchestra tion, resulting in memorable and impactful film scores including A River Runs Through It, Crash, The Black Dahlia and Judas And The Black Messiah — not to mention sterling TV work on Once Upon A Time and The Nevers. Now Ish am’s guest of honour position has brought him right back to the instrument that started it all.

“They’ve assembled a wonderful orchestra [Brussels Philharmonic]

to play a collection of my work in a way that nobody will have heard before — especially me,” he explains with a smile. “I have given myself the pressure of playing the trumpet on some of it. That’s proba bly got me more worried than any thing else. I don’t play that much anymore, so I have to get the chops back into shape.”

Yet Isham is quick to point out that any trepidation at getting back up to speed is superseded by his joy at revisiting his prolific back catalogue — “a full 39 years of film work” — in this way. “It’ll be interesting to hear all of this stuff back to back,” says the com poser, who turned 71 in September. “It really is a wonderful thing.”

A happy accident

Isham’s film composing career began almost by accident. Having cut his teeth playing trumpet in San Francisco jazz clubs as a teen ager, forming his own avant garde jazz outfit Group 87 and playing in Van Morrison’s band, he was by the early 1980s still struggling in his career. To promote his latest exper imental effort — a fusion of elec tronics (Isham is hugely inspired by Brian Eno) and traditional Chinese instruments — he spent the last few hundred dollars in his savings account on a cassette duplicating machine and distributed 100 demo tapes to everybody he knew. One of the tapes, via “a friend of a

friend of a friend”, he says, wound up in the hands of director Carroll Ballard, who was having difficulty finding the right sound for his 1983 Disney nature adventure film Never Cry Wolf

“He said, ‘That’s what I’m looking for! Who is that?’” Isham recalls. “And that was my first film. Much to Disney’s dismay — they had already paid for one score, just to get the film done, but he said, ‘No, I’m going to do something else. I’m going to hire a completely unknown kid who’s never done this before.’ How about that?”

The experience of scoring Never Cry Wolf, almost entirely performed with a Prophet 5 synthesiser, was “exciting, terrifying and adventur ous”, Isham says. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I had never taken a class in film composition before. I knew nothing about the technical side of it. It was seven days a week, 14 hour days, just trying stuff out and relying on my jazz instincts.”

His uplifting and atmospheric score was impressive enough to land an agent and, over the next couple of years, start to build a career. It had not exactly been Isham’s dream to work in film but he suddenly felt appreciated, having spent years “working in a genre that’s sort of in the cracks” and feeling unsupported by the industry. Even better, they paid him — more than he had ever earned before. “I was cajoled into the business. I was not pounding at the door,” he grins.

Unsurprisingly, Isham’s 39 year journey since has seen some aston ishing changes. His early electronic focused work was, he points out, during the pre MIDI era. “You had all these archaic ways of hook ing synthesisers up to each other and to tape machines. It was just a

very different world. Now you can do it all on a laptop in your bed room. Everything technologically oriented is so much more accessi ble.” So much so, he no longer feels tied to his California home studio.

“I have a small portable studio that I can bring with me and work in dif ferent locations. So that helps.”

It has also involved a lot of change for Isham himself, in terms

‘I was cajoled into the business. I was not pounding at the door’

Mark Isham, composer

Judas And The Black Messiah

of his sound and style. One of the biggest milestones, he says, was his Oscar­nominated score for Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It in 1992, which marked the point he fully embraced orchestration. He remembers mixing it in a tworoom studio, as the other room was being used by celebrated composer James Horner. One day, they crossed paths in the lobby. Horner

politely asked Isham if his score was all­orchestra. Isham confirmed it was indeed. “Oh, I didn’t know you did that!” Horner exclaimed.

“Right there you have the perception of me as ‘the electronic guy’, so the fact I was doing an all­orchestral score was a big deal,” says Isham. “It was a good turning point for me. Even though I grew up in the orchestral world, I had never stud­

ied it academically, but through exposure to it and now forcing myself into it, I could see that I could function effectively in it.”

That, perhaps, is an understatement. Isham went on to score three more films for Redford, and also enjoyed “repeat business” with the likes of Robert Altman, Alan Rudolph and Gary Fleder, with whom he is again collaborating

on an upcoming project. Isham is also as happy scoring episodic television as he is cinema — not that he sees much difference between the two these days. “I don’t know if you would call it TV anymore,” he says. “The Nevers is like a longform movie.”

He has never stopped learning along the way. While scoring 2006’s The Black Dahlia, for example, he studied Bernard Herrmann and Leonard Bernstein to help him nail “the mournful modern film noir” sound requested by director Brian De Palma. Even now, he still asks questions. “My son [Nick Isham] is a very prolific songwriter. I’ll go into his studio and ask, ‘When you compress that bass drum, but you link it

to the bass, how are you doing that?’ I’m learning all the time.”

Isham’s next lesson, he reveals, is “figuring out where I stand as a non­film composer these days”. This is one of the reasons why he has decided to play trumpet with the Brussels Philharmonic in Ghent — “to push myself to see what I’m capable of.” He is writing “a big symphonic work for electronic music instruments”, and also “doing a whole installation system with one of my sons, who’s a filmmaker”, but wonders how these pieces will find an audience.

“We have a very cluttered space these days which art is to be presented in,” he says. “Therefore how do you market it? And to whom? What do you call it so that people would be willing to take a look at it?” As an experimenter who, since his first few blasts on the trumpet, has rarely failed to attract attention, there’s a strong chance he will figure it out. ■ s

Benjamin Ealovega

Mark Isham revisits “a full 39 years of film work” ahead of his WSA recognition

‘We have a very cluttered space these days which art is to be presented in. Therefore how do you market it? And to whom?’

Mark Isham

A River Runs Through It Crash

Thank you for the music

This year’s World Soundtrack Award nominees include both fresh and veteran talents from around the world, working across film and television. Nikki Baughan profiles this eclectic group of composers

Television composer of the year

Established in 2016, this award recognises the craft of scoring music for high-end television series. Last year’s winner was Carlos Rafael Rivera for Hacks’ first season and The Queen’s Gambit; 2020 winner Nicholas Britell is this year nominated for Succession.

Nicholas Britell (US)

Succession

A four-time WSA award winner (discovery of the year for Moonlight, 2017; film composer of the year for If Beale Street Could Talk and Vice, 2019; television composer of the year for Succession, 2020; best origi nal song for ‘Call Me Cruella’, 2021), Britell is again nominated for his work on HBO’s Succession. He won a Primetime Emmy for the show’s title theme in 2019. Britell is also nominated (along with fellow song writers Ariana Grande, Scott ‘Kid Kudi’ Mescudi and Taura Stinson) in the best original song category, for Don’t Look Up’s ‘Just Look Up’.

Natalie Holt (UK) and John Williams (US)

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Jointly nominated for their work on Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi, neither UK composer Holt nor the US’s Williams is a stranger to the WSAs. Holt was nominated in this category last year for her work on Disney+ drama Loki (for which she was also nominated for a Prime time Emmy), while five-time Oscar winner Williams has received mul tiple WSA nominations over the years, winning best original

soundtrack in 2005 for Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds and film composer of the year in 2001 for another Spielberg feature, A.I. Artificial Intelligence. He also won the WSA public choice awards in 2001 and 2004.

Jung Jae-il (S Korea)

Squid Game

Having written everything from

operas and musicals to pop music and film scores, including Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite, South Korean composer, music ian and cultural curator Jung has most recently written the music for Netflix’s global hit series Squid Game, for which he is nominated here. The show’s title theme also saw Jung receive a Primetime Emmy nomination this year.

Hesham Nazih (Egypt)

Moon Knight

After composing the scores for several projects in his native Egypt, including Marwan Hamed’s thriller The Blue Elephant and Tarek Alarian’s Sons Of Rizk films, Nazih makes his English-language debut with the music for Disney+ Marvel TV series Moon Knight, which also secured him a Prime time Emmy nomination. Previous small-screen work includes the scores for Egyptian dramas The Seven Commandments and Every Week Has A Friday.

Theodore Shapiro (US) Severance

Veteran composer Shapiro has created myriad film scores for the likes of Old School, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, The Devil Wears Prada and Bombshell. His first WSA nomination comes for his work on the Ben Stiller-directed, Apple TV+ drama Severance, for which he was also nominated for Primetime Emmy awards for best theme music and best score, winning the latter category.

Cristobal Tapia De Veer (Chile)

The White Lotus

In the decade since composing his first score for BBC TV mini series The Crimson Petal And The White, De Veer has created music for small-screen projects includ ing Utopia (for which he won a Royal Television Society award), National  Treasure (winning a Bafta) and The Third Day. He also scored Colm McCarthy’s 2016 fea ture The Girl With All The Gifts, and his WSA nomination follows two Primetime Emmy wins for his work on HBO drama The White Lotus

Natalie Holt John Williams

Nicholas Britell Jung Jae-il

Theodore Shapiro

Cristobal Tapia De Veer

Hesham Nazih

Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

Gimo

Free Run Artists Productions

Film composer of the year

This award is given to the composer judged to have cre ated the best film music for feature or documentary in the last year, either as an individ ual score or body of work. Last year’s winner Daniel Pemberton is nominated once again.

Germaine Franco (US) Encanto

With Encanto, Franco became the first female composer to score a Disney animated film, for which she received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Pre viously she wrote and produced songs for Disney’s Coco and co-wrote the title song for Nickel odeon show The Casagrandes. She has also scored features including Dora And The Lost City Of Gold and Dope, along with Netflix films Work It and The Sleepover

Jonny Greenwood (UK)

The Power Of The Dog, Spencer This is the fifth WSA nomination for Greenwood, following nods for the scores of Paul Thomas Ander son’s There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012) and Phantom Thread (2017), and original song ‘Magic Works’ from Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005). This year Greenwood, who is a member of UK band Radiohead, is nominated for his scores for Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, his sec ond Oscar nod following Phantom Thread) and Pablo Larrain’s Prin cess Diana biopic Spencer

Daniel Hart (US)

The Green Knight, The Last Letter From Your Lover

Hart made his feature score debut with David Lowery’s low-budget 2008 film St Nick, and has since scored all of the director’s fea tures including Ain’t Them Bod

ies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, A Ghost Story, The Old Man & The Gun and The Green Knight. He is nominated here for his work on the latter (as well as in the best original song category for ‘Blome Swete Lilie Flour’) along with his score for Augustine Frizzell’s The Last Letter From Your Lover. Hart has also scored features

including documentary Fauci and TV shows such as The Exor cist. He is currently working with Lowery on Disney’s upcoming film Peter Pan & Wendy.

Alberto Iglesias (Spain)

Parallel Mothers Iglesias received a fourth Oscar nomination for his score on Paral

lel Mothers, the most recent fea ture from his 13-title collaboration with Pedro Almodovar. He has also worked with other acclaimed directors, not least Oliver Stone (Comandante), Steven Soderbergh (Che) and Ridley Scott (Exodus: Gods And Kings). In 2006, Iglesias won the WSA for best film com poser and best original soundtrack for The Constant Gardener, and achieved the same double feat in 2012 for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Daniel Pemberton (UK) The Rescue, Being The Ricardos, The Bad Guys, Brian And Charles Prolific UK composer Pemberton won this award last year for his work on Enola Holmes, Rising Phoenix and The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (for which he was also Oscar-nominated for best original song); he previously won the WSA discovery of the year award in 2014. This year he is nominated for his scores on four contrasting works: Thai cave-rescue docu mentary The Rescue; Aaron Sork in’s biopic Being The Ricardos (which bagged Pemberton a Bafta nod); animation The Bad Guys; and Jim Archer’s independent UK comedy Brian And Charles.

Hans Zimmer (Germany) Dune, No Time To Die, The Survivor Zimmer won Oscars for Disney animation The Lion King in 1994 and, earlier this year, for Denis Vil leneuve’s Dune. It is the latter for which he is nominated in this cate gory, along with James Bond instalment No Time To Die and boxing drama The Survivor. High lights of a long and varied career include Thelma & Louise, Rain Man, The Dark Knight trilogy and, more recently, Top Gun: Maverick and Blade Runner 2049. Zimmer has been nominated for multiple WSA awards, winning best origi nal soundtrack in 2011 for Chris topher Nolan’s Inception. He is cur rently working on the Dune sequel.

Germaine Franco

Jonny Greenwood

Daniel Hart

Alberto Iglesias Hans Zimmer

Daniel Pemberton

Zoe Zimmer

Tristan_Bejawn/Composer Magazine

Emily Ulmer

7 October 2022 | Screen International | screendaily.com Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Public choice award

Voted for by music fans, this award was won last year by Benji Merrison for SAS: Red Notice.

Michelino Bisceglia (Belgium)

Charlotte

Belgian composer Bisceglia won the WSA public choice award in 2014 for his score on Stijn Coninx’s Marina; this year he is nominated for Tahir Rana and Eric Warin’s animation Charlotte

A prolific musician, Bisceglia has composed the scores for multiple features and series, including all 52 episodes of 3D-animated show Symfollies, the music from which was played in a number of live shows with a full orchestra.

Nainita Desai (UK)

14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible UK composer Desai won last year’s WSA discovery of the year award and was also nominated for film composer of the year (the first documentary composer to be considered in the category after

the awards were opened up to non-fiction scores), and the pub lic choice award. Now she is nom inated again for the latter with Netflix mountaineer documen tary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossi ble, for which she was also nomi nated for a Primetime Emmy.

Frank Ilfman (Israel)

Gunpowder Milkshake

Having studied trombone and piano at Tel Aviv’s Jaffa Conserva torium of Music, Israeli composer Ilfman worked on his first TV production, Clive Owen-starrer Chancer with composer Jan Ham mer, when he was 17 years old. Since then he has scored myriad features and TV shows, including UK chiller Ghost Stories and Israeli crime thriller Big Bad Wolves. He reteams with Navot Papushado, one of Big Bad Wolves’ directors, for English-language action film Gunpowder Milkshake.

Joseph Metcalfe (UK), John Coda (US), Grant Kirkhope (UK)

The King’s Daughter

UK-born, Los Angeles-based composers Metcalfe and Kirk

hope have joined forces with US composer Coda to create the score for Sean McNamara’s fan tasy adventure The King’s Daugh ter. Kirkhope has worked across film, TV and video games, includ ing Rare’s Viva Piñata for which he earned a Bafta game awards nomination, while Metcalfe has scored films including The Hard Corps. Coda most recently scored Cats & Dogs 3: Paws Unite

Batu Sener (Turkey)

The Ice Age Adventures Of Buck Wild

Turkey-born, Los Angeles-based composer Sener has been work ing alongside Oscar-nominated composer John Powell at 5 Cat Studios, and has contributed music to features including How To Train Your Dragon, Solo: A Star Wars Story and Jason Bourne. He composed the score for The Ice Age Adventures Of Buck Wild — for which he is nominated here — and spin-off miniseries Ice Age: Scrat Tales. He has also com posed additional music for Olivia Wilde’s recent Venice premiere Don’t Worry Darling

Best original song

Awarded to the best original song used in a film or TV series, the 2021 winner was ‘Call Me Cruella’ from Disney’s Cruella by Nicholas Britell, Florence Welch, Steph Jones, Jordan Powers and Taura Stinson.

‘Blome Swete Lilie Flour’

The Green Knight

The Green Knight is composer Dan iel Hart’s sixth feature collaboration with filmmaker David Lowery; they are currently working on their sev enth, Disney’s Peter Pan & Wendy.

‘Hold My Hand’

Top Gun: Maverick

Top Gun: Maverick’s closer is written by Stefani Germanotta (aka Lady Gaga, who performs) and producer BloodPop (aka Michael Tucker).

‘Just Look Up’ Don’t Look Up Performed by Ariana Grande and Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi), and co-composed by Grande and Mes cudi along with WSA TV composer of the year nominee Nicholas Britell and Taura Stinson.

‘No Time To Die’

No Time To Die

The most recent James Bond theme is performed by multiple Grammy award-winner Billie Eilish, who wrote the piece with her brother, singer/songwriter and producer Finneas O’Connell.

‘Strange Game’ Slow Horses

Written by last year’s film composer of the year winner Daniel Pember ton and Mick Jagger, and performed by Jagger, this is the first song from a TV show to be nominated since small-screen music was made eligi ble in 2021 in this category.

‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ Encanto

The catchiest song of the upbeat Encanto soundtrack was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and per formed by the Encanto cast.

Nainita Desai

Michelino Bisceglia Frank Ilfman

Batu Sener

Joseph Metcalfe John Coda Grant Kirkhope

Bas Bogaerts

Raphaël Brochard

Benoit Billard

Marcus Grip

Discovery of the year

Given to a feature or documen tary composer who has had a breakthrough year on the international stage, the winner will be invited to perform their score at next year’s Film Fest Gent. The 2021 recipient was Nainita Desai.

Karl Frid (Sweden)

Pleasure

Swedish musician Frid studied clas sical music at London’s Royal Col lege of Music, Afro-Cuban music at CNSEA in Havana and Afro-Amer ican music at Stockholm’s Royal College of Music. Co-founder of Stockholm production studio Frid & Frid with his brother Par, Frid has scored features including Ninja Thyberg’s Sundance 2021 premiere Pleasure

Eiko Ishibashi (Japan)

Drive My Car

Japanese singer/songwriter and musician Ishibashi scored her first cinematic feature, Masakazu Kane ko’s The Albino’s Trees, in 2016. In 2019 she composed the music for anime series Blade Of The Immor tal and followed that in 2021 with the score for Ryusuke Hamagu chi’s Drive My Car, which won best international feature at this year’s Academy Awards.

A composition contest for composers under the age of 36.

John Konsolakis (Greece)

Composer of music for film, the atre, video games and concerts, Konsolakis has also won three

international composition compe titions.

Giacomo Rita (Italy)

Initially an electric guitar player, Rita now composes for films, video games and audiovisual projects.

Robert Wallace (US)

Concert pianist and composer Wallace creates scores for film and television, including HBO’s Allen V Farrow and Netflix’s Nightbooks

Best original score for a Belgian production

Awarded to the best score for a recent Belgian feature.

Vincent Cahay (France) Inexorable Cahay has composed scores for features including Working Girls and The Swarm, and is nomi nated for his work on Fabrice Du Welz’s thriller Inexorable

Son Lux (US)

Everything Everywhere All At Once

Guitarist Rafiq Bhatia, drummer Ian Chang and vocalist Ryan Lott make up US experimental band Son Lux, whose music has been used in fea tures such as Looper and TV shows Mozart In The Jungle and How To Get Away With Murder. They are nominated for scoring Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All At Once

Maurizio Malagnini (Italy)

Coppelia UK-based Malagnini has composed scores for several BBC dramas including The Paradise, for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 2015, animation Muddle Earth and Call The Midwife. He makes his feature score debut with live-action/animation hybrid Cop pelia, a film version of the ballet, which premiered at Annecy in 2021.

Isobel Waller-Bridge (UK)

Munich: The Edge Of War Waller-Bridge was nominated for a Royal Television Society Craft & Design Award for her Fleabag score, and has since scored fea tures including Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia, Autumn de Wilde’s Emma. and Christian Schwochow’s Munich: The Edge Of War. Recently she composed the scores for Craig Roberts’ The Phantom Of The Open and Babak Anvari’s I Came By

Demusmaker (Belgium)

Nowhere

Demusmaker (real name Blaise Delafosse) made his feature score debut with Houda Benyamina’s Divines, before scoring Peter Monsaert’s drama Nowhere

The Penelopes (France)

SpaceBoy

French indie pop/electronic band The Penelopes are nom inated for their score on Oliv ier Pairoux’s family adventure SpaceBoy n s

Sabam Award for best original composition by a young composer

Karl Frid Eiko Ishibashi

Son Lux

Maurizio Malagnini

Isobel Waller-Bridge

Seiji Shibuya

Emil Frid

Anna Powell Denton

New adventures

As he receives this year’s lifetime achievement award, French composer Bruno Coulais tells Mark Salisbury why he is still embracing the challenges of making music

Rather than count sheep when he has trouble sleeping, Bruno Coulais tries listing the scores he has composed. A simple enough task, you might think, except Coulais does not know how many he has written in a career spanning 44 years, from television and shorts to documen taries, animation and live-action features. “Maybe 200,” says the pro lific French composer, who is being honoured with a lifetime achieve ment award at the 22nd World Soundtrack Awards on October 22.

“I don’t know exactly.”

Born in 1954 to a musical fam ily, Coulais was naturally gifted. “My parents played the piano, and I was able to play immediately what they played, and I tried to write music, very small pieces for piano,” he recalls.

Coulais subsequently studied at the famed Conservatoire de Paris, where he would later return to teach film composition for five years. When he was still a student, aged 17, he was introduced by a friend to renowned French film maker Francois Reichenbach, who asked him to score a documentary short he had directed.

“I was happy to try,” remembers the now 68-year-old Coulais. “We [ended up doing], I think, five or six films together.”

Slow burner

Coulais admits he was not much of a film fan when he started com posing scores. “I was not interested in cinema,” he says. “For me, it was only entertainment. But when I met Francois, I noticed how inter esting and difficult it was to write music [for films].

“I was also very lucky because in Paris, it’s easy to see all of cinema

and I discovered the films of Berg man, Buñuel, Fellini, Walsh, a lot of great directors. I became passionate about cinema and music.”

For the next two decades, Cou lais worked mainly in France on various TV and film projects. “I was absolutely crazy, because I compose music for orchestras, and I write my own orchestrations, so I discover both the pleasure and difficulties of writing orchestrations. But cinema

was my best school, because I was very young and I had the chance to work with great orchestras and to improve my music writing.”

Coulais does not use an instru ment to compose, preferring to write in his head. “It’s dangerous for me to compose on the piano because my fingers become the masters,” he says. “In the head it’s more precise. [Growing up] I had a lot of brothers and sisters, and it

was very noisy at home. My mother listened to classical music, my sis ters to pop music, and so I used to work my inner ear. It’s precious because now I can write music without instruments.”

In 1996, he was hired to score Microcosmos, Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou’s acclaimed documentary about insect life. “The film didn’t have dialogue, so the music was the commentary,” says Coulais. “We wanted to approach it not like a documentary but like a fiction film. I had this idea of a very simple song, sung by my son, and I worked a lot with [sound designer] Laurent Quaglio.”

The resulting film, which screened out of competition at Cannes, was a breakout hit. Coulais’ music was a large part of its success, mixing score and sound design to dazzling effect and winning him a César. The experience proved life-changing and offers flooded in. “Suddenly I worked too much — I think I did about 10 films per year for many years,” he says.

In 2000, Coulais decided to stop writing film music and pen concerts instead. But it proved a short-lived hiatus, and two years later Coulais was back writing scores, having missed the collaborative aspect of filmmaking. “Now I try to manage the two, working on concerts and working for film.”

Since 2002, Coulais has contin ued to work at a less frantic pace,

SPOTLIGHT BRUNO COULAIS

‘It’s dangerous for me to compose on the piano because my fingers become the masters’

Bruno Coulais

Philippe Lebruman

Netflix

Bruno Coulais receives the WSA lifetime achievement award

Wendell & Wild is the composer’s latest collaboration with director Henry Selick

and he regularly turns down offers. “When I was younger, I worked a lot on films I didn’t like, and it’s not a good thing,” he says. “I love music, I love cinema and I love the way the composer can find the place of the music on the film. But the film is the master and some times the director has the wrong idea of the music.”

Coulais’ scores include The Cho rus, for which he received an Oscar nomination for best song, The Counterfeiters, The Secret Of Kells, Song Of The Sea and Wolfwalkers

Henry Selick was a huge fan of the Microcosmos score and used it as temp music for Coraline before asking Coulais to provide the soundtrack. The pair have recently worked together again on Selick’s latest stop-motion animation Wendell & Wild, which Coulais describes as “a masterpiece”.

Longer gestation

“With animation the process is very long, so you have time to experiment,” he says. “When you have only two weeks to write music for a film, you don’t have pressure because if it’s not so good, people say he didn’t have the time.

“And if the music is good, they say, ‘This guy is a genius.’ When you have a short time, it’s like a chemical reaction. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but sometimes the film is so strong that ideas come naturally. But I like to start very early in the process because I hate temp music. Temp music is the enemy of the composer.”

Coulais continues to work across live-action, documentary and ani mation. In addition to Wendell & Wild, he has written the scores for Laetitia Masson’s Un Hiver En Été, Josée Dayan’s Diane De Poitiers and Jean-Paul Salomé’s The Sitting Duck (La Syndicaliste).

“Each project is a new adventure and the composer must experi ment,” he concludes. “Each film is a possibility to try something new, to mix electronic elements with an orchestra. I love to do that, not to write what we expect from film music. I prefer the singular approach.” n s

SPOTLIGHT NAINITA DESAI

High scores

Nainita Desai expects to feel a range of emotions when a concert of her music is performed by the Brussels Philharmonic at this year’s World Soundtrack Awards. “On one level I will feel terribly exposed and vulnerable,” she says. “The other extreme is pure exhilaration and trying to remember every second of it.”

The performance of Desai’s work comes after she won the WSA discovery of the year prize last year. The suite she selected, orchestrated and rearranged for this year’s performance includes music from four of her recent documentaries: autism portrait The Reason I Jump, the personal Syrian documentary For Sama, mountaineering story 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible and wild life film Untamed Romania.

To hear documentary scores performed on the famous stage in Ghent is especially poignant for Desai. “I’ve been scoring documentaries for years and it always felt like it was perceived as this poor cousin of scoring fiction films,” she says.

“It was usually overlooked at awards and festivals. So when the World Soundtrack Awards could pave the way by including documentaries for the first time in 2021, that was a complete gamechanger.”

Desai strives for authenticity in her work — For Sama’s score, for instance, featured a Syrian violinist. “In documentary, I feel a greater sense of responsibility and weight on my shoulders to do justice to the story,” she

says. “I’m serving the film, and above all else, trying to tell the story in the most authentic way possible. Music can be more subtle in documentaries — For Sama and The Reason I Jump were not loud, shouty scores. Whether it’s a documentary or fiction, I try to get to the heart of the story by doing research.”

It has been a fruitful year for Desai, with a Primetime Emmy

nomination for 14 Peaks (also in the running for the WSA public choice award) and a bustling slate that includes fic tion — BBC thriller Crossfire, Sky’s 1960s-set comedy Funny Woman, Palestine-set feature film The Teacher, and season two of ITV’s police thriller The Tower — and non-fiction such as a freediving feature documentary.

She is also working on video-game project Immortality, and stepping out of her comfort zone to score a 10-part fantasy adventure series for Disney+.

“I like to put myself into uncomfortable situations where I don’t know what I’m going to do,” says Desai. “Every project is daunting and starts with a blank page. That’s exciting.” n s

‘In documentary, I feel a weight on my shoulders to do justice to the story’

Nainita Desai

Bas Bogaerts

Nainita Desai: WSA recognition of docs is “a complete gamechanger”

Last year’s discovery of the year winner Nainita Desai tells Wendy Mitchell why she is thrilled documentary scores are finally getting the attention they deserve

Sounds of South Korea

As Film Fest Gent and WSA celebrate the cinema and composers of South Korea, Cho Young Wuk tells Jean Noh about being at the vanguard of his country’s creative output

Best known as Park Chan-wook’s long time collaborator on films such as his recent Cannes best director award-winner Decision To Leave, Cho Young Wuk is one of the Korean film music composers set to be honoured with a live concert at the 49th Film Fest Gent.

Part of the festival’s focus on South Korean cinema, the Octo ber 20 concert will feature maestro Dirk Brossé conducting the Brus sels Philharmonic as it recreates scores from the region. Cho’s work from Park-directed films Oldboy, The Handmaiden and Thirst will be performed, alongside music from Lee Byeong-woo, who worked with Bong Joon Ho on Mother and The Host. The orchestra will also perform the music of Jung Jae-il, including his scores for Oscar winner Parasite and Netflix’s hit series Squid Game

Making Contact

Cho worked in A&R at Seoul Records and as a freelance writer for radio, getting his start in films when asked to create the soundtrack for Chang Yoon-hyun’s seminal 1997 drama The Contact. Starring Han Suk-kyu and Jeon Do-yeon, the film — about two strangers brought together through the radio and internet — became a hit as much for its soundtrack featuring Sarah Vaughan’s ‘A Lover’s Concerto’ and The Velvet Underground’s ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ as anything else, selling more than a million copies.

“Back then in Korea, no-one knew anything about clearing music rights. It took a lot of pio neering work but I thought of it as my mission to establish processes in this area,” says Cho, a witness and contributor to the internationalisa tion of Korean cinema, with con

tent flowing in as well as going out. Working on The Contact made Cho long for more creativity and he went on to score watershed films such as Park’s Joint Security Area (2000) and Oldboy (2003). After the latter, which won the grand jury prize at Cannes, requests flooded in to the point where he found it nec essary to start collaborating with a small group of composers.

Cho has since led them in scor ing dozens of films such as Park’s Lady Vengeance (2005) — on which he was also an executive producer —

as well as Ryoo Seung-wan’s The Ber lin File (2013). He has also created soundtracks for record-breaking Korean box-office hits A Taxi Driver (2017) and The Attorney (2013), both starring Song Kang-ho.

Cho has often recorded soundtracks with Brossé in Bel gium, as in the case of Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae’s directing debut Hunt, which played at Cannes ear lier this year, and has also worked with orchestras in the Czech Republic and at London’s Abbey Road Studios. “They take on Holly

‘Korean creators went from imitating western things to jumping beyond them’

Cho Young Wuk

wood films but they also offer dis counts for low-budget overseas films of less than krw36bn [$26m] budget,” says Cho of the legendary UK studio, noting that most Korean films fall in that category.

Despite the David-and-Goliath financial disparity, Korean con tent has struck a chord with inter national audiences more used to Hollywood fare. “It’s due to the steady rise of good talent and a mar ket where Korean cultural contents can grow,” says Cho, speaking of decreasing censorship and the rise of investment since the 1990s. “At one point, Korean creators went from imitating western things to jumping beyond them to make con tent of our own.

“There might be some foreigners who say, ‘Your music is so western despite you being eastern.’ But I also make very Korean music. Can they do the same?” he says, speaking to the dynamism of local creators.

After working with Chinese director Zhang Yimou on Cliff Walkers (2021) and on Park’s BBC series The Little Drummer Girl, Cho says he does not find foreignlanguage productions any more challenging than Korean ones. Of the projects he is currently working on, one of the most anticipated is Park’s HBO series The Sympathizer, based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. And setting his sights further into the future, “Maybe I can work on a sci ence-fiction film like Total Recall.” n s

WSA honoree Cho Young Wuk; (below) Brussels Philharmonic will perform Cho’s music from films including Oldboy

Film Fest Gent is proud to present its new album in the festival’s series of annual film music recordings, devoted to the guest of honour at the 2022 World Soundtrack Awards:

MARK ISHAM: MUSIC FOR FILM

Featuring music from: 42, American Crime, The Black Dahlia, Bobby, Eight Below, Judas and the Black Messiah, Life as a House, The Moderns, The Nevers, A River Runs Through It, Rules of Engagement, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent Performed by the Brussels Philharmonic and conducted by Film Fest Gent music director Dirk Brossé With trumpet solos by composer Mark Isham and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s principal trumpet Thomas Hooten

Licensed exclusively to Silva Screen Records, the new album will be released during the 49th edition of Film Fest Gent (11-22 October 2022) and is available to order from: shop.filmfestival.be and music retailers worldwide

“It’s wonderful to have such a passionate and committed community of musicians engage with the music.”

– MAX RICHTER

“It’s really great to connect with other composers whose work you admire, hang out with them and chat.”

– DANIEL PEMBERTON

The World Soundtrack Academy is the largest community of film music professionals worldwide and decides yearly on the winners of the World Soundtrack Awards. WSAcademy members have exclusive access to events, talks and panels so they can meet, network and collaborate.

Read how to become a World Soundtrack Academy member wsawards.com/ member