Justin Hurwitz on the Process Behind his 'La La Land' Score
Justin Hurwitz scored three Oscar nominations for La La Land for the upcoming awards ceremony, including one for Best Original Score and Two for best Original Song. The musician, in eight years in the business, has scored just three films, all music based, all for Damian Chazelle.
But while that first film was a low-budget musical, Hurwitz said that his process hasn't changed much. "It begins in the same way, with me at a piano, working for a very long time, trying to get melodies and thematic material approved by Damien, and that’s just a very long process, to find those melodies that we both really love."
On finding the main theme for the film, Hurwitz said "I was just thinking about something that would be sort of an outpouring of Sebastian’s soul, and also kind of the heart of the love affair for both of them. They’re in similar places—they both want to be in love, they both want certain things professionally that they don’t have, and there’s a real yearning for both of them, especially towards the beginning of the story—and I was trying to find that yearning.
"It was a tricky tone to find, because it had to be sweet and pretty, but it also had to have some pain in it. But it couldn’t have too much pain; it couldn’t be too sad." On the instruments used, he said it was mostly "vibraphone that you were hearing.
"I used a lot of vibraphone, and a lot of woodwind trills. Some of the woodwind trills, they’re obvious; it just sounds like a flute trilling. Other ones are kind of buried in the orchestration, and they add this almost ghost-like quality—this kind of throaty, almost human voice-like vibrato quality. Sometimes I just bury them in the orchestration because I like to have that color and that texture there."
Source: http://deadline.com/2017/02/la-la-land-justin-hurwitz-oscars-best-origin...
