Meet the Experts Film Score and Song panel: ‘The Neon Highway,’ ‘Nickel Boys,’ ‘Sasquatch Sunset,’ ‘Will and Harper’
What do you most value about composing for visual media as opposed to writing music for an album or live performance? Who are the most significant influences on your musical life and career? These were some of the topics discussed by eight composers, songwriters and recording artists when they joined Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with movie score and song contenders: country music artist Lee Brice and Dallas Davidson (“The Neon Highway”), composers Alex Somers and Scott Alario (“Nickel Boys”), composers The Octopus Project (“Sasquatch Sunset”) and songwriter Sean Douglas (“Will & Harper”). Watch our full group roundtable panel above, and click on each name above to view that nominee’s individual interview.
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Film newcomers Brice and Davidson cherished the opportunity to work on a film for the first time. “I’m such a movie fan, I’m always looking for a great movie to watch. I’ve always had a dream about doing that. I got to sing it and I got to be in the movie,” Brice admits. “There’s nothing like that visual and that audio coming together with a great actor, all the things, it just really is like the Mecca of emotion,” he adds. “Yeah, I love scoring so much. I find there’s an unknown, unnamed third thing,” Somers explains. “You have the music and you have the picture. And when you make something that either subverts what’s happening on screen or exaggerates it, it creates this like thing that’s greater than the parts. And it’s more powerful than if you listen with your eyes closed or if you watch on mute. I don’t really know what that is. It’s a bit of an alchemy. It’s really cool, but we’ve all experienced it in a great movie, a great scene. And I love like circling that and collaborating with filmmakers,” he says.
“I really love working with a picture and collaborating with a picture and being in conversation with a visual element,” The Octopus Project’s Yvonne Lambert says. “We have much more experience as a kind of a rock electronic band, so moving to the composer world and working with a picture has been really awesome to do,” she adds. “It was much more vulnerable than than it usually feels to have a song come out that you’ve written for for someone else,” Douglas reveals. “I saw it at a screening for the first time when it was actually in the movie. So the communal experience makes it all the more intense. Whereas otherwise, I thought that I had become a totally jaded songwriter who couldn’t experience true emotion anymore, but that is a little to be wrung out of me by the film process,” he smiles.
Brice is a five-time Academy of Country Music award winner for Single of the Year, Song of the Year, and Music Event of the Year. Davidson is a two-time ACM winner for Songwriter of the Year. Somers’ career has included “Pride,” “Causeway,” and “Under the Bridge.” Alario’s career has included “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” and “Easter Snap.” The Octopus Project is Toto Miranda, Yvonne Lambert, and Josh Lambert. Film scores have included “Damsel,” “The Disappearance of Toby Blackwood,” and “Butterfly in the Sky.” Douglas is a Grammy Award winner, plus he won an ACM Award for Song of the Year and Single of the Year. His career has included work with Lizzo, Thomas Rhett, and Demi Lovato.
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