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Today the documentary #Solutions has its world premiere at #cphdox. It’s an important film I’m very proud of even though I’m not the main sound designer. But the creative process behind the sound was my idea and I think it’s worth sharing a thread about the special process 1/12
The director is the acclaimed Pernille Rose Grønkjær who I’ve done three films with. She’s a great collaborator and connected with me very early when she started the process of making Solutions. So she connected with me about it before she even had a picture editor. 2/12
The film is about a group of the world’s leading scientists who isolate themselves for 10 days at the renowned Santa Fe Institute. They come from all corners of science representing environment, economy, democracy, social media, education and artificial technology. 3/12
The film is all about them debating their ambitious goal: To secure the future of humanity through science. So yes, we knew from the start that it was going to be a film with lots and lots of talking heads. Big question: how to make this visually and sonically interesting? 4/12
I was thinking about it for a while and then got the idea that as this film would be very philosophical it would be interesting to be more abstract in the sonic approach: without seeing the film I wanted to make sound collages based on the main subjects of the film. 5/12
Me and @Sonicsalute have built a giant sound library from all the films we’ve done and together we created sound collages from all these many sounds. Abstract but often musical soundscapes based on key subjects discussed in the film which Pernille happily shared with me. 6/12
The six collages we made had names like The Big Bang, CO2, Artificial Life and Moral Indignation and were built from sonic associations from the headlines. Here is an example, like most of them around five minutes – called The Global Financial System: https://www.dropbox.com/s/on9yzz2jid5nhkm/Solutions%20Det%20Globale%20%C3%B8konomiske%20Sys%20Lyd%20collage.wav?dl=0 7/12
The really amazing thing in the process actually is what happened next. Both Pernille, the picture editor and the composer loved the collages. The composer had already written some sketches but now he starting making music which incorporated the sounds from the collages. 8/12
The picture editor totally embraced the collages and used them as you would use score - he built the rhythm of many moments around the sound collages. The associative sounds also inspired him to built visual montages and atmospheric imagery around the many words in the film. 9/12
Pernille and him were very excited and ended up using ALL of the collages. There’s not a single part of the collages which are not used somewhere in the almost two hour long film. Sometimes playing low and sometimes playing loud, morphing in and out of scenes and sequences. 10/12
The sad thing was that the picture editing process, because of its complicated nature, took a very long time and in the end I didn’t have the time to do the final sound editing and mix. I passed on the job to my very talented colleague Jacques Pedersen who did a great job. 11/12
Of course a bit disappointing not doing the final film but I’m so happy with the result and for me this is a great example of how sound and image can inspire each other in special and unusual ways. It makes everything more fun. Check out Solutions! https://cphdox.dk/film/solutions-da/?fbclid=IwAR1YZ5srFXBxC9Xd78hUX3yEdNa0p9IqH7uNya1lW26I8rzaJtTOmCgZ9pw 12/12
