Icelandic musician Hildur Gudnadóttir has undergone a very noticeable transformation since winning the Academy Award for Best Original Score for Todd Phillips’ work. clown.
“It’s like marrying it because you get the prefix,” she joked hollywood reporter Before mentioning her, let’s introduce the “Oscar winner”. “It’s hard to see my name without that prefix.”
At the age of 42, he returns as a composer clownsequel to Clown: Pas de deuxshe said this choice was a no-brainer. “I was always going to be a part of the sequel because the music was such a big part of the first movie,” she explained, noting that she wanted to make sure the sound stayed consistent with the first movie. Gudnadottir said that sonically the second film “comes from the same source” as the first. “We felt that the structure of the source material was closely related to the characters. [Joaquin Phoenix‘s Arthur Fleck, aka Joker]so we don’t want to stray too far.
“[Phoenix’s character] There is obviously a certain theme and arrangement. It just felt like it was so ingrained in his character that we didn’t want to tamper with it too much.
exist Clown: Pas de deux, Since the film did significantly poorly with both critics and audiences, the music played a different role than in the first film. The film is a jukebox musical starring Phoenix’s Fleck and Lady Gaga’s Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, aka DC Comics’ most popular female anti-hero Harley Quinn. Sing often. Although Gudnadottir did not choreograph the film’s musical sequences, she described the marriage between the score and musical sequences as a “giant musical puzzle” and admitted that it took “a lot of trial and error” to complete.
The songs were sung live, without orchestral compositions behind them, as the team wanted the songs to “become part of the performance” in the scene. “The arranging process started as soon as the filming was done, which was a bit contrary to what is normally done,” Gudnadottir said, explaining that it was recorded by a live pianist and the actors could hear it through headphones.
“Anyone who works on arrangements will understand what a challenge that is in itself, because the arrangements have to keep fluctuating and then the performances are different every take,” Gudnadottir said.
The composer said her skill in the film was to connect the aural context and musical numbers already established in the first film.
“One of the things that’s a little puzzling is that the original sound world isn’t necessarily so closely related to where most of these songs come from,” she said. “It’s a huge undertaking, very complex, but definitely an interesting challenge.”
Gudnadottir said she wanted to continue expanding the “vocabulary of string instruments” from the first film and use the cello as the main instrument. Much of the sequel is set during Joker’s time in prison at Arkham State Hospital. The composer strives to connect her love of string music to this environment.
“I was really curious about how to make an instrument that could serve as a prison in itself,” she says. Gudnadottir’s curiosity led her to ask her friend Ulver Hansen to design an instrument she called a “string prison,” which she described as resembling an electric fence. She also had Hanssen’s father, luthier Hans Jóhannsson, make a “trench cello,” a box-stringed instrument used during World War I. Thiel said soldiers often carry bullets in boxes.
“They would play this instrument in the trenches to pass the time, and the way it’s described in historical documents is that it was designed to bring joy to the most horrific situations imaginable. I think that’s something that Arthur’s mother always The way he is talked about is very consistent,” Gudnadottir explained.
“I was like, ‘Wow, that’s Arthur’s instrument,'” she added. “The ship was built both to carry assault munitions and to bring joy to a dire situation.”
The experiment turned out to be a bit dangerous. “The strings get very hot,” she explains. “You can really get burned by it because they’re amplified.”
Gudnadottir said she cherishes her relationship with clownDirected by Todd Phillips. “The creative part of scoring these films is so beautiful and so open-ended,” she says. “Todd had a lot of faith in what I was doing and what I brought to the table from the beginning.”
Visit THR.com/behindthescreen for other revealing stories about the making of the film.
This story first appeared in the December Independence issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
