![]() ![]() When making things dark, obviously, there are sounds and colors that we associate being dark or low-end - things that are brittle, things that evoke tension.īut to create trauma, you need to take something that could have been light and make it dark. So, what I basically experimented with was how can I harmonize it and how can I change the implied harmony so that it gives you a darker feeling as opposed to a light feeling. My way of doing that was to associate the main theme that I wrote for Cassie and Nina as a lullaby for a lost friendship. Or, in this movie’s case, could have been promising. This isn’t my definition, but this is my way of decoding it: Trauma, in its essence, is the abuse of something that was once wonderful or could have been wonderful. When you’re scoring this thing, how do you score to the trauma? How did you make the decisions you made with respect to composition?Īnthony Willis: That’s a good question. Vehlinggo : I’ve seen Promising Young Women three times now and it’s striking to me how it so expertly manages the balance between levity and deep trauma. (Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and house style, and some of it was left on the cutting room floor in the interest of brevity, or Vehlinggo’s version of brevity, anyway.) ‘Promising Young Woman’ score composer Anthony Willis examines a score manuscript in the studio. In this Q&A, we dive a bit more into how the score came to be, what it’s like to navigate scoring a film that invokes both humor and serious trauma, and, of course, how that “Toxic” cue was spawned. Even the moments that are conventional in the film are unconventionally conventional.” ![]() “You can’t just fall back on the conventional way of doing something. “There was no rule book for Promising Young Woman, because the genre and tone are so original,” Willis told Vehlinggo recently in a Zoom chat. He spent about five weeks writing and recording the score for Promising Young Woman and the end result executes and complements Fennell’s vision with aplomb. ![]() Willis cut his teeth working alongside John Powell on fare like Solo: A Star Wars Story, Jason Bourne, and Ralph Breaks the Internet Henry Jackman on films like The Birth of a Nation and Harry Gregson-Williams on The Martian, and that experience has clearly contributed to Willis confidently stepping into his own as the main composer this time around. Willis’ BAFTA-nominated, organic-electronic score cues - including but not limited to the popular iteration of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” - deftly navigate bleakness and levity in a poignant film that also stars Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Clancy Brown, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, and Connie Britton. The tone of the film walks the line between dark humor and an analysis of the effects of trauma, and helping to tell the story is Los Angeles-based, British score composer Anthony Willis. It’s a brilliant twist on the revenge flick and easily avoids cliche. Mulligan plays Cassie, a woman who seeks to hold accountable the people (mostly but not exclusively men) who played a role in her medical school friend’s rape and death. Promising Young Woman - director Emerald Fennell’s debut film starring Carey Mulligan - has become central to film discussions over the course of its slow, pandemic-addled rollout. ![]()
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