Horror movies &stuff Interviews Marianne Composer Mikel Junehag
Our "Marianne" interview segments continue, with HM&S.com's chat with the films Composer Mikel Junehag! "Marianne" follows a broken family in the small, isolated Swedish-Northland's town of Ostersund. Among the pine woods, the lakes, the snowy mountains and the midnight summer sun, the story takes place on the fuzzy border where fantasy and reality meet. 45 year old Krister's wife Eva has just passed away in a car accident, and now he's alone with the 18 year old daughter Sandra who hates his guts, and a 6 months old daughter who he doesn't really know how to take care of. At night he's haunted by bad nightmares about what happened the night Eva died, and guilt for the pain he's caused Sandra over the years as an absent father. He experiences visits in his sleep from a woman dressed in green, looking for revenge.
Someone who comes to him via his dreams. Someone he knows already is dead. Sandra's boyfriend, who's interested in old Swedish folklore, soon realizes Krister is haunted by a Mare - a female creature of the night or a woman possessed. He tries to guide Krister by helping him get rid of her, while Krister tries to regain his family and reestablish some sort of order in his life. But having a bad reputation in a small town makes it hard to regain the trust of someone you've let down so many times before. Krister finds himself in a jungle of guilt and anxiety, superstition and nightmares, mental and physical illness, and has to find the best way out. Is the Mare real, or only in his mind?
MR. H:When scoring "Marianne"...did you go into the project with any specific ideas in mind? Or did the filmmakers tell you what they wanted specifically, and you then laid down the music?
Mikel:It was a combination of Filips ideas and my own that melted down into a vision of a style and sound that I came to aim at. I got tips on films and music with the right feeling from Filip. Smashing Pumpkins "Behold! The nightmare" was one of his benchmarks. The themesong to "28 days later" was one of my own. Another thing I decided from an early stage was to let an old friend, Sanna Eriksson, a local folk-violinist add her violin on the soundtrack. I understood that I had to have a very clear vision of the soundtrack before I started so that I wouldn't get lost in the labyrints of creativity. It would have been impossible for me to create the score if I was told in detail what to do. As a scorewriter you have to have a certain freedom in the creative process because you have to own the vision in some way to create some magic. The director have to explain his vision and at the same time don't hold the reint too tight. And that was a balance I think Filip handled very well.
MR. H:What kind of music can viewers expect to hear from "Marianne"?
Mikel:They can expect a guitarrbased postrock- and folkmusic inspired soundtrack. Major inspires has been the band "Godspeed You Black Emperor" and the score for "The Ring" and "Dark Water" by Kenji Kawai.
MR. H:What other films had you composed music for prior to working on "Marianne"?
Mikel:This is the first filmscore I'm composing. Before I have mostly composed songs in different rock-genres. But I did compose music for a play with one of my bands once, and that was a useful experience.
MR. H:Do you come out of the music industry in some capacity, or are you strictly just a film-music composer?
Mikel:Before I have just played in a couple of rockbands on my sparetime, one instrumental postrockband called komasmida, and my postpunk/hardcore-band ghostriot, whitch has been more of a solo-project. So I mostly see myself as an artist, trying to reach out. Scoring music for a film was more like an oppurtunity that was kind of laid in my hands. Very thankfully. It has definitly made me certain that I'd like to do it more in the future.
MR. H:Where did you grow up, and go to school, and how and when did you get bitten by the music bug?
Mikel:I grew up in the same small town where Marinne plays out, Ostersund. I was sporting a lot as young. My father was coach for my football-team but also a drummer and had a drumset in the garage. We also had a piano in the house and my sister actually used to play a very well known soundtrack-score, the themesong to Jane Campions beatiful movie "The piano". Both my elder siblings were playing instruments and went to music-highschool, whitch I also came to do. So music was there in many different ways and effected me during my upgrowing.
I think I've been bitten by the music-bug three times actually. The first was when I was very little and discovered Michael Jackson and that I, as the youngest of three siblings, got attention and applauce by my parents and other adults by performing to his music. The other experience was when I, as a teenager, started listening to radiohead and the swedish pop-band kent, and a whole world of inner landscapes and a way to express and handle all the feelings of being a teenager, unsecure and heartbroken, being rejected by the girls I fell in love with etc. The third occasion was when I was singing for the first time on stage with ghostriot, as a 20-year old, performing my own songs with my own lyrics. That gave me a rush that I had never felt before, (except from performing thriller at my kindergarden as a 5-year old maybe). Then I was stuck.
MR. H:While I somewhat believe this myself...do you personally believe that a musical score is key above all else in a horror film, and thus can make or break a movie?
Mikel:Yes definitly, many times the music takes a bigger part in horror movies, to create the effect of horror, why it can be seen as a more important ingredient in a horror movie. But on the other hand, some of the best horror movies doesn't have one singel tone of music in them.
MR. H:What musical instruments did you apply early and often to the score for "Marianne"?
Mikel:I played a lot with a bow on a disted electric-guitarr with lots of echo to get a sound that would be like a "sound theme" of the movie.
MR. H:What elements do you think are missing in the way that some of today's more mainstream horror films are scored?
Mikel:I think the problem is that there just isn't that many good mainstream-horror films being made. Maybe because horror movies has been seen as a lower form of movieform and doesn't attract the best directors and filmmakers in the same range as other genres. So many horror movies is just bad movies and you can't make a good score to a bad movie. So often it feels like the composers job is to compensate for a story that just isn't credible and that results in music that's just too much.
MR. H:What serves a movie best in your opinion, a simple but effective score...or a blaring soundtrack?
Mikel:Well, as I said before, I think a blaring soundtrack often feels like a compensation for a bad story. But of course, it depends on what kind of movie it is. I think every movie needs it's own recipe on what music it needs, blaring or simple or something else.
MR. H:Who were some of your favorite musical influences growing up, and still are up until today?
Mikel:I think there is just one band that I started listening to as a young teenager and still is today, and that is radiohead. Radiohead is definitely my favourite band of all times.
MR. H:In your opinion, which three horror films would you say were the best scored horror movies of all-time?
Mikel:The silence of the lambs, The ring(the original version), and Black Swan(whitch in my eyes is a horror-movie, and maybe the best of them all).
End.
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