MUSIC
Spoilers ahead!
Music is a major aspect of THE BUNGLERS, and we wanted to play with it creatively in certain ways to help tell the story.
1. As with color, we used different styles of music for the different characters:
Nuevo Flamenco for Isabella, and blues for Danny and Luther. Both lead with guitar, which keeps them connected. Then, when Danny and Isabella finally come together in the end, the music reflects this by shifting to a jazzy style that evokes elements of both, remaining guitar-focused.
2. We also designed the music in some scenes to fluidly shift between being source music (i.e., playing in the actual location) and more overt score. This was done to accentuate the romance plot, and was a fun challenge to pull off.
For example: In the climax shootout scene in the nightclub, we see the musicians performing live on stage throughout. But whenever we cut to closeups that emotionally connect the lead characters, the music directly accentuates the emotions and plays to the beats of the action – functioning as a score. We even hear instruments that aren't seen on stage in some of these instances, creating a richer emotional texture.
It's subtle enough that the audience shouldn't be directly aware, but we wanted the music to capture and enhance both the outer and inner stories developing simultaneously: the choreographed dance and fight, and the love story.
Another example: In the final scene in Danny's apartment, after the initial horn sets the comic-seductive mood (functioning more as score), the music is scratchy, tinny and faint, heard from the right side of the room, as if it's an old record playing over the radio.
But as the scene romantically intensifies, the music grows fuller, sound quality improves, and it expands to stereo – clearly becoming score, accentuating the action beat by beat. Then it subtly returns to source music, fading just before the scene ends, as if the record has finished.
It was great fun working closely with amazingly talented composers, developing the film’s musical style. Daniel Groisman wrote much beautiful music many months before production began, so I could storyboard and help choreograph to the music. This also allowed us to play it back on set to help create the mood for the actors. He revised and wrote more music during post, then (due to a scheduling conflict) Allen Simpson came on to compose more phenomenal music for the movie.
~ Glenn Camhi