A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Format
Film
Released
December 2023
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s timeless romantic comedy. It was released in December 2022, produced by Parkhouse Pictures and directed by Sacha Bennett. It features Robert Lindsay, Juliet Aubrey, Florence Kasumba, Tamzin Merchant, Tyger Drew-Honey and Lee Boardman.
Why pick this project as a case study?
It was a real step up in writing. Crafting a nuanced score that had space to weave through dialogue and support the story as it was performed in the language of the time was a challenge.
A leap of faith. To give the score the unique sound I was aiming for involved writing for a plethora of ethnic woodwind instruments I’d never seen or heard before.
The business side. Case studies tend to focus on the creative, and this project was unusual for the arrangements with musicians I proposed.
Background
I was first introduced to Sacha in 2015, but this was our first opportunity to work together. I knew the gist of the story; at its core it’s an intertwined love story. Four Athenians run away to the forest, then Puck the fairy makes both of the boys fall in love with the same girl. More mischief ensues between the fairy King and Queen, whilst in Athens plans take place for the marriage of the Duke to Queen of the Amazons whilst a group of working men are preparing to perform a play at the ceremony, which doesn’t go quite to plan. I believe Sacha chose us (I wrote the score in collaboration with Paul Arnold) after I suggested in a meeting that the sound of Athens be stark, cold and militaristic, and the sound of the forest be warm, inviting and acoustic.
Brainstorm
Once I’d been commissioned, the first task was brainstorming. Paul and I sat in my studio immersing ourselves, watching the rough cut, reading the script, and learning all we could get our hands on for about two weeks. During this time we wrote as many ideas as we could, first establishing a musical palette and then writing melodies for characters, couples and locations. We debated using instruments that were either keyboard- or guitar-based, and wrote a suite of ideas for each. Sacha preferred the keyboard route. We established a cold, military sound for Athens – check! The majority of the film, however, is set in the forest. We assembled the magical sounds of the forest electronically, but what about those warm acoustic instruments? That was more a voyage of discovery...
Composition and production
As it’s a dialogue-heavy film I felt that long and/or ‘flowery’ musical themes would get in the way, but I still wanted melodies for character, couple and location. For that to work it needed to be simple. The key to successful theme writing for me is to have the listener recognise and associate the melody almost subconsciously – the challenge, therefore, was to make each theme simple enough to accompany dialogue-heavy scenes, be supportive but not intrusive. There are sequences where music follows the entire scene, rising and falling where appropriate and playing pockets of melody where it could, whilst quietly supporting the ebb and flow in others.
Leap of faith
At this point I’ll bring Sandro Friedrich into the mix. Sandro’s a fantastic ethnic woodwind player, and as part of our ‘sound’ I like to add ethnic world instruments wherever possible – this seemed like a perfect opportunity to do so.
Ninety-nine per cent of the 300 instruments he plays I’ve never heard of, so the method devised was to write a theme on one of three traditional western flutes (concert, alto and bass), send them to Sandro along with a description of the character, a picture of the actor if possible, and ask him to pick an appropriate instrument. He’d send us an example and we’d go from there. It worked brilliantly, with the result that we have a veritable smorgasbord of unusual instruments across the forest sections of the score:
Oberon, King of the fairies played by Robert Lindsay. Sandro chose a bass quenacho, a warm, low-range flute from the Andes.
Tatania, Queen of the fairies played by Juliet Aubrey. Sandro chose a pinkillo, similarly from the Andes but higher in range.
Whilst they’d been together for a very long time, a disagreement meant that they hadn’t seen each other for centuries; having these young Athenian lovers come in to the forest re-ignited something long lost. As such, their themes were written to be two sides of the same coin.
This short example is a question-and-answer when they both reconnect in the forest for the first time in centuries: Oberon’s ‘question’ on the bass quenacho, with Tatania’s ‘answer’ on the pinkillo.
Strings, songs and symphonies.
I wanted to keep the tone of the score light-hearted, so strings for me was a no-brainer. There wasn’t the budget to have an orchestra throughout, so I asked Steve Bingham – a fabulous violinist I’ve worked with for many years – to bring the Bingham String Quartet on board. He played, conducted and recorded the players from scores prepared for us by Phil Toms. The initial plan was for strings to add humour; however, that turned out to get in the way over the woodwinds and magical synths, so instead the majority of what the quartet played added warmth to the magical synths and ethnic flutes in the forest. I did want to give them a chance to shine – turns out they were a perfect choice to underscore the comical troupe of amateur actors, led by the wonderfully named ‘Bottom’, who are rehearsing the play “Pyramus and Thisbe” to perform at the royal wedding. Here’s a snippet of their oh-so-serious theme!
There are often places that a score won’t be nearly as effective as a song. As that’s not my area, Paul and I have collaborated on many projects with singer/songwriter Phil Watts. For A Midsummer Night’s Dream he wrote three great songs – and here’s a snippet of ‘Drive’, appropriately named as it accompanies the sequence where a lover steals a car and uses it to escape the city.
Finally, to perform the Duke and Queen’s theme, which serve as the opening titles and the final reprise of the love theme that plays just before the end credits, we brought on board the Sofia Session Orchestra. As the film starts and ends in the royal palace, orchestral cues to top and tail the film felt right. I’ve worked with the same orchestral team since 2002 (via a fixer, who hires the musicians and studio, and produces the recording sessions, orchestrator, conductor, recording engineer, music editor and mixer) but our usual orchestra, the City of Prague Symphony Orchestra wasn’t available. The SSO was recommended and they did a great job.
Here's an example of the title music. Given that the age of the play and the opening montage of the palace gave no hints of this being a slightly futuristic Athens, I went old-school and added a harpsichord. It is Shakespeare after all!
Here’s an excerpt of the string parts from the title music, heard in the example orchestrated by Nic Raine, mixed by Gareth Williams, both from the orchestral team we’ve worked with for 20 years.
The business side
When I went freelance, I was given a golden bit of advice from a well-known American games’ composer: learn the business side. The relevance of that here is that over the years I’ve learned to think outside of the box when it comes to the production of a score if budget doesn’t allow. By production I mean preparing scores, bringing in live musicians and, if more than I can record in my studio, hiring studios and engineers. The film hadn’t been sold when we were commissioned, and while I loved it, the budget we were offered allowed for very little live recording. I had, however, been offered a deal that once the film had earned above a threshold, we’d get a payout. I knew that if the score sounded cheap (e.g. using samples to mimic live instruments, and obvious to anyone listening that it isn’t real) it would harm the sales potential of the film since it has the unfortunate side-effect of making a film look cheap.
I believe my strength is as an acoustic composer collaborating with musicians to bring my music to life. It sounds better but costs more. With that in mind, I proposed a deal with my regular players: pay them a small amount now and a windfall if we earn our payout. I only offer this to folks we’ve worked with for a long time, given the mutual trust and respect earned from years of working together. I was very fortunate that they all kindly agreed. This gave the film a substantially higher perceived production value and as such the film looks more expensive. We all worked our butts off – fingers crossed it pays off...
The reason I talk about this is to say to my fellow composers: even if you’ve not got the dosh, don’t let that hold you back.
Job done, premiere and release.
This project was the longest time either one of us had spent on a film – six months in an eight-month period – and sadly this coincided with Paul and I losing all of our parents. It also evolved into our longest film score (game scores can be a lot longer!) – 86 minutes of music (81 of score, five of songs) in a 100-minute film. It wasn’t planned that way, but the more we got into it the more the production team asked for, and the more it snowballed. We’d written themes for lovers, fairies, royals, the acting troupe and so forth, and had effectively given ourselves enough building blocks to musically narrate the film. I did worry that having too much music on a film can start to become part of the furniture or worse, cause listener fatigue – either way it starts being ignored, but we were too close to be objective. Months after we delivered the final score we went to the dub (where all of the sound is brought together and mixed) and I was fully expecting to have tracks dropped because there was too much of it. Much to my surprise, nothing was dropped; everything was used. By a combination of luck and judgement, the music we’d written was so varied and dynamic it didn’t ever feel like furniture, nor was it ignored when it came to the big moments. The director said tears were shed when watching that final scene and we got back from the dub to read a glowing email from the producers. Hoorah!
It premiered at a market screening at the Cannes Film Festival in May, 2022. Both Paul and I were there and incredibly proud. We found out a day later that it had been sold, and so far it’s been released in Poland. We’re hopeful it’ll come to our shores soon – time to cross those fingers!
Here’s the trailer, which uses two of the songs Phil wrote for the film and one of our orchestral cues.
Music Credits
Music written, performed, recorded, edited and mixed
Ethnic woodwinds performed and recorded
Strings performed
Conducted and recorded
Violin
Cello
Additional Cello
Orchestrated
Orchestra performed
Conducted
Engineered
Produced
Recording Coordinator
Orchestrated
Mixed and edited
Vocals performed
Trumpet performed
Songs
"Drive"
Written and performed
Arranged
Strings performed
“Syrup of Jigs”
Written
Performed
Arranged
Produced
“Once Again”
Written
Performed
Produced