"I always said to her, even if it's not on the marimba, write like it's on the marimba," says John Powell, the Oscar-nominated composer of How to Train Your Dragon and the Bourne franchise, and Franco's former boss. She's been playing the mallets since she was young, and over time it's become a composing superpower, according to one of her old mentors. Franco went so far as to have a special marimba from the Choco region of Colombia shipped to her in pieces, and performed those parts herself on the score. Elsewhere in the house, an Afro-Colombian choir follows Mirabel's younger cousin Antonio, who communicates with animals in his expansive bedroom inspired by the Choco rainforest. "The rhythm of the cumbia becomes the forward motion of her trying to find a solution to the problem," Franco explains. And if you're listening closely, those rhythms tell stories of their own, with each character and even the house itself moving to a distinct groove.įor Mirabel, that groove is cumbia: You can hear the traditional Colombian folk rhythm when she walks into her family's beloved Casita for the first time, and throughout her adventure as she searches for clues. But when their enchanted mountain house mysteriously begins to fall apart, Mirabel discovers that her real gift is the key to the family's fundamental rhythm. Mirabel is the only person in her family without a magical ability: One sister creates beautiful foliage at will, another has super strength, her mother can heal wounds through her cooking. She shares that square-peg nature with Encanto's protagonist, Mirabel Madrigal. Mirabel Madrigal, the heroine of Encanto, struggles to find her place in a family blessed with magic powers. I don't think film music has to be clinical. "They're reading, but they're enjoying what they're playing. When a score really grooves, it's because "the musicians are having a great time," she says. But Franco believes that musicians play better when they're having fun, so she keeps things loose, often joining the percussionists in the back of the room. Hollywood recording sessions have strict parameters: Time is the movie studio's money, and the music also has to be perfectly synced to picture. It was so fun playing music with other people.") She thumped her way from stage band to jazz band to the El Paso Youth Symphony, where she'd jam regularly with the guys in the orchestra, and formed her own band with members of the percussion ensemble at Rice University, where she earned two music degrees.įranco tries to bring that performance-first, jam-band vibe to scoring, where it couldn't be further from the norm. "I took a lot of pride in taking care of the instruments. ("And I would shine everything," she says. She had her own snare drum, which she would roll to school on a skateboard. In high school, she was the lone girl pounding away on percussion in her concert band, marching in the drumline at football games. Movies Let's talk about 'We Don't Talk About Bruno' More than that, Encanto is Disney Animation's first feature to be scored by a woman - ever. She is, incredibly, only the sixth woman in Academy Award history to be nominated for best original score, and the first Latina. This month, that score made Franco an Oscar nominee - putting her far-from-household name on the ballot next to Hans Zimmer ( Dune), industry titan of the past 35 years, as well as Nicholas Britell ( Don't Look Up) and Jonny Greenwood ( The Power of the Dog), two of the 21st century's "it" composers. But the pulse of the film belongs to Franco, whose instrumental score bops with cumbia, joropo and other high-energy Colombian rhythms, carried by a battery of traditional Latin American instruments. There are, of course, plenty of singable songs in her latest project, the Disney animated musical Encanto: Lin-Manuel Miranda's genre-hopping songbook has blown up Billboard, with the sleeper hit "We Don't Talk About Bruno" becoming the highest-charting song from a Disney animated film since Aladdin's "A Whole New World" in 1993. The right music can make a movie sing, or make it groove. I was asked, 'Oh, don't you want to play the flute? Don't you want to play the violin? Girls play the violin.' I said, 'Nope, I'm playing the drums.' " "I was only 10," she says, "and I was very adamant. Presented with a picture of all the instruments in the orchestra, Franco pointed at her future. When Germaine Franco was a little girl, her fifth-grade music teacher gave her a choice. Composer Germaine Franco attends the world premiere of Encanto at Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood in November 2021.Īlberto E.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |