vimeo.com/ftheodoreelliott/sfam

Somewhere around 2017, a Kiwi I never met sent me an email proposing something unconventional. I was to write a soundtrack to a film that didn't yet exist which would eventually be cut to the music. This intrigued me. I was given a vague idea of the narrative: An abandoned city, a mysterious occurrence, a lone survivor, a vague location, industrial, isolated nature, loneliness. Some of these images rang true to my roots which may have something to do with why I was chosen as the composer. I set to work.

The result was not what I expected. The film runs a full 6 hours using only some of the music and very sporadically. The foggy and lethargic narrator is played by my colleague Carla Kihlstedt. I chose here to publish most of the music I wrote. Several themes are repeated and reorchestrated in the tradition of film music, denoting what I would call invisible characters (and ones that I made up in my own head). I took the titles from Theo's script (which I read after writing the music) included in full here, not all of which was used in the voice over. The titles suit me for the pieces they named, but do not necessarily align with how they were used in the film. The vagueness of what I had to go on and general monomania of the narrative make this point moot.

I know some of my original music can be dark and melancholy, but this might be some of the most somber and nauseating stuff I've come up with. Sometimes that's what happens with minimal direction. That said, I wouldn't be publishing it if I wasn't satisfied with the results.

Here are some words from the film maker F. Theodore Elliott himself:

...a lonely woman investigates a mystery... 

Finishing a new feature always makes me feel kind of bummed out for some reason.
Working on a film, editing it, getting it ready to release, I feel like some hunched toymaker building minute little clockwork figures.
And then you release them out into the world and wish them the best.
And no matter how hard you've worked you still hear them creak and grind and scrape as they make their way out the door.

This film took around 6 years to make.
6 years working on a polishing this little wind up homunculus.
And breathing a little life into it. Trying to give it something like a soul.
And after all that time you push it out the door and the gears still creak and scratch as is disappears out into the world.

I feel making this film was the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life.
Certainly more difficult than any of my other films.

I'm proud to see it totter out into the world and wish it the best.

This film would never have been made without the irreplaceable contributions from Trevor and Carla.

I don't know this any of this will make sense sense to anyone, but I think now it at least feels like it is what it was supposed to be... whatever that means.