I’m still in awe over the Succession finale. Here is a terrific article from Slate about the series’ music by Nicholas Britell (above) and how smart it is.
I also discovered, thanks to the aforementioned article, this piece on the sound recording and design of the show.
I had not noticed how the series took care not to feature the ambient sounds of New York, so as it isolate the ultra-wealthy characters who are beyond such things. Cool!
One of the things you learn filmmaking is that there are seemingly endless subtleties that require creative decision-making that we, the audience, totally take for granted.
But when it’s your project, you’re confronted with these constant challenges to get the execution to resemble the show in your head.
Just a totally random example, I am reminded of the observation from Anthony Daniels (I totally forget where he said this) that, when filming the original Star Wars, they discovered that C-3PO seemed “dead” unless he was constantly, subtly in motion.
Filmmaking is hard! But endlessly fascinating and, to me, fun.
Also, related to Nicholas Britell, I was listening to Morricone’s classic Battle for Algiers (thank you, Quartet Records) and thought, hey, this sounds familiar—it’s Andor.
Given their shared subject matter, I thought, this can’t be a coincidence.
And also, as I started to prep a column, I thought, why am I doing all this work? Some nerd must have already written about this.
It’s funny, because when I was watching Andor, I thought about that folk-like triplet motive, this is so good, and so simple, it must be from something else...yes?
But if you’re gonna steal—steal from Morricone!