“With a bow on a bandura”, or the history of creating music for the movie “Dovbush”

[ad_1]

On August 24, 2023, Oles Sanin’s action adventure “Dovbush” started showing at the Ukrainian box office. During the first weekend of national distribution, the film collected UAH 8.7 million, surpassing “Pamfir”, “Shchedryk” and “Mirny-21”. The story of the famous Carpathian opryshka, who raised an uprising against the then government, may become a new record-breaking blockbuster of Ukrainian cinema. No less exciting than the spectacular scenes and Carpathian landscapes was the music for the film, the singers of which are Alla Zagaykevych and Oleksandr Chornyi. The UP music columnist spoke with them. The life of Natalka Pysanka, who goes on to tell how the sound of “Dovbush” was created. Alla Zagaykevych co-authored the music for “Dovbush”. Photo: “Dovbush” artistic arsenal is worth seeing at least twice. For the first time – to enjoy the picture on the screen, the plot and the performance of the actors. The second time is to immerse yourself in the world of the music of this film with your eyes closed. Oleksandr Cherny at “Kyiv Music Fest-2020”. Photo: theclaquers.com In fact, such an organic combination of picture and sound is the result of the work of specialists at all levels: from the director’s idea to the recording of music on sheet music, then to the performance by musicians and the compilation of sound tracks. And all this under the close supervision of consultants: Ostap Kostyuk and Iryna Fedun – from Hutsul life and ethnomusicology, Anna Hadetska – from baroque music. Read also: In Ukraine, the selection of films for the Oscar 2024 award has begun. Work on the musical design of “Dovbush” lasted several years, in fact, as did the work on the tape itself. Composer Alla Zagaikevich, who is not working with director Oles Sanin for the first time (she previously created music for “Mamaya” and “Guide”), recalls that everything started in the fall of 2018. At first, she prepared the music “in the frame” – the one that sounds at the wedding in Oleksa Dovbush’s dream, at the march of the Polish army, the baroque military ensemble of the nobility, the lamentation at the funeral… The film “Dovbush” collected 8.7 million in the first weekend of distribution. UAH Photo: press service The beginning of the work was full of folklore expeditions, work with the archives of the Lviv Academy of Music, folklore experts of the Hutsul Region… The director of the film “Living Fire” Ostap Kostyuk and the ethnomusicologist Iryna Fedun helped the composer a lot. First, studio recordings of folk performers and musicians of the baroque ensemble Open Opera Ukraine were made. And they immediately went into the frame. The first created “music” of the film is a military march melody on copies of ancient flutes played by boys from the Lviv Musical Decade. For Oleksandr Chorny, this is the first experience of co-authorship in writing music for a film. Previously, he worked with director Stanislav Kapralov (horror “Let It Snow” and action adventure “Egregor”), as well as director Lubomir Levitsky (documentary “Follow Me”). “I started working on the film already when several versions of the soundtrack were ready. My task was to introduce new solutions to the sound of the film, working both with Alla Zagaikevich’s music and with my own material. As a film composer, I was brought up in the American cinema, so I used this “optics” to work on Dovbush, adding an element of “American” narrative, procedurality to the soundtrack,” Oleksandr Chornyi told UP.Zhyttia. Dasha Plakhtiy embodied Marichka in “Dovbush”. Photo: from open sources Together with the director, the composers were in constant search of different, sometimes elusive moods, deciding what should be reworked and what should be combined. “To a certain extent, the music we worked on was constantly metamorphosing, revealing its various facets: ethnic, Hollywood, ambient-electronic, symphonic,” Oleksandr Chornyi added. In one of the battle scenes, musicians continue to play musical instruments. Photo: press service And in such stylistic and semantic syncretism lies the uniqueness of the musical design of “Dovbush”: electronic music flows into epic lyre melodies performed by Gordiy Starukh, and percussion is combined with vocal effects of Maksym Berezhnyuk. All this is against the background of authentic music that sounds in the frame: Hutsul, baroque (scenes with Poles), Romanian… Read also: Romanian surrealism and war through the eyes of artists: which films won at the Odessa International Film Festival 2023 Over four years, work on the film developed in in different directions: the musical solution quite radically “oscillated” between completely folkloric or “conditionally authorial”. There were many creative searches – shared by the director and composer Alla Zagaykevych. “We both liked everything at first… and then we understood together that “it’s not the same”… That’s why what we hear in the film is probably the fourth version of the music,” Alla Zagaikevich shared in a comment to UP.Zhyttia . However, the final result is impressive. Sitting in the cinema hall, you can physically feel the breath of the mountains. This is not just a coincidence, but the off-screen presence of ethnic musician Maksym Berezhnyuk: it is he who perfectly “breathes” in all Opryshkiv scenes. Hutsul motifs are conveyed by the singing of Susanna Karpenko, the singing of Serhiy Okhrimchuk, the folk singing of female performers from the village of Zamagora, Verkhovyna district, and the voices of actors and actresses from the Ivano-Frankivsk Theater. In the film “Dovbush” various musical instruments are played, and in the scene in the church there is even an organ. Photo: press service All material based on folklore timbres is synthetically generated. “I most liked combining modern granulation techniques (splitting of sound – ed.) with arkan, folk singing. For example, we hear it at the end of the robbery scene – this is a bit of a “crazy arkan”, – says Alla Zagaikevich. The list of musical instruments that sound in the film is impressive: drum, didgeridoo, various types of cymbals, floyar, tylinka, lyre, ocarina, trembits, hunting horns, torban, trumpet (shalmei), we also hear a baroque ensemble with a harpsichord, baroque flutes… One and the same instrument can produce different sounds – thanks to different playing techniques, for example, with a bow on a bandura. In the film, you can also hear the performance of Oleksandr Cherny: the plucking sounds in the scenes with Ivan Dovbush and his gang are the sounds of the lyre, which was made by the director of the film, Oles Sanin. Music plays an important role in Oles Sanin’s painting “Dovbush”. Photo: press service The music in “Dovbush” is all-pervading, it accurately conveys the mood of the scene or the character of the characters. Let’s recall a slightly creepy episode in the bedroom of Princess Yablunovskaya. The antiheroes of the film are making love, and at this time a musician is playing the ocarina near their bed. Or the scene of Count Pototsky’s speech with Princess Yablunovska in the cathedral, when the organ sounds. And his sound seems somewhat superficial, like both of the gentlemen. Even when powerful music sounds in the inn, we hear someone’s exclamation of delight: “I would sell my soul to play tacos!” Several musical episodes make you want to smile or laugh. This is the Soromysk drama “And I am a poor orphan…” written by Oleksiy Hnatkovskyi, who plays the role of Ivan Dovbush. Or the episode before the decisive battle with the Polish army, when one of the snipers says: “Do you hear? – Just don’t shoot the musicians.” The scene before the verisimilitude of the soldiers’ battle with the gunmen. Photo: press service In the film, several leitmotifs can be singled out, for example, the theme of the hero Dovbush, conveyed by the tone of the lyre. This theme was written by Alla Zagaykevych a long time ago, it had several timbre options, but it was Oleksandr Chornyi who offered a very expressive version with a lyre (performed by Gordiy Starukh). There are also other leitmotifs – the theme of brothers, the theme of a bartka. This is a real explosive mixture – a seemingly incompatible combination: folk singers (Serhiy Okhrimchuk, Maksym Berezhniuk) with academic musicians (cellist Viktor Rekalo, double bass player Nazariy Stets) and jazz drummer Alex Fanteev. This is how the topic of sprays was born – tough, uncompromising. But this was the director’s idea. “The idea is exactly such hardness. The director demanded drive. There are three more versions of this music. The combination of wild Hutsuls and defiant professionals worked,” commented Alla Zagaikevich. In the film “Dovbush”, Dasha Plakhtiy embodied the beloved leader of the Opryshks. Photo: press service The complexity of the concept, according to the composer, was to tell about the eternal theme of the myth of the hero, as something alive and relevant. “When you start working with folklore and historical material, you increasingly feel the need to develop a very effective, almost juggling super live sound,” explains Alla Zagaikevich. The film keeps the viewer in suspense thanks to the clear rhythmic structure of the percussion instruments. Alla Zagaykevych is sure that Oleksandr Chornyi was able to realize Oles Sanin’s desire to keep the rhythm of the scenes as much as possible. Oleksandr managed to make a demonstrative integration of music into the bright sound design of Valery Khilobok. Read UP. Culture in Telegram

[ad_2]

Original Source Link