Rabbit Proof Fence Interview Transcription - EPK Transcript
Working with Phillip Noyce
Phillip Noyce I met through a friend of mine, George Acogny, and I think we talked a couple of times in London about the project when he first described it. I explained to Phillip at the time that I could only take it on if he was happy for me to work with some collaborators and in fact much of the creative work in assembling this thing has been done with David Rhodes, who I've know and worked with for many years, and Richard Evans, and Richard and David have done a fantastic job in assembling this in an emotional way.
The research process behind the score
The period of the film was the '30s and although we're not really using instrumentation from that period we were still trying to avoid especially identifiable, modern sounds. When I first met up with Phillip, one of the ideas I proposed to him was that we build up a lot of the soundtrack from natural sounds that he would have recorded or could have recorded as he was shooting the film, the areas or the elements that they might've encountered. Because I pictured them making this amazing journey along the rabbit proof fence without a whole lot of man-made noises to distract them.Trying to find a range of wildlife that was appropriate to the film was part of the research. We read around a little bit and also I worked with some Australian musicians so that I think it was part of that process but a lot of it was trying to respond to what we were seeing on the film.If I can start with one example where we took some Australian bird sounds which is mainly a magpie that you hear(listens) and then I suggested what we did with that was to slow it down to see if we could get a moodier thing that was of that sound, but not exactly that sound, so it becomes this, slowed down (listens) and then Richard Evans took it into the computer and started manipulating it a bit and it became this (listens) which is further slowing it down and putting a little more vibrato into it. Anyway we'd then sync it into the soundtrack and one of the places we used it is what's called The Return, when the kids are coming back home, so there's a big string section around it. For me it's very evocative. (plays section) I love the way the band works up and you get this other sort of harmony coming out of it.
What attracted you to the project
After I did the ''Last Temptation of Christ'' score for Scorcese, there were a lot of other offers coming in, and most of them, even though there were some great people and opportunities, I haven't gone for and it's partly because I'm such a slow worker and wanted to follow through on some other projects and on my own music. And with Rabbit Proof Fence, I was attracted because it was very independent in nature. It was very different from normal Hollywood fodder. The story I thought was very powerful, simple. There wasn't going to be a lot of dialogue. It was these three girls in the Australian outback and a lot of atmosphere and mood and so music was going to play an important role.
Writing for the Film
I guess one of the things that's different about doing a film score is that you're working for somebody else. You're serving someone else's project and if you're not happy with that you shouldn't be doing it.I think the only frustrating bit from a musician's point of view is that you end up getting things to work for a certain length that you've been asked for and then inevitably in the editing process, the film editing process, they change the lengths. Very often shorten things, and so suddenly you find you've got a piece of music that breathes naturally for say 35 seconds, and suddenly it's got to be compressed into 17 seconds, and you think 'How the hell do we do this without destroying the soul of what it is'. So these are normal frustrations for anyone writing for film but, at the same time, sometimes you get stuff, you lay it up against the film and you get the real strength of them both working together, and it's a fantastic feeling when you see the two serving each other, and it's extraordinary how much the music can change the film. You know sometimes I've seen it where a scene and a relationship between people will mean one thing, with one piece of music and you sense there is a totally different meaning when you put another piece of music underneath exactly the same scene.I think like most things with the creative world now, the impact of the computer has made a lot of difference to what we can do, and Rich and David I think were able to manipulate things in ways that wouldn't have been possible on the last soundtrack I worked with and you have it all there inside the computer in terms of how you process the signals and play with them so that's been something we've really gained from this time round
The Story
It's a great story really of these girls that are pulled away from their families there was this policy I think to deliberately break up aboriginal families and particularly those half-caste and the children were taken to these school-like places where they were trained to become domestics for the Whites.Evelyn, who plays Molly here, leads an escape from this institution and because they knew that they'd come from up the Northern Territories at the top end of the rabbit proof fence, if they could find this fence which went all the way across Australia they could make their way back home. So it's really an account of that adventure.The story finishes when the girls return home but you do have then a little postscript which is of the women as they are today and it's very moving.
Rabbit Proof Fence
I think with Rabbit Proof Fence yeah Phillip has created
a wonderful atmospheric piece and some extraordinary acting performances.
I think it's probably my favourite Kenneth Brannagh role
he does his sort of nasty Englishman, he's believing he's acting
for the good of the children and clearly devastating lives at
the same time and especially the girls and Evelyn who plays Molly
is extraordinary - mature in the way she tackles the performance
and so I think for us it's hard to fix stuff when the acting isn't
right but here we were given some fantastic acting and wonderful
visual landscapes with which to work with and it's much, much
easier I think to develop music when you have great material to
work off than what we see most of the time coming out of Hollywood.