“Guillermo del Toros Pinocchio” composer Alexandre Desplat on working with the director: “If I see him cry, I’m ready” – sound and screen

Alexandre Desplat opened Deadlines Sound & Screen Awards Season event with music from his latest project, by Guillermo del Toro Pinocchio. The Netflix animated film, which is currently available to stream, is the duo’s second collaboration after the Best Picture Oscar winner. The shape of the water.

Desplat spoke about his experience with del Toro, a director who celebrates the power of musical composition in films to affect emotions.

“Guillermo has a strong passion for films and for music and for the music in his films,” Desplat said during a Q&A after his live performance Pinocchio Signing with a 60-piece band. “There is no fear and there are no limits. He is open to all ideas. He likes that music can evoke emotion, and this film has many twists and turns of emotion, such as danger and melancholy, joy and fantasy through the love of a father and son. As in The shape of the water, there are so many emotions. There is strong social and political content in both films. in the Pinocchio, it’s fascism with the film set in 1930s Italy. All this together creates tension that the music can convey. The best moments with Guillermo are when I think I’ve approached the right idea musically and play it for him, and when I see him cry, I’m right. He is very sensitive to music – some directors are.”

Oscar winner Desplat also revealed how unique it was to work with del Toro as the famous director helped write songs. He explained that he had “never” worked with another director who co-wrote music for projects he composed, especially for a project as long-term as pinocchio, which they started working on three years ago.

Desplat revealed that the most important part of his music-to-movie-making process begins with seeing a rough cut of the project.

“I like watching. I enjoy watching the film, even if it’s not fully edited, but I enjoy looking at the images to see how the actors move — I enjoy watching the actors listen,” he told the young composer. I did spend a lot of time in theaters, writing incidental music and listening and watching what the actors were doing during rehearsals. When I’m working on a film, it’s always very present in my work .i have to see the movie Of course I can get a theme and an idea but I do this job – well it’s not a job – I do what I do many hours every day because I like cinema, I love that music and film merge and really work together.”

He added, “The great thing is that with Guillermo we had the idea that the songs in the film wouldn’t be too long so that we wouldn’t break the pace of the story… I was really happy that the cast played along with the songs; There are no other singers. Christoph Waltz, Ewan McGregor, both great musicians and great singers. As well as David Bradley and little Gregory Mann playing Pinocchio. We were lucky to have a great group of singers who are also actors.”

Check back Monday for the panel video.