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Ian Eisendrath, the ‘Fiery’ Exec Music Producer on Getting Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds in the Christmas Spirit for Apple Musical – Sound & Screen

Upcoming Christmas movie from Apple Original Films Funny required the hands and talents of several behind-the-scenes creatives, including Ian Eisendrath, who served as executive music producer for the musical comedy. After performing an original song at Deadline’s Sound & Screen event, he revealed the elements of his work that kept him busy amid the cast’s singing talent, including Ryan Reynolds, Will Ferrell and Octavia Spencer.

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“In a movie like Funny there are so many elements to this – we got an incredible score from Dominic Lewis, [and] Various actors who may have sung a little bit before or never sung – one of the great things about this one was getting them to sing as themselves,” said Eisendrath. “We wrote over 13 lyrics through the incredible talented Justin Paul and three co-writers – job number one is to make sure everything comes together and works together.”

He continued, “And I’m really involved in the recording process for all the vocals and the orchestra, the mixing and editing of the camera work where the actor often sings his songs in front of the camera. As you all know these movies are often a mix of live vocals and studio stuff. We always had them sing on set because we really wanted to make sure that the audience experienced a performance that felt like it related to what they were saying. We ended up using a lot of live vocals, which was really great.

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Amidst all those tasks on his to-do list, Eisendrath also took on the role of a therapist, with the actors in various states of well-being before the microphone.

“I think one of my jobs is to be a therapist, to introduce people to singing, first in the studio, then on set and then on camera,” he said. “We all know Will has done a lot of things where he sings, but I don’t know if he’s ever done anything where he actually sings as a character that isn’t a parody of something else. And these numbers are not easy. [Composers] are you [Pasek] and Justin [Paul] write very long complicated things to sing. So it was a lot of fun to work with [Farrell] on ash, what is your voice and sound?

“What I’m learning about these actors is that when we can suddenly match the lyrics to what they’re playing and they can really see songs as monologues on the field, they can do it. It’s almost as if their bodies and their voices know what to do to achieve what this character wants or needs to convey in a scene.”

Check back Monday for the panel video.

Writer: Rosa Cordero

Source: Deadline

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