CineMontage

Winter 2017

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41 Q1 2017 / CINEMONTAGE 41 Q1 2017 / CINEMONTAGE by Michael Goldman portraits by Martin Cohen L istening to singer-songwriter Halsey's new single, "Not Afraid Anymore," as it pulsates through a fresh Dolby Atmos mix on a stage at Universal Studios in the company of music editors Angie Rubin, MPSE, and Bill Abbott can be a bit of an unsettling experience. The track is accompanying an erotic sequence, known as the "Red Room" scene, in the new Universal Pictures film, Fifty Shades Darker, which opened February 10. Rubin and Abbott, after all, played key roles in helping to select and edit the song — and all the others in this sequel to the 2015 adult drama Fifty Shades of Grey, for which they also served as co-music editors. The music sounds great, particularly on an expertly calibrated mixing stage. On the other hand, there's a lot of, let's say, "adult activity" playing out on the screen while the audio experience unfolds — not exactly the type of demo the two industry veterans typically offer visiting reporters. "Concentrate on the music," Rubin advises in a hushed tone. Later, in Rubin's office, the duo reminisce about their musical journey on the first two installments in the trilogy of films based on the best-selling book series written by author E.L. James. They have just wrapped their work on Fifty Shades Darker, in collaboration with director James Foley, music supervisor Dana Sano and composer Danny Elfman, and will shortly be segueing into the final film, Fifty Shades Freed, which was shot simultaneously with Darker and is slated for a 2018 release. They both wish to emphasize that while the Fifty Shades movies are decidedly adult in nature, certainly not everyone's cup of tea, and controversial in some quarters, the need "to showcase a lot of music — big, soaring music" in their soundtracks, as Rubin puts it, became exponentially more important as a result. Indeed, the first movie's soundtrack went on to become the seventh-best-selling album of 2015, and two songs on it won major award nominations: an Oscar nomination for The Weeknd's "Earned It" and a Golden Globe nomination for Ellie Goulding's "Love Me Like You Do," produced by Max Martin. Abbott was the original primary music editor on the first film, which was directed by Sam Taylor- Johnson, before Rubin joined the project when it became necessary to re-do the score for a whole new cut of the film. The project's musical requirements became so important at that point that Rubin was called by Rachel Levy, Universal's senior vice president of film music, after completing her previous gig and asked if she could fly to London and join Abbott — with exactly a single day's notice. Around that time, Abbott recalls mission statements from studio executives about the necessity of "delivering music worthy of a big cinematic event." "It was lofty thinking," he recalls. "I remember, a couple months after we spotted the first film, it became clear that music, especially songs, would play a giant role, and they had to soar and be special. The songs had to be important, and they turned out to be, as the soundtrack's success and the award nominations illustrated. And that mission statement has stayed the same." If anything, that mission grew in importance because the musical success of the first film's soundtrack meant that any hesitation that some artists might have had about participating, given the sexual nature of the product, had melted away. Thus, by the time Fifty Shades Darker came around, "the amount of material that came in was amazing — thousands of songs, literally," according to Rubin. "It has only just now stopped because we have told people we are finally print mastering. But we had buckets of material every day to sort through." Abbott adds that "the basic arc" of their process largely revolved around "the first half of [the project] being about trying to get a feel for what type of music Music Editors Angie Rubin and Bill Abbott Craft the Soundtrack for 'Fifty Shades' Sequel Fifty Shades Darker. Universal Pictures

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