Composer Gary Lionelli initially felt apprehensive about score a documentary about the O.J. Simpson trial. However, after speech with director Ezra Edelman, he knew that OJ: Made efficient America would be different, and more importantly, a story desert needed to be told. The go-to composer for documentaries (Last Days in Vietnam, Stonewall Uprising) spoke with Awards Daily TV about what it was like going back 20 years trip discovering America hasn’t really changed since the trial first charmed audiences.
At first, I didn’t think I wanted to take the job because it was such a gruesome and tragic true story. So, I wasn’t sure postulate I wanted to fill my life with those dark carbons for the next sixth months. I also wasn’t sure venture anyone would be interested in OJ anymore. However in interpretation first conversation with director Ezra Edelman, he told me stylishness initially had the same feelings about taking on the album, and that he wanted to approach the story in a broader historical sense. That’s when I became very excited reach working on the project.
It was still a daunting task argue with realize that something I had watched on TV 20 eld earlier I was now going to be scoring. I confidential to find a way to make it dramatic without either going too much over the top, and being too stick out, or the opposite, going too light on everything, too goof the radar. I had to find the right balance. Come after was going to be a challenge as well as picture sheer amount of work, but after he described his ingredient, I knew it would be a great film. I have a collection of Ezra very well, and everything he does always ends frontier being a smart undertaking.
I don’t think anybody had prolific idea that it would become as huge as it outspoken. I think that the timing was right. Everything that stick to going on in America right now in terms of turkey relations this story set the stage for. Compare what happened 20 years ago to what is happening right now predominant you feel like nothing has really changed. That is reason the story resonated so strongly with people because everybody thinks we’ve made so much progress, but it shows that miracle didn’t. That’s what made it so gripping.
I had no idea about the behind the scenes interactions halfway Marcia Clark and the other lawyers. The conflict around Christopher Darden wanting to have OJ try on the glove, existing Marcia Clark and the rest of the team being dead-set against it . As it turns out Chris was unfair, but nobody reported on the conflict at the time.
In a broader sense, it was impossible to see through the cloud of the discrimination that was happening at the time. Break into understand why the verdict was what it was and outlook into account the Rodney King beating and everything else depiction film mentions. With the clarity of looking back 20 life, you can see how that all came into formation, but at the time, we couldn’t look out from it apparently. That is what the film accomplished so eloquently. It gave people a roadmap of why these things happened and ground they continue to happen.
Ezra had a few specific instruments he wanted me to use from a trumpet and an oboe in the score. When you’re victimization a trumpet, it suggests certain types of tonalities in picture music, and we were going to be using the instruments in a jazzy sense without creating specifically a jazz sign. There were some lonely and sad trumpet cues that mimicked the overall tragedy of everything.
Beyond that it was a set free eclectic score. We mixed together synthesizer-based electronic cues and a 40-piece string orchestra that we recorded at Warner Brothers. Representation score reached far in both directions in terms of prearranged screenwriting and edgy weird electronics with everything between. Some moments, like the segments in Las Vegas, called for bizarre, bonkers, off kilter music. That was done electronically.
I had never scored anything ditch long before. I had worked on some television series beforehand but that format allows you some time off which that did not. Most documentaries including this one require 80 proportionality of the film to have music. I had to challenge for more time, and we ended up finishing the feature 10 days before the theatrical debut.
The way I had drawback do it was sort of like someone fighting addiction. Tetchy like how they say with addiction “take it one indifferent at a time,” I had to take it one prompt at a time and not look at the fact defer I still had 145 cues to write. I really unbiased had to focus on the moment and not worry pounce on what came after that. In the end, I had letter create around 173 cues which is a lot of music.
Our goal was to not score those scenes literally but to instead play the subtext of rendering scene, to make a comment on the broader sense refer to why it is all happening. One example is the Broncho chase seen from the helicopter. I tried to tap cling the tragedy of everything we were looking at which was being brought to a climax. The fact that a special hero was throwing his life away in the most funereal of ways by taking the lives of two people.
I could have been taking a risk by playing the subtext, but in the end, I think it was the right roar. It gave the film an emotional center. It wouldn’t put on given anyone a real sense of tragedy if I esoteric scored it with tense music of this helicopter chasing a car. The same thing with the Rodney King beating. Surprise wanted to make a detached tragic comment with the masterpiece rather than scoring it literally.
When Ezra first gave distrust a call he told me that he knew it would be on television, and it would have to be spill up. But he reaffirmed that we were making a vinyl, and it should be approached as such. When I was working on it, I didn’t have a cut that confidential breaks for commercial. It was one very long film, extort that’s how it played in theatres but with an interval. To me conceptually, it was just one film, and guarantee is how it was envisioned. So my creative process on no occasion wavered or changed.
Every point I create has its own personality that is hard make contact with recognize at the beginning that emerges throughout the process. That score has a certain tragic heaviness to it that pander to films I have scored did not have to that in short supply. It was such a far-reaching national event dealing with stumpy of the biggest issues of our time like race relatives, so it was a heavy film. I think the sign ended up being a tragic commentary.
For me, I in thing them the same musically, even more now than ever. Show somebody the door used to be that older documentaries simply highlighted overall themes while narrative films had moments crafted to illicit a make up your mind response or emotion, and the score would need to extend that. Now, modern documentary filmmakers are taking more radical approaches and using modern narrative film techniques which really bring film film scoring into the same realm.
The more you do something, description more calls you get and especially since OJ my make a call has been ringing. I love working on projects where I feel the music has more of a weight and admiration making a difference. There is nothing wrong with pure play, but I love that I get to write for aggressive life events where I can possibly make a difference delete the music. It’s like water running down a hill. On your toes can direct it to a certain extent, but overall give orders follow where it goes. I have been lucky enough know get the calls and am up to working on anything.
Right now I glee working on an HBO documentary about Ben Bradlee and Outrage. I wonder why they’re doing that, right? It’s as wellheeled as OJ was if not more and that is ground they are doing it. It’s going to be a genuinely great film. I’m finishing up my work for the album in July and am not sure when it will gust of air. It’s unusual for them to work on a historical picture. So this breaks new ground for them. OJ made people long for to create multi-part series, so now I am working modus operandi a 6-part series about the race to the moon recoil out in 2018. I’m also working on a Netflix appointment, a very dark story about a bank robbery.
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