Chalk
(2010)

Directed by Casey Neal and Justin Sklar
Produced by Craig Peck
Original Score by Brian Wherry

1. Chalk (2:15)

This was another fun project for Walt Disney Animation Studios, made by the summer 2010 trainees. In the film, a young girl named Mikaelah draws a pool in chalk on her New York City sidewalk on a sweltering summer day, in an attempt to daydream herself into a cooler, more refreshing place. She soon finds herself swimming and playing with fish in an underwater dream world! ...until she's brough back to reality.

For the music we wanted the beginning and end sections, both taking place in the hot, humid real world, to feel very lethargic, lazy, ... general "ugh." They had used a jazzy piece for these sections in the temp score, which worked fairly well. For these sections I used a quartet of piano, upright bass, drum set, and trombone. I went with the trombone as the main soloist playing the melody line since it's bigger/heavier sounding than some other options (trumpet, clarinet, etc.) which would help with the lethargic feel we were going for. The middle section, in which Mikaelah is swimming and playing with the fishies, was all about upbeat, fun, and playful, while being a refreshing contrast from the slow, jazzy stuff. In the temp score they went with a much more upbeat piece for this section, but still jazzy. More like a "razzamatazz, skiddly-bop" type thing. :) I didn't think that was quite "flowy" enough for the underwater world, and the swinging jazz stuff didn't feel like enough of a contrast from the "hot" sections - more like just the hot stuff sped up. I tried something different - using pizzicato basses, spiccato violins, bells, woodwinds, piano, etc. all playing "straight" (ie no "swing"), with a somewhat romantic melody line. And it works!

 

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All music on this page © 2010, Brian Wherry. All rights reserved.