Simon Franglen On Composing More Than Just Music In 'Avatar: The Way of Water'
The score for Avatar: The Way of Water may not have received any Academy Award nominations Tuesday, but that doesn’t take away from its beauty or the incredible story of how it took nearly a decade to come together.
In June 2015, while The Way of Water was still in the early days of production, composer Simon Franglen was as busy as any other musician in Hollywood. In the midst of balancing his projects and his personal life, he received a phone call that would change his the course of his career.
James Horner, the composer of the first Avatar film, had died. He was flying his personal plane over California when he lost control and crashed. In an exclusive interview with FilmSpeak, Franglen says Horner’s death was a “shock.” A friend of Horner’s, he had literally just spoken to him the night before the crash. He said that, following the tragedy, James Cameron, Jon Landau, and the rest of the Avatar family were devastated. Almost immediately, however, he was asked to pick up where Horner had left off on creating music for Disney’s (then planned) Avatar-themed amusement park. He didn’t hesitate to say yes, but the workload would consume his schedule for the foreseeable future.
Still from Avatar: The Way of Water (©Disney)
“I had to deliver five hours of music for the park. And that took me through May 2017, when the park opened,” he said. Having finished what Horner started, at the end he felt content. Little did he know, it was only just the beginning. Fast-forward seven months later, and Franglen received a call from Cameron asking him to read some scripts. Those scripts were for Avatar 2, 3, 4, and 5. “You need to understand where we end up to understand where you start,” Cameron later told him. Without another word, Franglen knew what Cameron was really asking: he wanted him to take over the franchise’s music.
Obviously Franglen accepted, but the gig was far from easy. He explains that before he could even record the music, not only did he have to write it but he had to write it in the film’s native (and totally made up) language Na’vi - or as he calls it “the worst language on earth.” He had to create something called a “songcord.” Similar to a rosary, the songcord is a string of beads that’s used as a mnemonic device by the Na'vi clans in order to recount information, prayer, stories, and mythology. “The idea is that with the songcord you're seeing a life. So you start with the beads, and you can pick up a songcord from your great grandfather and you could sing his life by tracing through the beads in his songcord. Each person has [one],” he said.
But in order to understand how to create one in the first place, he had to look at how other cultures passed down similar information from generation to generation. In his research into numerous different indigenous societies he discovered a common thread among all of them. “There was a repeating idea of life being a spark,” he said. “And then you carry that spark that becomes the dawn, and then you carry that light from the dawn through the day and towards the sunset. That is something you see all around the world. So that became my core idea.”
Still from Avatar: The Way of Water (©Disney)
He praised Zoe Saldaña’s voice for really bringing the songcord to life. And he revealed that the version of her singing in the film was done in a single take! “What you hear in the film is her singing live on set,” he said. “That's not pre-recorded [or] in a recording studio. That's not edited. That's a single take live with 100 technicians in a boom microphone recorded as you see her mouth moving on screen.” After inheriting the job, and after working tirelessly to create the film’s single songcord, Franglen says that it wasn’t until Saldaña brought it to life on set that the journey officially started.
Franglen was seemingly creating culture from scratch. Still, he admits he was heavily influenced by some of Earth’s own “nomadic” and Polynesian islands for their proximity to the water. He says that similar to the way that the Metkayina tribe that the film introduces has to learn how to adapt to the surface, he decided to adapt to more primitive instruments to create a more organic sound. He says that he even teamed up with an “ethno-musician” to make a whole set of custom instruments made of things like bamboo and clay and inspired by the film.
His commitment didn’t stop there. “We had a thing called ‘Culture Club’,” he said. It consisted of costume designer Deborah Scott, lead production designer for the Na’vi Dylan Cole, and even the film’s prop masters. “We would all work together,” he explained, “because Jim said, ‘You can't just make [stuff] up. It has to be based on something.’ So we would make a coherent whole.”
He teased that there were instruments that he specifically designed to be played by Na’vi in the film. While those instruments and sequences didn’t make it into this film, he is certain they’ll make it into the next film. That’s not the only thing that didn’t make it into the film though. Fast-forward to the end of production. Franglen didn’t disclose just how much music he made for The Way of Water, but he does say he and Cameron “could have [reached] five hours without even blinking.” He also teased that some of his music that was cut is likely to be added to the next film.
Still from Avatar: The Way of Water (©Disney)
The final version of the film clocks in at 3 hours and 12 minutes. Although that is much longer than most other blockbusters, Franglen confirmed that Cameron fought the studio from cutting anything else out. “There was a point where Jim just said, ‘I'm not chopping anything else out,’” he said, while admitting that there were some spots that could be condensed. He defended the film’s length by adding that “When you have a film with many characters, you have to have that time to allow us to actually learn the characters.” He pointed out that, despite there being so dialogue-heavy sequences, there are also long periods of silence. He explained that both him and Jim agreed that because so much of the film takes place underwater the music often acts as a narrator.
That being said of the film’s immense runtime, Franglen also revealed that there are only 6 whole minutes without any music. He jokingly referred to those minutes as “time off” Cameron gave him, while praising the orchestra for carrying so much of the film’s weight. While it seemed like a lot of work, he makes it abundantly clear that he’s happy to return and do it again and again and again.
“They’ve got me. They’ve signed me for three, four, and five or until [Cameron] gets bored of me,” he joked. “I actually have a contract that makes me [work] whether I like it or not.”