In A24’s The Front Room, things go to hell for newly-pregnant Belinda (Brandy Norwood) after her mother-in-law (Kathryn Hunter) moves in. Belinda must now draw the line between her and her diabolical guest, who is trying to get her hands on the couple's child.
Max & Sam Eggers wrote and directed the thriller, which also stars Andrew Burnap and Neal Huff. Ava Berkofsky served as the film's director of photography, with Benjamin Rodriguez Jr. and Eric Kissack sharing editing duties.
Katy McIlvaine (pictured) was The Front Room's music supervisor. The feature's '60s and '70s soundtrack is an important tool for creating an unsettling tone and alternate universe. McIlvaine experimented with different types of vintage, country and gospel music to create the distinct soundtrack that brought this world to life.
Hi Katy! Can you talk a bit about the importance of collaborating with directors, composers and editors in the music supervision process?
“Creating something that’s greater than the sum of its parts is the magic of making a film. When I look at the work that everyone else is doing, it blows my mind. As a music supervisor, I’m consumed by whether a song has the right energy and tone, or maybe if the lyrics match the subliminal message of a look the character just gave. I listen to songs for hours and then re-listen to my favorite ones, all in service of finding the right fit and I love it! Finding options to present to the directors feels like finding a missing puzzle piece. But I can’t imagine myself getting that granular and caring that deeply about so many of the other aspects that the rest of the post team is diving into. It makes me grateful that everyone is there to show up and put their all into this project, and collectively, we’re going to make something that no one could have done by themselves!”
Which genres, eras and instrumentation did you tap for the soundtrack of The Front Room?
“’Hold Fast To The Right’ was written into the script because our directors Sam and Max loved the opening line: ‘Kneel down by the side of your mother my boy,’ since so much of the film is a battle to see who the real mother is! So we picked that recording from Webb Pierce & The Anita Kerr Singers during pre-production and always knew that would be part of the musical palette. Once we got into post, we experimented a lot with different instrumentations and eras. Max and Sam really liked instruments that have been associated with unusual and haunted vibes, so we looked for songs from any era with Leslie organ, glockenspiel, and theremin - to name a few - and you’ll hear a lot of that in both the licensed songs and Marcelo Zarvos’ amazing score!”
Did the final soundtrack differ from the initial script?
“The tone of the final song choices stayed pretty true to what the vision was in the script. I was delighted that the number of licensed songs grew though. There were more than twice as many licensed songs in the final cut than there were in the script I originally signed onto. Getting to expand my creative role was a surprise and a really exciting opportunity that I’m so grateful for. The cost to license music is often underestimated, so it’s rare that music supervisors get to dream bigger!”
What were some of the challenges of tracking down copyright owners for songs that were more than 50 years old?
“This was definitely a big part of my overall workload on this film. The directors, Max and Sam, were great at finding songs that were hidden gems and hadn’t been part of the mainstream commercial music machine - even in their time - so people hadn’t tried very hard to preserve the line of communication and rights. With songs this old, even their heirs are from a generation that doesn’t have a huge online footprint, so it’s challenging to find anyone connected to the copyright. For a version of ‘This Little Light of Mine,’ I spent more than a week researching the band The Gateway Singers and finally caught a break when I looked up the obituary of each band member to find the names of their surviving family members. I then googled those people to look for their contact and found one of the sons! He was in his late 60s, living in Nashville, and as luck would have it, he had a career in the music industry and therefore understood the licensing process and the urgency. He was thrilled that someone was interested in using one of his dad’s songs and went far above and beyond to connect the dots for all the rights. He even digitized the audio from one of his dad’s old vinyl records when we discovered the label didn’t even have the song file in their system!”
Why do you find it important to champion the artists behind each of your song selections?
“It’s important to champion artists in today’s AI-driven marketplace for the same reasons it was important before AI. Major labels and publishers have their methods, but money for independent musicians has already bottomed out. It happened when fans started downloading music and stopped paying to buy the music that they listened to, which evolved into streaming subscriptions that most indie musicians can’t profit from because the royalty deals and algorithms are stacked against them. So the indie music industry has already been AI-proofing itself to some degree because musicians have had to develop different income streams, and one of the streams they still look to is sync. There are already cheap production library alternatives out there if you just want to slot any song in. But the magic of making films is that people are telling a compelling story and want a song with soul. It amazes me that humans can be so creative that musicians are still making new songs that move us to tears or inspire us to jump up and dance. I could never do that myself, so I made it my life’s work to figure out how to get money to the people who can.”
What kind of timeline were you facing with this project?
“Every month looked different, and the needs changed as the project evolved, but the timeline is always ASAP. That’s usually the case for music supervision. We sign onto a project and don’t know how it will unfold, but we’re along for the ride.
“On The Front Room, I would get a new pass of the cut, and Sam and Max had put another song in a new scene. It was exciting to have the music uses grow, but every time it would be an urgent race to identify clearance parties. There were a lot of times that we determined a song would be un-licensable, and had to reassess and figure out what the creative pivot would be. There are near-infinite ways that it could have unfolded, and I’m really proud to have been a part of the final product that Max and Sam created!”