Written by Sierra Falconer, Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) marks the filmmaker's directorial debut. The anthology drama debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is set around Green Lake in northern Michigan. The film has four chapters: “Sunfish,” “Summer Camp,” “Two Hearted” and “Resident Bird.” It stars Maren Heary, Jim Kaplan, Karsen Liotta, Dominic Bogart, Tenley Kellogg and Emily Hall.
Marcus Patterson served as cinematographer and Chelsi Johnston edited the project, which features original music by Brian Steckler (pictured). Here, the composer (www.briansteckler.com), who is based near Sacramento, CA, shares insight into his process creating the original score.
Hi Brian! Take us through one of your days working on this project. What is your process when creating a score?
"I typically work from the beginning of the film to the end once I’ve watched it all the way through, spotted the music cues with the director and talked through the general style, tone and sometimes instrumentation. But in the case of Sunfish, I knew I wanted to create a melodic theme to represent Green Lake that would appear in each vignette to help highlight the connection each story has to the lake. So, I wrote that theme for one of the later cues in the film, and then once that was in place, I went back to the beginning to write each cue consecutively.
"Initially, I wrote the cues with virtual instruments, knowing they would all be replaced down the road with the real thing once I had approval from Sierra. I played the guitar, ukulele and piano myself, and hired some great players for the violin solos and string quartet parts."
How would you describe the score and where does it compare to some of your past work?
"The Sunfish score is fairly minimalistic. It reminds me of some of the chill indie folk records I’ve worked on over the years as a record producer. And it’s very different than the batch of dark thrillers I’ve scored more recently. The thrillers have almost non-stop music that really heightens the tension as much as possible, and can be very big and dramatic.
Sunfish, on the other hand, has a fairly sparse score that heightens the emotion with a pretty light touch. It’s rare that more than two instruments are playing at a time, the exceptions being the string quartet and some of the more action-oriented cues in the vignette about the fisherman trying to hook the big fish."
Can you talk about working with the production sound and the live musical performances?
"Sierra had the good idea to use a piece of on-set audio from the ‘Summer Camp’ vignette, played by one of the very accomplished student violinist actors (Giovanni Mazza) in the big fishing scene in the following vignette. It’s an emotional callback that links the emotional states of the two lead characters together. Technically, it was tricky because not only did it need to time out perfectly for the scene, but also because the on-set audio needed to be supported by a new score and then continue beyond the length of the on-set audio recording to lead back to the Green Lake theme to wrap up the vignette. I was fortunate that the violin recording from the set was captured well enough that making the transition to the studio violinist was smooth with a little EQ and room matching.
"As far as integrating with the film’s sound design in post, I was careful to leave room for the film’s mixer to massage the music’s space if it was needed. I delivered both a stereo mix and a set of stems."
How much of the final score was developed in the studio versus being shaped or refined during the editing process?
"I was fortunate that Sierra and (editor) Chelsi Johnston had a very nearly-locked cut ready for me when I was brought in to start working on the score. By the time I was recording the live instruments, the small changes in the cut weren’t big enough to affect the score cues."
What’s next for you?
"I would love to work with Sierra on anything she’s doing in the future, and her future is bright after premiering her film at Sundance. In the meantime, there are some projects in the works back in the thriller/mystery genre, and I’d love to do some sci-fi. That’s definitely my favorite genre to watch, and I think it would be really fun to play in that world as a composer.
"Thanks for the opportunity to talk with you! The Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) soundtrack is available now to stream everywhere you listen to music, and I can be found at briansteckler.com, @briansteckler on Instagram, Threads and Facebook."