This interview with “Avatar: The Way of Water” composer Simon Franglen first appeared in a special section of the Below-the-Line issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
Composer Simon Franglen had worked on the first “Avatar” on what he called “the non-orchestral side: the shiny textures, the synthetic stuff, the beats.” So when his close friend and original “Avatar” composer James Horner died in a plane crash in 2015, Lightstorm asked Franglen to write music for Disney’s theme park attraction Pandora—The World of Avatar. He then began work on “The Way of Water” by devising a Na’vi language song to fit into a line at the beginning of the script: “Neytiri sings the song cord.”
“The idea is that you have a string of beads and you trace your family history almost like a rosary while you sing,” said the British composer. Cameron liked what he heard, Zoe Saldana sang it impeccably in front of the entire crew, and soon after, Franglen was hired to write the film’s score.
Immediately, he and Cameron agreed that certain Horner’s musical themes from the first film should be retained, both to honor the late composer and to create the idea of Avatar canon. But with the action moving from the jungles of Pandora to the coast, they also knew a different approach was needed. “There’s no reason for a reef tribe to have the same sound,” he said, “because they have different materials to work with.”
Franglen discarded what he called “the shiny gamelan textures” he had written for the forest scenes in the first film and turned to bamboo instruments and wooden percussion. She also began working with Pacific Islander singers in Wellington, using softer voices with a Polynesian texture. “We also built a three-dimensional array of tall, delicate percussion instruments to capture the idea of this brilliant light coming through the water,” she said. “That became a recurring texture throughout the movie.”
His other work included a heavy baddie theme based on bass brass and electronic percussion, though the heart of his score came with more emotional tracks. “In several places in the film, there is no dialogue and only minimal sound effects because we are underwater, and the emotion of the scene has to be conveyed by the music,” he said. “The family story is so important that I would almost say this is a smaller movie than Avatar.” He smiled. “I don’t mean that in a derogatory way: this is still Pandora, this is still a Jim Cameron movie. But my biggest challenge was making sure I connected emotionally with the characters.”
Read more of the issue below the line here.
