23 - The Music

Vincent is a musician who had the opportunity to be in different band (Napoli's Walls, What do you mean by silence, and recently Médiums...) One of the reason we asked him to work on the film was that his musical world was fitting perfctly with Ernest and Célestine. Another reason was that he looks like Ernest a little and his studio is as messy as Ernest's house.  

We started working together early. Vincent started working on the storyboard, creating the musical themes of the film. Little by little, melodies were born. At first we need to find a way of speaking together, because my musical knowledge was not really developped

After those floating conversations, everything went well. We both wanted to give each character a specific intrument. Each time they would appear on screen, a specific instrument was used.  

For Celestine it was the clarinet

And for Ernest the violin

When the 2 are reunited, piano was used to illustrate their friendship.  

For one on the scene we asked Vincent to create the music before we made the animation. Here is the scene as it was written in the script:

CELESTINE (CONT'D)

(showing Ernest her painting)

Ernest, this is winter.

ERNEST

(taking up his violon)

It would sound something like this.

The musical phrase from the violin follows the blue curve of Celestine’s painting… It is winter indeed.

61.EXT. countryside - day

The musical phrase develops and accompanies the metamorphosis of the landscape from winter to spring. The clouds disappear, the sun comes out, the snow melts, water drips from the branches, grass grows, leaves return to the trees, the flowers blossom and bloom, insects gather pollen and nectar, birds sing, in short, it is the coming of spring that Ernest celebrates with his violin until the front door of the cabin finally opens and Ernest and Celestine appear on the threshold.  

This scene depicts a musical transition and was supposed to be a mix between sound and drawings. So we had to draw according to the music as Oskar Fischinger used to work (here you can see one of his most wonderful film ”The sorcerer's Apprentice”à. We asked Vincent to create the melody, simply asking him to make something that would depict the transition between Winter and Spring

Once the music was made, I went to see the animator so i could brief him

So here is the result. I hope you'll like it ! I want to add that the scene was made by Davy, the animation musketeer