Johnny Jewel - Home (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2016)

Home had its world premiere in August at the Venice Film Festival, where Fien Troch won Best Director in the Orizzonti section.

Below are quotes from Home director Fien Troch and Home composer Johnny Jewel

Fien Troch - Home director and co-writer

“I’ve always been drawn to Johnny’s music, as it is reckless and physical. His music is an emotional roller coaster. Every time I see scenes of my film with Johnny's music on, everything I’ve done and worked for is lifted to another level. It’s an overwhelming feeling. Music in films is often pushing you to where you reject what you see. It is often obvious or illustrative, causing the desired symbiosis of picture and sound to dry out and die off. But Johnny is extremely strong in translating the narrative of the film, and the emotions that come along with it, into a new lyrical universe. The melodic grammar he uses becomes both a counterpart and ally of everything that’s happening on the screen. There’s moments of perfect harmony, friction and support. Once this marriage is inaugurated there is no way back for the film, and it can no longer exist without Johnny’s music.”

Johnny Jewel - Home composer

“In Home, all of the film’s edits are actual jump cuts in time. Fien did this intentionally, just like in documentaries, to give us the impression that we’re actually seeing into the real lives of the characters. On a sonic level, Fien wanted the pop songs to come in and out of the film abruptly, similar to the improvised smart phone footage that the teens filmed themselves. She asked me to ride the line between hitting the viewer head on with a pop song that immediately sweeps them into that world and then subconsciously creeping in through the back door with score where the viewer doesn't even realize they’re hearing music.

Fien wanted me to approach the ‘reality’ of the film in an abstract way that blurred the lines between score and sound design. We discussed using minimal ambient music to explore the themes of stress, anxiety, isolation, hope, the naivete of youth, and the disconnection between the characters. Fien does an incredible job illustrating the ever-widening generational gap between the day job-fueled mundane routines of adults and the smart phone-aided curiosity of teenagers, and she wanted to use music and sound to reinforce this gulf between the two generations. The voices and breath of the teenagers are intimately mixed very closely to the screen, whereas the adults are generally recorded from a boom mic further off in the room, pushing their voices away. Everything we did with sound was an effort to underscore this distance, and we hope for people to identify with the kids.

Fien's ability to work with a young cast who had never acted before, and to shoot in all natural light with only two cameras, and with no crew or make-up, is a testament to her strength as a director to capture this hyper real feeling the film gives us.”