* This article integrates many reports, materials, comments, and personal subjective opinions.
This is not a movie that narrates the process of playing a group. Most of the plots revolve around youth love and psychological problems with the heroine. However, watching them keep on talking, swinging between the longing for love and the long-term friendship, still makes people involuntarily think of their past youth. The background of the story is set in the Glasgow region of Scotland, and it is a story about love connected by music.
The film was written and directed by Stewart Murdoch, the lead singer of the famous Scottish Indie Pop band Belle & Sebastian. Stewart Murdoch wrote and directed for the first time, and raised $120,000 through online crowdfunding to bring his 2009 concept album of the same name to the big screen. The original album, which took five years to create, described the lives of a group of young girls. He invited female singers from all over the world to give their voices, and Belle & Sebastian played behind the scenes, and added a lot of orchestral music to create a retro atmosphere of British women's ensembles in the 1960s.
Stewart Murdoch was born in Scotland, and despite being forced by his parents to learn the piano as a child, he joined a group of classmates at the age of twelve. In the late 1980s, he suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and was unable to work for seven years. It was also during this period of convalescence that he began to learn to write and write songs. In the movie, the protagonist Eve (played by Emily Browning) is trapped in the painful experience of the nursing home, daily psychological counseling courses, anorexia and thinness, eating colorful pills on time, autism or escaping the status quo, etc., more or more Less from his own experience.
Glasgow, Scotland, which is known as the three major music capitals of the UK along with London and Manchester, has produced countless bands that subverted traditions in the past three decades. Young people from all over the world gather in art galleries, parks, gardens, cafes, and pour into performance venues one after another; and since the 1970s, Blonde Girls, Smiths, and all the bands that once played a big role , have appeared here in front of a loud and sharp-eyed audience. Three young people met here, and a firm friendship was established between the flow of notes. Led by James, they roam the city. The melody continued to flow naturally from Eve's mouth, unfolding a dreamlike summer adventure.
In 2003, Stewart Murdoch composed the song "God Help The Girl". With the continuous evolution of inspiration, a girl band, a story, and even the idea of remaking it into a music movie also surfaced one by one. Stewart Murdoch began work on the screenplay. In 2009 Belle & Sebastian officially launched God Help The Girl album. The album describes the life story of a young girl, and Stewart Murdoch gave up the microphone and invited female singers from all over the world to give their voices. Camera Obscura, Teenage Fan Club, Kathleen Elton, Zoey Van Goey frontman Kim Moore, The Divine Comedy frontman Neil Hannon Hannon, and Aysa of Seattle Band Smoosh, who have both sang and worked in background bands, respectively. Stewart Murdoch felt that the song was the foundation of the entire film. As a musician, he feels more confident in realizing the potential of these songs than driving a full film first; he also believes that after the songs are recorded, they can serve as further inspiration for the film. The album successfully created the retro atmosphere of the British band in the 1960s, and also won praise from the British music circle at that time.
It is very difficult to find actors who can act, sing, and interpret the singer-songwriter in the film. After two years of selection and more than 2,000 actors, Emily Browning, Ollie Alexander, Han Na Murray's qualifying, let the film begin to enter the real preparation.
The actors and accompaniment band performed live on set, and were performed by the same sound engineer who recorded the original album. It was a huge test for every actor, except for Olly Alexander, who was originally vocalist and keyboardist in the electronic band Years & Years. But the big battle at the shooting scene made him exclaim, "I am often shocked by the scene in front of me. The singing and dancing scenes in the movie are really the most beautiful things in the world."
Choreographer Emily Jane Ball designed each song and dance scene to have a distinct tonality, depending on the central character at the time and the theme of that song. Amplify and stylize the body movements that can be seen everywhere in daily life, kind and charming.
Emily Jane Bower highly praised the performance of the actors, "The three protagonists have done a very good job, and some songs have even been rehearsed for nearly two months, and everyone is very dedicated. Emily Browning has the most dance scenes, But she has received a lot of martial arts training in the past, so her memory of dance steps is very fast and accurate, which is amazing and has the most potential."
Emily Jane Ball also believes that director Stewart Murdoch is a great partner. . “There are choreographic clues hidden in his lyrics, and he has a very concise and clear idea of the tonality of each song and dance scene, and that helps a lot from the beginning. Get all the answers."
Because the weight of music is so important and so central, Eve and James have a conversation about music creation, including "Why do you want to think of a group name first? How many young people want to form a group every day, spending so much Time and energy to think about what kind of name should I choose?", "It's enough to write a classic song in a lifetime!", "Sing as long as you sing the song you want to sing, that's enough, why do you have to ask for a big one?" Selling?" In fact, they are all people who are "interested" in music, or who use music as their "vocation", and the thoughts that flash through their hearts also reflect the life thinking of director Stuart Murdoch from an otaku to the lead singer of a band.
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