Why Oscar Score Contenders Started Writing Music Even Before Shooting Began

While this year's most acclaimed film scores showcase a diverse array of sounds, a common thread links them: composers are now frequently brought on board long before a director calls "action." This marks a significant and welcome shift from the traditional post-production scramble, where composers might have mere weeks to craft a complete score after filming wrapped. The new approach grants artists precious time for deep collaboration and a more refined, intentional musical vision.

Simon Franglen's work on "Avatar: Fire and Ash" exemplifies this extended creative runway. He penned his first theme over seven years ago, while director James Cameron was still deep in production on the trilogy's earlier chapters. Franglen dedicated the final two and a half years solely to composing the epic three-hour score. "This had to be a new score. It had to have new colors and new textures," the composer stated. His ambitious process involved a 100-piece orchestra, choirs of up to 80 voices singing in Pandora's invented Na'vi language, and even designing new instruments for the nomadic Wind Trader culture. "This is a good old-fashioned cinematic epic, and there is something about orchestra that is an essential part of the blockbuster experience," Franglen noted. Cameron, known for his meticulous world-building, agrees, believing that "musicians are every bit as important as the actors in terms of the emotion that they bring to it."

This trend of early integration allows the music to become a foundational character. For Noah Baumbach's film "Jay Kelly," composer Nicholas Britell was hired more than six months prior to shooting for what became "a two-year set of conversations and explorations." Baumbach wanted a classic, immersive "movie-movie score." Britell's solution centered on a "felt piano"—a modified instrument with felt placed between the hammers and strings to produce a softened, muted tone. "That became a metaphor for Jay’s journey, the idea there’s beauty but also restraint, a search that’s not quite expressing the fullness that it might have," Britell explained. His involvement was so integral that Baumbach invited him to the Tuscan set to perform themes for the cast and crew, fostering a unique unity between the film's visual and auditory elements.

Similarly, Bryce Dessner began composing for "Train Dreams" before filming commenced, working from the script and early dailies. This head start was crucial for his desired organic development. "I wanted the music to have time to develop," Dessner said, "so a lot of the pieces were written off-picture." His main theme is a five-minute string composition he describes as "an aria that never quite finishes its sentence," mirroring the fragmented, searching life of the protagonist, Robert Grainier. To capture a specific nostalgic authenticity, Dessner recorded much of the score in non-traditional studios using vintage ribbon microphones and slightly out-of-tune upright pianos, aiming for what he calls "a kind of analog feeling."

The practice also opens doors for unique cross-genre collaborations. For Oliver Laxe's Sahara-set raver saga "Sirat," French electronic musician David Letellier (professionally known as Kangding Ray) spent a year and a half in dialogue with the director before filming started in Spain. An experienced techno artist who has played global raves, "Sirat" is only his second film score. "The rave stuff is what I do every weekend," he acknowledged. However, for the film's spiritual second act, he radically transformed his sonic palette: "I used the same (musical) elements and basically disintegrated them as the film dissolves into something at times brutal, at times emotional and at times hopeful. What is left is ambient and ethereal." This deliberate deconstruction highlights how early, deep collaboration enables composers to move beyond mere accompaniment and instead craft scores that undergo their own narrative evolution alongside the picture.