Fellini’s 8 ½ uses sound and music as a way to tell the story, the Saraghina sequence would fail to represent the sensual pleasures of youth without the vibrant music that accompanies Saraghina’s dancing, the music provides information for the audience to decipher. The music is setting the tone for what the narrative is showing, surreal cinema relies on emotional storytelling, rather than using emotions to show events it uses events to show emotions.
The soundtrack to “The Gurgle” was made to reflect the emotions of the character in the film as well as the emotions of me. “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music”, The film and it’s soundtrack were not made with logical narrative and the audience’s reaction in mind but with feelings being the number one priority. A few sections from the film’s soundtrack were made by other people, I maintained feelings being at the forefront in two ways; descriptions and choosing from a library of sound. I sent Milligan Elliot the description that follows:
“A pensive synth pad, it should sound like the ghost of a man seeing his wife and his dog”
Milligan sent a few different results and I chose one to loop over the beginning of the film alongside some glasses resonating, this set the tone for the whole film.
I asked Cameron Cooper, a close friend and musician, for some guitar recordings. He has been unwell for an extended period of time so he was unable to play the guitar. He allowed me access to a library of recorded music he had, I went through and selected the one that I thought fit the ending the best, it added a dark peacefulness to it.
Neither of the people I collaborated with sonically saw the footage the music would be played over, this was intentional as I didn’t want them to make something to perfectly match what was on screen, I just wanted a recording made by artists focused on the sound.
Aldous Huxley, Music at night and other essays