Writer/Director Robert
Saitzyk's flick, "White of Winter" stars
Zoe Poledouris, who also composed the score. Poledouris'
rich, echoing soundtrack evokes the pain her character
Rachel steeps in; Rachel was raped by her boyfriend
Tommy (Bret Roberts) about twelve years before
the film's start.
Poledouris does a fine job of inhabiting Rachel's
fragile, broken psyche, her inability to deal with
a world that treated her so cruelly. Poledouris'
use of the lonely oboe texture is a perfect choice for Rachel's tonal
coloration,
especially since, as Poledouris says, "Rachel doesn't speak for
first 45 minutes of the film."
It is a great benefit to have the composer and the lead actress be one
and the same. While shooting a take, Poledouris improvised a little song
to accompany a music box Rachel sees on a mantle. That nugget became
a main theme for Rachel's lost childhood. "And that theme," adds
Poledouris, "came as I was conjuring up some of the imagery I had
been working on to play Rachel."
In post, Zoe's early commitment to the film also played an important
role; the removal of the dreaded temp track from the editing process.
She fed
the editor sketches of themes whenever she could, heeding the advice
of many composers from the Sundance Composer's Lab she attended in 2000: "get
on a film as soon as you can, so you can control the temp score, whether
it's yours or not."
Peter Byck is a freelance filmmaker and journalist,
writing for
The Louisville Courier-Journal, indiewire.com and
bmi.com. |
