“ALMODÓVAR’S COLORS — AS BROUGHT TO LIFE HERE
BY HIS PRODUCTION DESIGNER ANTXÓN GÓMEZ,
AND AS CAPTURED BY CINEMATOGRAPHER JOSE LUIS ALCAINE —
AREN’T JUST A STIMULANT BUT AN ENERGY SOURCE.
EVERYTHING ABOUT ‘PAIN AND GLORY’
IS AWAKE AND ALIVE.”
Stephanie Zacharek, TIME“ALBERTO IGLESIAS’ BEST SCORE.”
Peter DeBruge, VARIETYBEST
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Antxón Gómez
BEST
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jose Luis Alcaine
BEST
COSTUME DESIGN
Paola Torres
BEST
ORIGINAL SCORE
Alberto Iglesias
S13
THE ENVELOPE LOS ANGELES TIMES THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019lover John Reid, told Martin at their first
meeting “he wasn’t singing on camera — pe-
riod.” But after coaxing the actor into the
studio, Martin recorded what he says was a
“simply great performance” of “Honky Cat”
on the first take.
Others simply surprised him. Jamie Bell,
as Bernie Taupin, had an “amazing and an-
gry” rendition of “Goodbye Yellow Brick
Road” that flipped the narrative of that
iconic song and was another showstopper,
Martin says. “I had no idea he could sing so
well.”
But it was Egerton’s performance on-
screen that became a guiding force in the fi-
nal mix. “In a strange way, it is so pro-
foundly good and authoritative that it really
led us through the entire process,” says
Prestwood Smith. “Often we’d come to a
scene and think, what are we going to do
with this, and often, his narrative would just
help you understand how the scene should
play sonically.”
Given the film’s song-heavy story line
and visually vibrant palette, all agreed “the
score should be simply connective tissue, to
be as minimal as it could and just connect
the dots,” says Margeson, who was first
tasked with creating melodic themes for
various scenes and character groups. When
they put them up against the picture and de-
cided unanimously they didn’t work, “We
asked ourselves, why are we trying to intro-
duce new thematic material to an Elton John
story?” he says. “There are so many greatmelodies that he’s already written. Why not
see if we can weave them into the score?”
The film’s modest $40 million budget in-
cluded the more expensive Dolby Atmos
surround mix, which Martin used to remix
the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band” and is inching toward wider ac-ceptance now that Netflix and Amazon Stu-
dios require all of their original shows to be
mixed in the atmospheric technology.
Rather than simply using Atmos to send
“a helicopter flying overhead, what’s more
interesting about it is you can put people
and an orchestra into the studio to give you
that element of reality. It just gives you
much more space to put things sonically,”
Margeson says. “A good example in ‘Rocket-
man’ is the scene when he falls into the
swimming pool. We can literally move the
music up as he sinks to the bottom.”
Subtle as those shifting soundscapes may
be, Martin believes they should challenge
and engage as much as they sell the story
onscreen.
“We live in a world where everybody
hears but not a lot of people listen,” Martin
says. “People watch so much, but do they see
anything? You need to grab their attention,
and you do that by startling them a little bit
and trying things. I think that’s exactly what
my dad did with the Beatles in those days.
The same with ‘Rocketman’: These are some
amazing songs. Figuring out how to change
them, and having a real reason why you do
it, is the ultimate goal.”TARONEgerton, center, performed Elton John’s songs in “Rocketman” in a
“profoundly good and authoritative” way, says the film’s recording mixer.Gavin BondParamount Pictures