SOUND DESIGN

I knew from the beginning that music would be very important in this film - my main character Anya is a violinist - but the music choice came to define the script, even helping to name it.

I wanted to keep the SFX to a minimum in this film, but I knew that throughout, Anya had to be playing a song on her violin, and that this would be the same music that played on the radio at the end of the film. I spent a long time listening to classical violin music, and there was one song that jumped out at me. 'The Lark Ascending' by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

'The Lark Ascending' was written in 1914, in response to George Meredith's 1881 poem of the same name. Much of Williams' work is in response to his experience in the war. He worked as an ambulance driver in France, but what really comes alive in both this piece and many of his others is a love of the English pastoral. Williams was a collector of folk music, and it is partly through this that he becomes intrinsically connected to the English countryside. 'The Lark Ascending' echoes the soaring freedom of the skylark, it is wild and beautiful, and that is what I wanted echoed in my film. Jennifer Pike wrote about the piece, saying that, 'everything has unconsciously bled into his work - the sense of stillness, a yearning for peace.' The characters in my film are people who, just like Williams are 'yearning for peace.

But 'The Lark Ascending' soon started to mean more to me than just the gorgeous violin. Skylarks are a fascinating bird. They are not particularly notable as birds, in fact they look quite plain, but their song is stunning. In fact they have been the subject of poetry beyond Meredith. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the poem 'To a Skylark'.

'Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.'

In this poem, the skylark is suggested to be misunderstood by humans for we will never understand its true beauty. At one point in the poem, the speaker can no longer see the bird, but they are still entranced by its song. This is an idea that is certainly seen in my film, you can get rid of the artist, but you'll never get rid of their song. 

Today, skylarks are classified as under threat, but they can still be heard throughout the British Isles. Other than the violin playing, I wanted the SFX in my film to remain minimal. However, I fell in love with the skylark, and what I thought they represented, and so I made the decision that birdsong would be heard throughout my film. They are in the English countryside after all. But particularly, I wanted the song of the skylark to be heard throughout.