Inside the Liverpool Literary Festival: The stories of movie music- Mark Kermode and Jenny Nelson

After a jam-packed Saturday, the Liverpool Literary Festival welcomed a true legend of the world of Cinema. Mark Kermode is the go-to authority on film for the majority of the country. He came to speak about his latest book, ‘Surround Sound’. Accompanied by the book’s co-author Jenny Nelson, the pair were interviewed by Professor Matthew Fairclough to discuss all things film music.

I’ve been a fan of Mark Kermode for many years. His podcast with Simon Mayo (in both forms) has been a long car journey staple for my family, but I’ve never read any of his books. I was excited to hear Mark discussing his writing for this reason. It was also a pleasure to be introduced to Jenny Nelson. Nelson is a radio and podcast producer with a passion for film music.

The talk started by explaining the book’s long journey to publication. Kermode had struggled writing about film scores and movie music for many years. He mentioned this to Nelson who offered to help out in any way she could. The result of this was the writing partnership which produced ‘Surround Sound’. It was very interesting to hear how a vague brief like ‘a book about film music’ can evolve slowly before coming to print.

The discussion of the book’s content was equally fascinating. I was impressed by Neslon’s fierce advocacy for female composers. While I’m sure many of us are used to how male (and white) dominated the Oscars continue to be in the major categories like directing, I hadn’t appreciated how epistemic the challenges facing female composers are. Many female composers have reported being told that they cannot score action or superhero films, because they won’t be able to make music which is ‘muscular enough’. I am glad that the pair can use their book to bring light to an issue which still flies under the radar, even among film fans.

The different processes used by composers was also something I hadn’t considered. Prior to the talk, almost all of my knowledge about how to make a film score came from ‘The Holiday’ (which does contain my personal favourite score of all time). The image of Jack Black playing along to film footage was what I took to be the ‘correct’ way to score a film. In reality, many composers start writing music without footage. It can be especially tricky to tailor music to specific scenes as so much postproduction editing is left to the wire. For the big studios like Marvel, films can be recut and reshot multiple times, but for composers it’s much harder to adapt.

The whole talk went by extremely quickly, and I could hardly believe the hour was up when time was called. I thoroughly enjoyed a deep dive into the world of film music. Hearing about the process of creating a film score was fascinating, and I now have an even deeper appreciation for them as an artform. I would recommend the book in a heartbeat. If Mark Kermode or Jenny Nelson are ever speaking near you in the future, make sure you check them out!

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