Yi Ling Huang was at a preview screening of Damien Chazelle’s newest, Oscar-tipped, film where she heard what the writer and director had to say about production.
A filmmaker whose work seamlessly weaves together film, writing and music, Damien Chazelle first appeared on the public’s radar with 2014’s award-winning Whiplash. An aspiring jazz drummer in high school, Chazelle made the switch the film, studying the craft at Harvard University’s Department of Visual and Environmental Studies.
Chazelle’s follow-up directorial project, La La Land (which he also wrote) is not out in cinemas yet, but has already attracted substantial Oscar buzz. Starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, the film is a modern-day musical.
Although La La Land hearkens back to the romantic tradition of Golden Age musicals, it also presents very modern challenges. “It was about people you could relate to today,” said Chazelle when premiering the film in the UK at the 2016 London Film Festival. “People going through - in many ways - stuff that I went through in LA, just being kind of artists, hustlers, trying to bang on doors, trying to make stuff. It’s as simple as that. That, I hoped, would be universal, even beyond the contours of Los Angeles, or the arts, even. It was about marrying the older things that I loved with the fresh new experiences that I was living at the moment.”
Chazelle’s love of music is evident in his filmmaking process. Rather than an elaborate add-on, music is embedded into the very core of the film. “Justin [Hurwitz, composer on La La Land] was part of the process at the very onset,” confirmed Chazelle. As soon as I was writing the script, he was writing melodies to go with it. The songs, the score…were written, composed and orchestrated in tandem with the script.”
And Chazelle’s tip for audiences at the London Film Festival for making films? “Write what you know and write what you love - that’s my approach so far.”
La La Land will be released in US cinemas on December 17th and in UK cinemas on January 13th 2017.
Read our review of La La Land here.
