![]() ![]() He also credits Stone with her level of commitment to the acting, singing and dance training. “It was one of the surprises of the film to see how much he could accomplish.” “The work Ryan did learning to play piano is absurdly great. Gosling’s piano-playing was also authentic, with the actor spending six days a week in lessons. Stone and Gosling sweated it out with Moore for eight weeks in choreography training, and both worked intensively with a vocalist, ultimately singing City Of Stars and Audition live on set to keep them in the moment. “We did our best to create these songs, but to see them enhanced in such a creative way, and then the brilliant interpretation Emma and Ryan brought to the songs, is beyond our wildest imagination,” says Pasek. When Gosling and Stone came to film their numbers, Pasek and Paul held their collective breath, unsure how the actors would bring their lyrics to life. “To also think about a musical number’s physicality is another thing altogether.” “A film composer typically only has to think about the music,” says Hurwitz. In a departure from the rest of the film’s music, it was created in an informal environment where Legend, his writing partner Angelique Cinelu, De Vries and Hurwitz sat in a room with a piano, tried a few things, and within a few hours the song was recorded.īy the time filming was underway, most of Hurwitz, Pasek and Paul’s work was complete.īut minor adjustments were made, such as working with choreographer Mandy Moore (whose credits include Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) to extend certain melodies, or tweaking the tempo as dance moves were either slower or faster when dictated by performing on a hill in the song A Lovely Night. John Legend, who stars in La La Land as pop star Keith, contributed to the music and lyrics for up-tempo song Start A Fire. “I was impressed how they had only several syllables to work with, but could write so much story,” he says. ![]() Hurwitz was concerned the duo would find this process constraining, but picks out their work as one of his biggest pleasures of the process. In theatre, we are used to working from a blank canvas.” “Also different for us was working solely on the lyrics rather than the music. “But unlike theatre, you can’t get audience feedback and amend the lyrics after each performance,” says Paul. That’s our background from the world of theatre,” Pasek explains. ![]() “We always try to serve what the characters are going through emotionally. The songwriting process took approximately a year. The pair undertook a huge number of rewrites, requiring frequent trips back and forth to Los Angeles, with final sign-off often happening after “hashing it out” musically in a room with executive music producer Marius De Vries and Hurwitz. “Luckily for us, it was a conversation Justin and Damien wanted us to continue.” “We tried to capture the emotions Damien talked about when describing what he wanted the movie to look and feel like,” says Pasek. The song is one of two from the La La Land soundtrack, along with Audition (The Fools Who Dream), nominated for an Oscar. The Tony and Emmy-nominated songwriting team first penned the melancholy track City Of Stars, sung by Ryan Gosling’s character Sebastian as he ponders his first date with Emma Stone’s Mia. Thanks to a timely connection in which New York-based songwriters Pasek and Paul (Benj Pasek and Justin Paul) were convinced by their manager to “just happen to be in LA”, a dinner was arranged with Chazelle and Hurwitz where they hit it off via their mutual love of musicals. By 2014, the melodies were near finished after an intensive period during which Hurwitz would send hundreds of piano tracks to Chazelle, who whittled them down to 20 with a long list of notes, allowing the duo to next hire lyricists. ![]()
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