Designing Sound & Score with Nia DaCosta, Laura Karpman, and Katy Wood on THE MARVELS 

What I love most about movies, especially Marvel and Disney movies is that they treat music as a character in their films. I saw on LinkedIn about a opportunity to attend a Zoom with Marvels director/Sundance alum Nia DaCosta (Candyman), Academy Award-nominated Composer Laura Karpman (American Fiction), and Supervising Sound Editor Katy Wood (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) as they discussed creating the soundscape of “The Marvels”. This talk was put on by the Sundance Collab and the Dolby Institute. Please note if you have not seen the movie “The Marvels” there will be spoilers below. You have been warned!

“The Marvels” movie came out in November 2023 and starred Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel, and Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau. This movie not only had a prominent female cast but differed from other movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a unique blend of thriller, comedy, and action.

Director Nina DaCosta: Crafting Tension with a Comic Book Heart

The director Nina DaCosta is a lifelong comic book fan whose fandom includes Blade, saw Marvel as the perfect fit for her varied directorial talents. She has been mostly known previously as a thriller and horror director. During the talk something she emphasized was the importance sound and music play in setting the tone especially in the opening scene. She aimed to evoke specific emotions from the audience right from the start with Kamala Khan’s character intro featuring her bangle’s unique sound which popped from the screen. The other sound effects were intentionally vocal and impactful as Kamala sketched and narrated frames from a fictional team-up between herself as Ms. Marvel and her hero Captain Marvel when she should be studying for high school. I loved how the artwork flew off the screen to become animation and the soundscape really brought it to life. During the talk we also learned that the X-Men theme was meant to be included in this scene but had to be cut due to the upcoming unannounced launch of the X-Men 97 show that was due to hit Disney+ this year. I loved hearing about this “Easter Egg!”

Composer Laura Karpman: Orchestrating a Space Opera

Laura Karpman spoke about how she considered the film a “Space Opera.” She had previous experience creating the score to Disney+’s show Ms. Marvel. Ms Marvel’s score was a beautiful blend of South Asian pop and electronic sounds to reflect Kamala’s teenage character who is Muslim Pakistani American from Jersey City, New Jersey. I have heard previous interviews from Karpman who describes that Khan straddles two worlds and the it was important for the music to reflect her unique and varied background. During the talk Karpman also elaborated on a collaboration with Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie that allowed them to experiment with spacey percussion and non-traditional instrumentals. Glennie has been profoundly deaf since childhood and usually plays percussion barefoot so she can better feel the vibration of her instruments. Karpman also collaborated with choirs that have low human voices and counter tenors which added a otherworldly feel to the score. Data-driven music creation was also used with the help of a data scientist who would plot potential sounds which were then transcribed into MIDI. Karpman carefully crafted the music to support varying tones from scary to funny, ensuring a unifying motif ran throughout. Her ability to decide when to warm up or cool down a scene with music is reminiscent of classics like “North by Northwest,” which she said was a major influence to her.

Katy Wood: Seamless Integration of Sound and Music

Katy Wood who was the sound designer on the film found “The Marvels” script to be refreshingly humorous which set a different tone to a Marvel film from the jump. She also described the challenge of a complex sequence where Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Monica Rambeau switch places mid-fight, jumping between locations like space, Fury’s spaceship, and Kamala’s house (complete with her whole family present). The blend of the score, source music, sound design, and dialogue ensures viewers are never lost despite the rapid transitions. She also worked hard to sync music and sound effects to the action’s downbeat which once I watched the scene again it made total sense. Another complicated scene was the Musical number on Aladna. Karpman decided that any kind of music could fit in the diverse setting of Aladna. She created a loop group of background actors’ voices, all in the same key, matched by Wood to the actors’ performances. As a side note in the comments during the talk viewers called out that they would like a full length Marvel movie musical and I concur!

I loved being a fly on the wall during this talk and learned so many things about music scores and sound design. Many thanks to Sundance Collab and Dolby Institute for having me! If you haven’t seen “The Marvels,” it is available NOW on Disney+!