Soundtrack from 2023 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning film SCRAPPER.

"Living alone in her London flat, 12-year-old Georgie must confront reality when her estranged father, Jason, shows up out of nowhere. Uninterested in a sudden new parental figure, she remains stubbornly resistant to his efforts. As they both adjust to their new circumstances, Georgie and Jason soon find that they still have a lot of growing up to do."

Working with director Charlotte Regan is such a blessing because she is extremely open and honest, knows what she wants, but also leaves so much room for exploration and play in all departments, from the actors to cinematography all the way to music. I’ve been working with Charlotte for years on short films and was so excited to do Scrapper together. Our earliest conversations were about how the film’s score should be approached from Georgie’s perspective - a 12 year old, wise beyond her years, who’s dealing with the grief of having lost her mum.

I remember in early conversations with Charlotte and Theo (producer) that I mentioned the idea of wanting to use lots of metallic textures in the score. Throughout the film, Georgie constructs a giant tower of scrap metal which is a sort of allegory for how she’s processing her grief. And so it felt really fitting and important to me for the music to have this idea woven into its texture. I invited a fantastic percussionist named Paul Clarvis into the studio for a half day with me and I sent him a photo of the tower in advance. He brought loads of weird metallic percussion instruments with him and we spent a bunch of hours just throwing chains around the studio and making a general racket. It was great fun but also became such an integral part of the score.

The other thing I really wanted to capture was the whirlwind of emotions Georgie goes through throughout the film. She’s this very capable 12 year old who can look after herself, but the loss of her mum is just too huge a thing to really grasp. I wanted to try and capture the sound of this - the flutter of emotions and slight cacophonous cloud of thoughts which might be flying around in her head. We recorded brass and woodwind instruments, re-amped through guitar amps to get a slightly rawer and less pristine sound, to create a sort of flurry of sound, and to evoke this big whirlwind of swirling emotions. You can hear this most in the Tower Room tracks as well as in Painting Clouds.

I hope people get a chance to see the film. I love it so much and was a total pleasure to be involved in.

Photos by: Molly Manning Walker