Before releasing the newest film you can enjoy the score from “Warsaw Hunter” as well as from all my previous films! Now after ten years of my soundtracks’ presence on Amazon store the platform changed the rules. No longer you can listen to those soundtracks there. Also using Soundcloud’s free account was not enough for all the great tracks, which accentuated my films. This is why I uploaded them all to YouTube now. The only exceptions are "Disconnected (since here the whole film is its soundtrack) and "Latino Cracow" and "Apart" to which the music was licensed - my another effort to explore more variety.
Music is an important part of every modern motion picture. Hundred years ago, in the era of silent cinema, orchestral scores were not an integral part of the films. But once dialogue (and sound effects) found its place on the film prints, the music followed. Thanks to masters of suspense such as Bernard Hermann, Ennio Morricone or John Carpenter, one can't imagine a great movie scene without a great score.
From the very first film I paid a lot attention to how the recorded scenes will play together with the soundtrack. Even though it is not recommended to rely on temp tracks (one can get too attached to it once it comes to replacing them), they were often helping me to shape the scenes. After all, one of the rules of editing says: "Kill your darlings"! But still, the shots need to make sense when played without sound at all, otherwise you rely on music to distract viewers. Probably the best scenes from any move you remember had some iconic music in the background. But do they still play well without the sound? Go on and check yourself!
I had the pleasure of working with great musicians who were equally eager to work with me. For the first three films I chose to work with Bohdan Palowski, who approached me after the first press news about "c@ught in the net", which at that time was still in production. The temp tracks I used for editing were consisting of some electronic songs of French band called Air (for costly reasons I was not able to get a license for using them). Bohdan offered instead more subtle sounds of real instruments (cello, piano) with additional electronic tracks. The compositions were not written for any particular scene, but rather following the general mood of the story. After all they were based on the screenplay, since I was still editing down the 10 hours of footage to 50 minutes... Still thanks to this choice of tracks Bohdan provided I could experiment with their lengths and adjusting to cuts accordingly.
Later Bohdan composed a couple of tracks after being inspired by the screenplay and some early clips from “Deadly Recording". There are some strong riffs in the score, as well as experimental sound effects. All played well with it's crazy plot. The dynamic trailer which I edited to one particular track (before even cutting a single scene) served as an inspiration for the overall mood for the whole film. However this time I was playing around with multiple options. To be honest, my temp tracks here were bits from John Powell's score for "The Bourne Trilogy". Moreover I requested soundtracks from two other musicians in order to choose the best one. Unfortunately Marcin "Ricky" Wójtowicz was not able to provide it on time, beside some guitar sketches he had in mind. We talked about scoring for the next film, but at that time he was too much into acting. On the other hand, Jairo Nieva scored all the scenes relatively quickly. His style however was more ironic then the story, and maybe more suitable for a computer game. Nevertheless it was still quite interesting so I included it on the official album (I even released a fan-edit of the film with his score only). Ultimately Bohdan had the best intuition when it comes to the story about independent director framed in a murder, so we ended up with his music.
It was no surprise that the next film I worked on was also scored by Bohdan. For "Blind Fate" Bohdan chose more delicate melodies, as the film had some mystical touches related to Indian mythology... well, it all started from a free interpretation of Bible mixed with gangster genre. What became a topping on this dish was the original song written specifically for this film only! Originally the vocals on "Walcz" were performed by the composer, but later he replaced it with the voice of Julia Trębacz. Song became more energetic, and somehow elegant, though it lacked the rough rage which the original one had (this is why I included both in the remastered, shortened version of the film called "The Wealth"). Later Bohdan also composed a church-like score for a short film "To Give", which was edited by Andrzej Polatyński in his debut. I couldn't really relate to the screenplay, but produced it for the sake of trying a distanced approach to material. In the same year we also filmed three music videos for the artists supported by Bohdan, including "Walcz" with Julia Trębacz, so it was quite a productive collaboration between me, Jakub and Bohdan.
The same year however I was approached by amazing artist from Rzeszów, whose scores expressed what my movies were really about. I was editing "The Carcass" with temp tracks from "The Night of The Living Dead" when Bogusław Salnikow sent me an e-mail with his demo. His original style amazed me. I never heard anything like this in music before. The "Industrial Demo" is probably the most representative of his early period. Later he surprised me with the variety of genres he could score (trance-like music for "Disconnected" or country feeling for "In the shadow of Chuck Norris"). I remember plenty of people leaving the screenings of "The Carcass" at the National Film Festival in Gdynia with the mindf*ck look on their faces. The sounds were literally drilling into your brain! I can't even imagine how weak the film would be, if not illustrated by this powerful music.
Boguslaw introduced me also to his band Rockaway playing the big beat rock. For me it was an opportunity to invite them for collaboration. They were fresh with the award from the Jarocin Festival and their newest album had this great retro feeling of the best rock bands. At that time I was experimenting with editing, to tell different story using the same material. I cut down "c@ught in the net" into a 10 minutes long film titled appropriately "In the net". The short film included recent songs by Rockaway and a new original score by Bogusław. In 2017 I toyed with the original film again to change it's storyline. Then I licensed some bossa nova tracks from UMI/Paris Music, but still the nightclub scene in the background had two subtle songs by the Rzeszow-based musicians as an homage. The musicians also payed homage to some of my films by incorporating dialogues to some recordings like "Brudny Harry" or “Pościg” and having inspiration for the whole album from independent films.
In 2010 I also produced "Antek", for which Jakub wrote a song and hired jazz artists based in Krakow. They composed and recorded live music before we even filmed a single scene. Thus we could play the CD with the music at the film set. I had limited myself to selecting particular bits of their records for editing the film, which was not directed by me. No further changes were made and it was a nice refreshment to have live instruments after using electronics for so long. A year later I was organizing a quick 2 week production of a short thriller “The Soul Collector”. While searching for the sound engineer I met Jakub Zając, who was also very much involved in trip-hop music. He convinced me to score the film himself, but he didn't work on sound editing. That came later from Radosław Ochnio and Patrycja Krysik. Their sound design was incorporated together with the music to create a rather disarming atmosphere. And just to give the story some cultural background we incorporated the opera piece “Adriana Lecouvreur”, which I found in and licensed from Milano’s library. Two weeks after the production wrapped I had already the first rough cut of the film to present to my co-producers. Since I was still waiting for the original score to be delivered, as for the temp tracks I used atmospheric score from “Scarface” which I found on some bootleg album. Giorgio Moroder is a great pop/disco composer, but underrated for those less popular tracks.
For the next couple of films I was working even closer with Bogusław Salnikow. The documentary "In the shadow of Chuck Norris" was edited during the whole production period of 3.5 years, so not only the length but also the content was changing constantly. I believe I presented around 10 different versions to various people before finalizing the cut in March 2013. During production Rockaway was recording a new album "Nie ma Em Ti Wi" and parts of their newests songs were included in the score. I am sure that rock and country mixed with classical music helped to distinguish the characters in this documentary even more. The finalized Rockaway album was released nearly at the same time as the film, with some songs reprised at my OST album.
"Disconnected" had no dialogues and the challenge here was to involve the audience into this experimental form mostly by rich content within the frame. I tried to downplay the tone using as the temp tracks from John Powell’s"Anonymous" rejected score. Once the scenes were edited together I asked Boguslaw to replace the temp tracks and he composed some of the most chilling tunes. One of them in particular, 'Clubs in Netherlands' had its own history, however. Couple of years earlier I was preparing a production of erotic thriller called "Temptation". Boguslaw recorded a couple of tracks just after reading the script. I asked him especially about some cue track for the club scene in style of Armin van Buuren trance music, which he disliked a lot. It was a struggle for him, but the result was worth the effort, so I definitely wanted to use it in "Disconnected". "Temptation" didn't move beyond the pre-production phase and sadly was cancelled a couple of days before shooting.
Still years later when I worked on "Disconnected 2020" and "Warsaw Hunter" I didn't need to record new music. There were already plenty of great tracks from the unfinished soundtrack to "Temptation". "Disconnected 2020" was just a short sequel/remake, again with no dialogues, so here the deal was simple - to indicate familiarity from the original film without repeating the same themes. For "Warsaw Hunter'' the deal was slightly different. The film is a collage of other works with no original material. Instead I used plenty of outtakes or re-edited particular scenes. I also added two other unused tracks which Boguslaw recorded earlier for "Pękal" and "The Soul Collector". Thus the whole soundtrack for "Warsaw Hunter '' is brand new, although recorded mainly between 2011 and 2012. In a way, now you can experience how my six other films would sound if they were all scored by the same composer :-)
Lastly, "Warsaw Hunter" is an opportunity to re-examine particular scenes from previous scenes in different contexts. The dynamics are underlined by a specific score which elevates the work into something completely new, while still having the core of the old moduls. How much is it different? You can compare on your own. Out of six films which are the basis for “Warsaw Hunter” you can listen to their original music now on YouTube. Moreover, you can also see additional playlists with the music videos and live recordings in which I participated - just click here. Let it roll!
