The Soloist

The Soloist was recently released in the US (after having it's release date put back 5 months) so I can finally talk about the work I did on the Synaesthesia Sequence last summer.

Directed by Joe Wright, the BAFTA winning director of Atonement, the film is about the relationship between LA journalist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jnr) and a mentally disturbed but musically gifted vagrant Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) who he finds living on skid row.

When Steve takes Nathaniel to see a rehearsal by the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall we travel inside Nathaniel's head and see Beethoven's music transformed into ever changing patterns of light & colour, suggesting the character has the condition known as Synaesthesia - seeing music as colour.

Joe wanted it to be as bold & colourful as possible and for the shapes and edits to be a perfect match for the music. Double Negative's VFX Supervisor John Moffat shot a variety of coloured lights, crystals and glass in a dark tent to use for the piece. The original intention was to create a rough assembly from these elements that would then be supplemented by additional CG sprites but as the raw elements worked so well on their own it became clear that it should be left as a pure edited piece with no added VFX.

The film has had mixed reviews in the US (it's not released in the UK until September). Here are a couple of quotes from film blogs that mention the Synaesthesia Sequence:

If Nathaniel's love for classical musical goes unexplained it is just as well, since all of our own respective loves are not so easily summarized. Director Wright almost achieves a wordless answer in a minute-plus set-piece where Nathaniel closes his eyes and listens to Beethoven as a fantasia of colors overtake the darkened screen. It is a bold cinematic choice, and one that pays off. (themovieboy.com)

The Soloist is as much about the power of music to transform as it is about friendship. Wright films Ayers’ street solos as symphonies for an entire city, his music the soundtrack to the director’s sweeping L.A. vistas. In the movie’s most beautiful moment, as Ayers and Lopez watch the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the film illuminates the phantasmagoric collage of colors playing in Ayers’ head – a jolt of pure cinema that provides a subjective peek into the disturbed prodigy’s mind. (orlandoweekly.com)