GOOD DOG HAPPY MAN

Amsterdam 18 maart 2009

3rd edition of the Unheard Film Festival!

Dear Unheard Film reader,

Unheard Words by Marijke Peters

And that, as they say in cartoons, is all folks! The third Unheard Film Festival reached its conclusion on Sunday night with a bang (in fact several bangs) and another great new soundtrack to accompany a not so great film. Good Dog Happy Man chose to write new music for Cloverfield after reaching a unanimous agreement that it was the “best s**t movie of 2008.”

But despite the cheesy acting and a fairly suspect main character – more on that later – it was the perfect candidate for a total musical overhaul. Despite a few party tunes played, funnily enough, at a leaving do for one of the requisite heartthrobs the film has very little music of its own, which makes it even easier to improve on. Not that Good Dog Happy Man didn’t find the task a challenge – the band spent weeks coming up with the new score, watching Cloverfield “at least 50 times.” All that at the same time as bringing out their first album.

Frontman Sander Klijn said one of the best things about using this particular blockbuster was the lack of thought needed to understand the story. No complicated sub-plots here. Just a bunch of improbably good looking 20-somethings and a massive monster-like creature that goes on the rampage in New York, smashing up buildings and biting people. If you’ve seen Godzilla then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Having described the monster as “about as scary as a rubber duck” Klijn admitted it was what made it so much fun to create sound effects for. Aliens wreaking havoc just cry out for loud, sometimes funky, guitar and drum-thumping tunes. There was, he said, no reason to take it too seriously: “I would have loved to have written something new for a Lars von Trier movie, but that’s just not the kind of music we make,” describing his style as the Police meets Curtis Mayfield, so pretty eclectic.

So it was an amusing end to another excellent festival – and appropriately made the point that a film is just as much about the sound as the images. Whether the wobbly hand-held camera shots would have had as much of the fear-factor without music as they did in, say, the Blair Witch Project, I can’t be sure without seeing the film again. But something tells me probably not.

Much like the film geeks who won Saturday night’s soundtrack quiz there’ll be a lot of people waiting around impatiently for the next edition of Unheard. Until then there’s plenty of time to clear your ears out and start listening up when you sit back to enjoy a film.

THE END

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