Clinton Shorter
Clinton Shorter has been composing film scores for 12 years, beginning with Come Together in 2001. He scored the sci-fi thriller District 9, which has won several film critics awards and was nominated for a Golden Globe. TheCelebrityCafe.com's Cristen Kleindienst spoke with Clinton about coming up with the music for a movie as unique as District 9.
Cristen Kleindienst: How did you get involved with scoring District 9?
Clinton Shorter: I’ve known Neill [Blomkamp, the director of District 9] for about eight years; I got introduced to him by a friend. I scored a short film for him, and scored a few commercials for him. He asked me if I could score District 9 for him. That was in 2008, so almost two years ago.
CK: What were your inspirations for the score?
CS: My inspirations were basically what the film required. We decided to go with as many authentic African instruments as we could, but some weren’t big and edgy enough. We did use African voices. We also used a lot of Western instruments, so we cheated a little to get the sound we wanted. Neill absolutely loved it.
CK: What kinds of emotions or feelings were you trying to portray through the score?
CS: It’s not your typical film score. It starts out in a documentary style. Neill didn’t want the first part scored traditionally. It was defiantly trickier than anything I’ve done before. There’s a part when Wikus (Sharlto Copley) hits another character over the head. That’s defiantly a turning point, and a tricky part. We didn’t want the audience to not care about Wikus. We wanted them to think that when he’s stealing the ship later on, he’s still being heroic.
CK: Was it easy to write music to go along with the images in District 9?
CS: It was, for sure. The biggest trouble for instrumentation is the first part.
CK: What awards has the movie won so far?
CS: It was nominated for the American Cinematic Editors award, Writers’ Guild award, Producers’ Guild; there’s been a lot of buzz around it. All we can do is wait for February 2, and hope for the best!