BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE FOR LEVEL AND GAIN
Unorthodox is one of the boldest character tales in recent Netflix history. Inspired by Deborah Feldman’s 2012 autobiography, and filmed mostly in Yiddish, this miniseries follows the life of Esty — a young woman raised in an orthodox Jewish community who flees her arranged marriage. Leaving her family and Brooklyn home behind her, Esty travels to Berlin to explore her identity and passion for music.
Music is certainly at the heart of Unorthodox, underpinning the relationships and dreams of Esty (played by Shira Haas). And Australian-Italian screen composer Antonio Gambale was tasked with helping to share this story through music of his own.
In this long read, we chat with Antonio about how he paved the way for a gripping and deeply emotional character story in the miniseries Unorthodox.
At the time of writing, Unorthodox has earned Antonio two Emmy nominations: Outstanding Main Title Theme Music, and Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited Series.
Antonio, it’s such a privilege to be able to chat with you about Unorthodox — a moving miniseries that’s been released on Netflix in 2020. How did you first get involved in this project?
Thanks, it’s a pleasure to chat with you too. I actually first heard about the show through a friend who lives in Berlin. A couple of summers ago, I was with her on a summer holiday and she was waiting to hear back if she was going to start working with Anna Winger, who is the co-creator and showrunner of Unorthodox. Before the holiday was over, she got the call, so she went back to Berlin to start working with Anna and her team.
About six months later, she called me about a new show they had for Netflix in pre-production and thought that my style and profile as a composer was really well suited. So she asked if I wouldn’t mind being included in the pitch for the show.
I was sent a briefing package with some scene excerpts from the script and an overview document for the kinds of things they wanted — and did not want — for the score. All the composers were asked to take a swing at any or all of the scenes, just to demo the kind of music we might write for such a scene. They also were interested in hearing some ideas for character themes and what the opening titles music could be. Funny story: the theme I made in demo form for the opening titles ended up being almost exactly the same as what we used in the show, with just a little extra rework once the titles sequence was finalised.
A short while after, I got a call from our director who told me she’d been listening to the music on loop while reading the scripts and couldn’t imagine the show anymore without this music. That’s pretty much how I found out I got the job.
An underlying theme in this series is the power of music: it’s the force that drives the main character through her journey and self-discovery. With music also being your own raison d’être, how closely connected did you feel with this project?
Interesting question — I’m not really sure I ever thought about it this way before. It’s absolutely clear that music is a cathartic and liberating element in this story; it’s written right into it at the script level. I’m just not sure if I made a personal connection with the story on that level, at least not immediately. I think I was more aware of connecting with the characters for who they were and what they were going through than with the idea that music was a liberating force in the story.
Esty is such a compelling character, and her journey to make a life for herself on her own terms with so much resistance is something that really resonated with many people, myself definitely included. Music has always been such a given in my life that it never has really been a means of escape for me in any real sense, not in the way it is for Esty. But now that I think about it, even if I wasn’t consciously aware of it, I think this aspect of her story did connect with me too, and certainly influenced the way I worked on the score.
Talk us through the styles of music you incorporated. How much research did you undertake prior to creating the score? For instance, did you listen to traditional Jewish music to inform your composition, or was it more a result of your own experiences in screen music — composing each scene to respond to the plot and characters, and cues?
One of the main directives from very early on was that the creators didn’t want a score that was trying to sound Jewish at all. From the outset, the intention was always to fill the Jewish part of the show with a lot of very carefully selected authentic source music. The show creators and music supervisor worked closely with a cultural consultant — he is actually also an actor in the show — who is from the Satmar Orthodox community himself. There was never any question that the musical universe of the show was going to be peppered with plenty of authentic source music, so there was no need for the score to try to do it as well.
We also wanted our show to feel contemporary and not alienating to people who know nothing about the community and culture in the show. One of the great things about Unorthodox is that it managed to connect with audiences all over the world. A great many people saw themselves in the story, even despite coming from a completely different culture. I think if we had taken a very conservative and traditional approach with the score, we might have alienated people rather than open up the world of the show to them.
One of the great things about Unorthodox is that it managed to connect with audiences all over the world
The main challenge was making a score that fit comfortably shoulder-to-shoulder not just with the music from Esty’s orthodox community, but also with the other key styles of source music in the show — classical and contemporary electronic. All three of these influences leaked into the aesthetic I aimed for, to create a style of score that was its own thing but had a natural place in the show.
I also wanted it to be the kind of music that makes you think, but not music that tells you specifically what to think. There’s so much emotion and character journey already very evident in the script and the performances, so the music just needed to support this in a sophisticated but subtle way; helping to accentuate the emotions, but never trying to tell you what to feel.
This was also a very character-theme-based score. I wrote themes for most of the main characters, and this always gives you a kind of internal logic to use when deciding which direction to take for a scene. It also lets you shift perspective on what point of view the scene is about.
A good example is the flashback scene where Esty and Yanky were home alone the first night as a married couple, completely awkward around each with no idea how to behave or what to do. We chose to base the music for his scene on Yanky’s theme, not Esty’s, even though her perspective is usually the main one in the show. By doing this, we were able to emphasize that she was out of her element — that she was now in Yanky’s world. By this point in the show, we’d already had many Esty scenes with her theme music, so its absence here helps to underline a feeling of disorientation.
We made these kinds of decisions for quite a few scenes in the show.
You composed and produced this score in two locations: Paris and Berlin. Tell us a bit about why you had travelled between these locations during this project, and how they influenced your work. After all, Berlin is the place the character Esty runs to, in order to find herself and pursue her musical dreams.
Yes indeed, this was really mostly down to practical realities and logistics. I live in Paris and so that’s where I started working on the show, initially.
For Unorthodox, the show creators did not want to use any [pre-existing] temp music at all — a rule that we stuck to. I wrote some themes and exploratory material while the shoot was still underway. I was able to watch all the rushes from every single day of the shoot from the comfort of my own studio in Paris, using a secure online video sharing service Netflix provided. It’s a useful way to see how the show is starting to look, but you also have to be careful not to watch too much because it can be misleading. It gives you some good insights, though, and does help you start getting a feel for the characters as they are on screen.
The Berlin part came in quite organically. I was already going there regularly to spend a few days revising the spotting and going over feedback on cues with the team. Eventually, our post-production coordinator floated the idea that I could come to Berlin and stay there for a couple of months for the last stretch of post production.
They found a small studio space I could set up to work in, just around the corner from the final mix studio and the edit rooms, and the production team found me a lovely loft apartment in Kreuzberg, one of my favorite Berlin neighborhoods. Being in Berlin for the final few months was about getting the whole team together in one place so we could easily interact and work together.
There’s something invigorating about ‘taking the show on the road’ and setting up camp close to the rest of post
I’m quite a fan of this style of working — there’s something invigorating about ‘taking the show on the road’ and setting up camp close to the rest of post. You’re out of your homeland comfort zone. For me that really enhances the vibe of working on the show. Especially in this case, being in the city where most of the story takes place. It’s not always compatible if you have a lot of gear that you really need or want to use in your own studio. But you can still make it work. It’s also pretty easy to record musicians you usually work with remotely, something I did quite a lot on this show.
I’d like to ask you a bit about your education, now. You studied at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and your experiences there have certainly set you on a path to career success. Of your time studying the Screen Composition course, what sorts of practical experiences did you undertake to build your portfolio?
AFTRS is quite a special school, and I consider myself lucky I had the chance to go there. Interestingly, I wasn’t the only AFTRS graduate on Unorthodox. The costume designer on our show also went there, and we were even in the same year. I didn’t find out until after the project was completed because our paths didn’t cross.
I went to AFTRS at an interesting time. It was actually the first year there was ever a film music composition course offered. I think one of the most productive things we did in my time at AFTRS was called Masters Collaborative Workshops. Aside from just the usual film school activity of coursework and making actual films, usually shorts, we had this extra component as well. The idea was that instead of everyone just studying their own field and forming groups to make student films, we also had a rotating schedule where each department spent some time with another department. So there would be editing students doing workshops with set designers, composers sitting in on classes with scriptwriters, and so on. The purpose was to help demystify areas of production that traditionally don’t know much about each other’s work.
I think music composition is one of the least-known parts of film making
I think music composition is one of the least-known parts of film making. It’s quite common to talk to people who work in any other film department and find out they really know nothing about how it works at all. So it was a good initiative of the school to run a program like this and try to help us learn more about disciplines other than our own.
Read the full story at Level and Gain, our sister publication about all things screen music.
Images supplied.
