Carmen A Conversation with Benjamin Millepied and Nicholas Britell

What's going on guys? It's Austin from FlickDirect and I have the incredible honor of sitting down here with Nicholas and Benjamin on their film. How are you guys doing today? Good, very well, thank you. And how is Miami treating you two so far? Love it, love it. You know, always good to come to Miami. Gentle breeze, gentle warm breeze. Beautiful. The thing I was curious about is because I saw that you made a bunch of shorts beforehand.

So the thing I wanted to ask starting off is is what did you learn from your shorts and what you take from those shorts going on to your first day on set of Carmen? Well the shorts to be honest I mean I always I wanted to make all these dance films and my approach was quite instinctive for years. I just I learned as I was doing but you know knowing that I eventually wanted to do a feature and understanding, you know, the being a choreographer and respecting the craft of choreography and its complexity and how much that is a process of always learning and which has taken me years to master, I really wanted to make a first film having a sense of, you know, cinematic craft.

So I actually, I worked, I studied on my own by watching a lot of films and I think there's a big change, the difference between the shorts that I was making before until this first film. I actually shot a short film that wasn't, preparing myself for Carmen, which was never shown. That helped me a lot because it was, it had dialogue and it had dance and it sort of confronted me.

I'm really glad I did it with everything that was to come. But I learned a lot making the shorts, but going to make a film was, I had to sort of really rise to the occasion. I didn't want to be sloppy, and I wanted to really present some vision that seemed intentional in what I was doing. - Well, I can tell you, you did not come up as a first-time filmmaker at all.

And Nicholas, you're definitely no stranger to composing incredible music. So, from what I read, you've known each other since 2008, from what I remember correctly? - Yeah, yeah, we met in '08, yeah, that's right. So it's a heck of a partnership already on your end. So as you've done some iconic music, whether it's from stuff like "Succession" and/or "Don't Look Up," now, what was the most exciting thing about working with a first-time filmmaker?

I mean, what's exciting about working with first-time filmmakers in general, obviously, is experiencing a new vision, experiencing a new set of aesthetics that the director's interested in, and sort of finding out new things along those lines. But I will say, between Benjamin and me, we have collaborated on so many other projects over the years that I think on some of the short films, and we've been working on various projects, whether it was commercials or dance-related things.

So there's a long-term kind of artistic conversation that we've been having. So to me, in a way, it's his directorial debut, but at the same time, I think on a collaborative level, you know, it feels like we've been talking and working together in a way for a very long time. - Yeah, we knew we had similar tastes and intention and even in discussing the film, this kind of film we wanted to make.

- Yeah. - I think it was very clear. Which is why the process was so easy. - You might as well be best friends at this point, right? - Yes. - Yeah. - So let's talk about the creation of the Scorpio. The score in this movie is just, it's beautiful to say the least. - Thank you. I'm curious, when you two first meet up to talk about the musical score of a film, I'm curious, how does that first inception of the idea, like how does it grow and then how to keep evolving as the time goes on, especially going into post-production?

Yeah, yeah. You want to jump in? Yeah, I mean, you know, we started with the music. I mean, we actually, before even script was, you know, I started working on the script. It was very important to define the sound of the film because I knew just like music inspired what I create for the stage, it would really inspire the visual language, the atmosphere, and more, even that I could probably consciously comprehend.

So we had a few, you wrote a few pieces and I used to, and even by the time I was doing those songs and dances and I had even score I played on set in certain scenes but what was fascinating was how but when we got into the room to actually score it with the image suddenly it really felt like oh there was yet this other path to take and it was completely connected to years of conversation about sounds we were interested in for the movie and they just coalesced and came together in this one moment and one morning in New York.

That's such a great, yeah that was actually kind of amazing because like Benjamin was saying you know there were these long-term conversations, early pieces, pieces that had to be written certainly for the on-camera performances, but like Benjamin was saying I remember there was a particular moment and I think there was a particular scene actually, there's the scene in the motel when Carmen and Aiden are first in the motel there and I I remember I had been, you know, I had at this point written lots of music for the film, both in the movie and as I did for score, but what happened there was, there was this interesting opportunity where I remember saying to Benjamin, what if there was a choir in the score, and what if the choir was almost speaking inside the room with them, you know?

And I'd never done anything like that before, and I actually said, maybe this is crazy. But we tried it out, and all of a sudden, it felt so integrated into what was happening. And what was interesting was that from the early conversations Benjamin and I had had, we had talked about this idea of could there be voices actually in the score, but we never knew how or in what way.

And when that happened, all of a sudden it just opened this whole new door. And that was while we were deep in post. And so at that point then, it was really exciting 'cause this whole other avenue opened up for us. and then I ended up integrating choir throughout the score really for the first time that I've ever done that. - Well, again, I just wanna say congratulations to the two.

- Thank you. - Thank you. - The film is terrific. I can't wait to be able to see it. I can't wait to see where you go in your career. I can't wait to see even more music on your end. Thank you so much, guys. - Thank you. - Hit like, smash subscribe, and get notified for whenever reviews, interviews, and news go live. (thunder rumbling) (dramatic music) (explosion) [BLANK_AUDIO]