‘The Staircase’ Music Supervisor on Finding Right Tunes for Crime Drama
27.06.2022 - 22:51
/ variety.com
Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorHBO Max’s “The Staircase” marks the fifth collaboration for music supervisor Randall Poster and creator Antonio Campos. Poster says that the journey has helped build a musical rapport. When it came to finding the perfect needle drop moments for the true-crime series starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette, Poster looked to music that would help tell the story rather than rely on the musical tastes of the characters.“The Staircase” retells the death of Kathleen Peterson, played by Collette, from a fall from a staircase in her home.
Husband Michael Peterson (Firth) was convicted of murder in 2003. He was eventually released but to this day nobody knows exactly how Kathleen died. Set around the events of 2001, Poster’s primary challenge was how to use music to tell that story as the story jumped back and forth in time within a short period.
Poster says, “The challenge was how to use music to set the story in time, but also use music to reveal some of the less apparent personality components of various characters.”Kathleen died on Dec. 9, which steeped the show around the holidays. That meant Poster having to find the right holiday tunes to play.Says Poster, “The holidays are recurrent.
We worked hard to be able to use real songs. There’s always the challenge of being able to afford all the music that you want to want to use, but we really were intent on specificity in terms of figuring out what would be their Christmas cheer? We were trying to have some fun when it came to the spirit of Christmas and use pieces to push certain emotions forward or to play as counterpoint. Towards the end, we used songs from the Phil Spector Christmas album, and songs that people often sidestep because of
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