Imaginary Friend in Daniel Isn’t Real Image

Imaginary Friend in Daniel Isn’t Real

By Mun Kang | December 31, 2019

Sound and music are a significant part of the film. Can you talk about when and why certain elements as types of music or different sound effects are used?
The score itself, which was created by Clark, who’s an electronic music artist. I came to him and said, “I want this to sound like Bernard Herrmann scoring a traditional Hitchcock movie sound, but like an industrial thresher and every decayed and it’s broken.” He went and recorded string quartets and read samples and really achieved that. That sense of the classic sound and the modern sound mashed together was sort of what Daniel is. There’s something about him that’s very contemporary, what he’s wearing and his point of view, but he also has a sense of classic-ness that goes back through time, and he has interests in old things. There’s a moment towards the end of it where we play J.S. Bach’s “St. John Passion,” which is this very old piece of music that sounds even more ancient than it is. I feel like that the juxtaposition of these very new sonic elements and these old ones were key. We used some tracks by JPEGMafia, who I think is the most modern rapper on the planet, and we have a track by Boy Harsher, which is this incredible next level, industrial band. To hear these very modern, brand new sounds of music with strings sounds and paranoid thriller crescendos creates the sense of this new and the old clashing together.

“…we used this color that’s very, very vibrant violent.”

The color red is used a lot in the film. What is the significance and explanation behind red in your film?
We used red, and we used this color that’s very, very vibrant violent. Both of those had to do with signifying Daniel. So sometimes we don’t even see him on screen, but might see a neon light that has that color. The idea was that part of the structure of the story is going from a world that feels isolationist and alone with blues and greens to then we get more and more exciting colors. When we see the color red onscreen, it amplifies our heart rate, it tightens our blood pressure and wants to use color to create those emotional landscapes.

Daniel Isn’t Real is currently available in Theaters, On Demand, and Digital.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Join our Film Threat Newsletter

Newsletter Icon