Butt-chugging on screen was hard enough for John Cena, but matching the right music to the scene was no easy task either for Blockers composer Mateo Messina.
In an exclusive clip for PopCulture.com, Messina described the challenges of scoring the scene, while making sure his music was not distracting from the hilarity on the big screen.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“Really it was about capturing the spirit of camaraderie and them coming together to do something,” Messina said of his music for the scene. “Any parent in the world would understand, they would do anything for their kid. So this isn’t that far-fetched.”
Messina’s score for the scene sounds unique thanks to his use of a berimbau, a Brazilian instrument, but it’s not “perfectly in-tune, like something’s not right.” It also gives the scene a “s–’s going down” vibe, Messina explained.
The berimbau was not the only unique instrument heard in Messina’s score.
“Elsewhere in the film, a lot of the percussion is untraditional like playing sleigh bells with brushes, dropping various big pieces of furniture next to a mic on the studio floor, and stomping on the back of a piano – a lot of weird stuff to find sounds nobody is used to hearing,” he said.
In a previous interview with PopCulture.com, Messica said he brought in “every different percussion instrument you could imagine” and experimented with different ways to use them.
“The drums felt like the right instrument to feature for basically these parents,” he said. “When it came down to the last few reels, the last two rails in getting the emotional beat to cross, I obviously went to different instruments than the percussion.”
“I needed to demonstrate, musically, the flow. You need to understand that that beer is now going inside him,” the composer said. He used guitars, which he then played backwards, to create the sound when Cena realizes he has beer going up his butt.
Aside from that one scene, scoring the film was not easy. There is no “how-to” guide for scoring comedies, since each film has its own flavor, requiring a composer to start from scratch.
“Every director’s different, and every director has a different tone of comedy, or even the subtleties and nuances of how they tell a joke,” Messina previously told PopCulture.com. “For instance, Kay was like, ‘Oh, I don’t ever want any music to come close to getting on a joke. I want it to come after.’ Whereas other directors I work with they’re like, ‘No. Play right on the joke and help us support it.’ There’s so many subtle differences in comedy especially.”
Blockers was Pitch Perfect writer Kay Cannon’s directorial debut and stars Cena, Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz as parents who try to stop their daughters from having sex on prom night. All three of the parents got their own themes, as did their children, in Messina’s score.
“This film was an absolute blast mainly because our director, Kay Cannon, is so funny, Messina said. “She has a great style and she was very collaborative and trusting in the process.”
Blockers hits home video on July 3.
Photo credit: Impact24 PR
