The Marvels Composer On Going Through 'Marvel College' And Creating Music With 'Space Junk' [Exclusive Interview]
If you don't already know composer Laura Karpman, she's one to watch. Of course, if you're a video game geek, you probably already know her work from such games as the "EverQuest" series, and if you enjoy genre TV shows, you may have heard her music on the "Taken" miniseries from 2002 and 2020's too-short-lived "Lovecraft Country."
Yet her most prominent film and TV work so far is undoubtedly with Marvel Studios, with whom she's been associated for the last several years. Breaking into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the animated anthology series "What If...?," she then went on to score the 2022 "Ms. Marvel" series on Disney+. Now, she follows Kamala Khan from that series to the character's big-screen debut as part of "The Marvels," which sees director Nia DaCosta sitting in the director's chair this time as she follows up 2019's "Captain Marvel" starring Brie Larson as Carol Danvers.
I had the opportunity to speak with Karpman in advance of "The Marvels" opening in theaters this week, and the composer happily discussed such things as constructing her expansive and playful score for the film as well as her views on tackling the MCU as a whole. As for that show-stopping musical moment in the movie that's hinted at in the trailers? Well, Marvel secrecy is still a thing, but a hint or two may have escaped...
Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Going to Marvel College
You have so many elements to juggle in this score: The huge scope of the movie, all these different planets, and these lead characters that have been established in other media. What was it like approaching this? Did working on "What If...?" and "Ms. Marvel" make it easier, or was it just as much of a challenge for you?
I think probably being familiar with what's going on in the MCU is helpful, and I think "What If...?" is a great place to figure that out, kind of what's going on and then turning it on its head. So working on "What If...?," I often call it like Marvel College, because basically, you've got to become really familiar with all the films so you can figure out how to change out of them, musically and otherwise. So I think coming in with the knowledge of that, and "Ms. Marvel" obviously, is helpful, but every project has its own needs and requirements, and this one certainly did. Of course, this is a new team of people who are significant and need their own music and need their own emotional arc. So I think it was my task to figure out what that was for this particular project.
Building a sonic palette
So when those bigger questions were addressed, how did you go about building your sonic palette for the score? I would love to know more about the human voices, and of course, Evelyn Glennie, who I was reading about as well.
Well, something I spent a lot of time thinking about is: What does space sound like? And of course — not of course, but there is no sound in space. Sound can't be heard, but it can be felt by your body. You feel it as vibrations.
So let's start with Evelyn Glennie. Evelyn Glennie is an incredible percussionist who is profoundly deaf. So she doesn't hear, but she feels sound. In fact, often she plays barefoot, so literally the sound comes up through her body. And so bringing her into the score to help me create the sound of space was something that was really important to me. I felt it was something that she could feel almost, and that would come through her performances. So basically I went to her studio in Cambridgeshire, and we looked at instruments and we made weird sounds out of a lot of stuff. So that was hugely significant to the score.
I also went to a prop house in Burbank and rented space junk, literally stuff that came off rockets or fell from the sky. I rented anything that could have a great musical sound. So there were these titanium discs that sounded super cool when bowed and struck. So I use that as well as a part of the score, and you hear that in a lot of different places.
And finally, Nia said she wanted a space opera. So space opera spells human voices to me. So we did three kinds of vocal recordings. Two small group recordings that were unusual voices put together from a variety of musical and world disciplines — so we had Carnatic Indian singers, South African singers, Black American singers. I had counter tenors who are men singing in their falsetto voices, so like men singing up high. I had also very, very low singing. So we started to think about voices, not in terms of men and women, but in terms of high and low, and how those sounds could work together. So I did one of those sessions here in L.A., one in London, and another larger choral session in London as well.
Working with Nia DaCosta
What was your collaboration like with Nia? Was it a constant back and forth? Did you go away and wrote the score, bring it to her, then you worked from there? What was your process?
All of it. I mean, we worked together. We were together in the same room. She was here for a good part of the time. I went to London some of the time. We would work over the internet. She was really wonderfully specific about what she wanted. There were certain scenes that the music worked immediately for. There were other scenes where we did multiple versions, which I was thrilled to do, to get her exactly what she wanted. Different sounds that we explored together, different emotional ranges, and of course, where music should be and where it shouldn't be is always a big ongoing discussion in these kinds of projects.
The mystery of the musical number
I have to ask: I got to listen to the score yesterday, and being a musical theater nerd and theater kid, I'm so jazzed that there's a musical number in this film. Can you just tell me a little bit about the process of making that happen? Because it's wonderful.
I would love to tell you about that process, but I won't do it until Thursday until everybody gets to go and see it. But all I can say is there will be many, many, many musical surprises in this film. So go see it and discover along with the rest of the world the glory that "The Marvels" has to bring.
"The Marvels" is in theaters everywhere.