Interview with Flavio Le Fosse, producer and sound designer

What were your first jobs in the field of applied music?

My debut on the big screen came on tiptoe, thanks to GRAMS. In 2018 I composed, in development, the song “Out of the nest” for Baby (Netflix series). With the same approach I composed for Briganti (Netflix) the tarantella “Dalla terra si nasce,” playing it directly on set with the actors. An experience that brought me together with many professionals and launched me into my first major projects: Big Trouble at the Esquiline (YouNuts!) and I still feel the vertigo (Nicola Sorcinelli).

What do you like about Applied Music for Imaging and why did you choose to specialize in this area?

Since I started playing music, I have realized that music can create stories and worlds. Unconsciously, I have always had the need to tell stories, and I decided to do it with sounds. La Applied Music fascinates me because just adding music to a scene can transform it, give it depth, emotion, rhythm. It is an invisible but powerful language. And Above all, it’s one of the things that still gives me the creeps.

How important is it to capture the “tone” of a project to then compose a piece and what is your stylistic signature?

The tone is the soul of a project and the music. Because it is a universal language, it allows you to make clear the direction you want to take. Personally, I prefer to work as early as the development stage, because that is where the tone of a project is determined. Perhaps it is this approach that describes my style, beyond the sound I choose. I am interested in Building a deep dialogue between music and image from the ground up.

What was the biggest difficulty in making a movie soundtrack?

Perhaps the biggest difficulty was that I was in a very hectic reality, with deadlines and frantic pace. Never before have we lived in the era of maximum results in minimum time, sometimes at the expense of creativity. In fact, in my opinion, the current film industry fully reflects this concept, leading audiences to take a more superficial approach and reduce their attention span.

What are you working on now?

I am now working on several short films that are making me discover a whole unexpected world. Composing music for shorts gives you much more space and you have more freedom of expression, it’s an intimate collaboration that allows you to experiment and try to break out of the box. Then it’s always a matter of finding the right people to collaborate with and So far I have to say that it has worked out pretty well for me.

Tell us about your collaboration with the screenwriting collective “Grams.”

With the GRAMS I had the opportunity to experiment with a new cinematic approach, namely that of composing original music already at the development stage. It’s an approach actually already seen with Morricone and Leone or Nolan and Zimmer, and it allows you to build the story from the ground up by giving it a clear direction from the beginning. In projects such as Baby o Brigands and many others, we tried to present three-dimensional designs, giving us an extra boost when they were being optioned.

Who are the contemporary composers that you think are doing good experimental research?

There are so many really talented young composers in Italy who unfortunately do not have the space they deserve to be able to express themselves. Outside of Italy, composers such as Cristobal Tapia de Veer, Ludwig Goransson, Jerskin Fendrix, Labirinth, Theodore Shapiro, Jasha Klebe, Apparat and many others are revolutionizing the way film music is made.

What is a dream of yours in the drawer?

To be able to stay in Italy and do this work and win an Oscar.

Who is your musician of the heart? Why?

Labyrinth, is from another planet.

What is your favorite song that you would take to Noah’s Ark?

Unintended by Muse.