Everything Everywhere All At Once composer Son Lux breaks down some of the most memorable moments from the score
Son Lux’s greatest challenge was to pay homage to classical martial arts cinema without “traditional Chinese music”
Image: Allyson Riggs
Composers of double Oscar-nominated Everything Everywhere All At Once, Son Lux (Ryan Lott, Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang) have broken down their most memorable moments from the score.
For those unaware of the film, Everything Everywhere All at Once is centred around a Chinese immigrant who gets swept up in a wild adventure where she must connect different versions of herself in the parallel universe to stop someone who intends to harm the multiverse.
As you would expect, scoring a film such as this is no easy feat, especially when finding the balance between the hundreds of different scenes throughout the film.
In an interview with Variety, the composing trio has said that in order to go with Daniels’ (the single name used for director-writers Kwan and Scheinert), mosaic-like version of familial bonding, Son Lux had to dissect over 100 musical cues, rearranged into 49 detailed tracks.
Speaking about The Fanny Pack fight scene, Lott says “all expectations built within the film’s first 10 minutes get abandoned with this scene,” as viewers begin to realise that what film they thought they were going to see, is drastically going to change.
The trio say that their greatest challenge was to pay homage to classical martial arts cinema without “traditional Chinese music”, and ended up achieving this by accident.
“I was recording basslines for a different song, using software removing the sound of the studio… then sped it up for a hyper-realized vision,” said Bhatia. Then, Bhatia wrote additional melodies at quarter-speed with Lott building out its orchestration adding strings, with Chang drumming. “Ke Huy Quan’s character is fast, with finesse. Rafiq’s bass captured that.”
Read the full interview with Son Lux.
