“It was crazy – we basically prepped a stadium tour,” says Saleka Shyamalan of working on her scenes and the songs for “Trap,” the latest thriller directed, written and produced by her father, M. Night Shyamalan.
“Trap” tells the story of a father and daughter (played by Josh Hartnett and Ariel Donoghue) who attend a pop concert where they realize they’re at the center of a dark and sinister event: a trap meant to capture a notorious serial killer called The Butcher.
“There was no detail left out,” continues Saleka. “There were the songs, full choreography, full costumes, full screens, all the transitions, multiple different sets. A lot of time was spent putting that together. It wasn’t the normal production design for a movie.
“It was, ‘All right, let’s make a tour. What is this character’s tour like? What’s the opening song? Where does it go from there? What are the points where the audience is surprised, having fun – the ups and downs? What is the order of the songs to create an arc for the show within the movie?’ And I had to think of several things that were important as I was writing the songs – they needed to function as storytelling, in what was going on with Cooper as he’s trying to escape, but also as scoring, because there’s really no scoring in a big chunk of the movie. The songs have to function in both ways. It was fun – super challenging, but fun.”
To create the sold-out concert of Lady Raven (Saleka) in “Trap,” visual effects supervisor Will Towle began with a light detection and ranging scan to create a 3D version of the venue itself. Performers were then filmed against a green screen, and 2D sprites were created of concertgoers engaging in a variety of activities (such as clapping, cheering, silently appreciating). 3D models were also created and motion capture was done to provide the 3D CG models a range of movements and reactions. By employing all of these techniques, 300 concertgoers could be multiplied to fill the 15,000-seat house where Cooper takes his daughter Riley to see Lady Raven.
Of course, what’s a concert without some dancing? For the dance and movement in Lady Raven’s stadium show, choreographer Cora Kozaris sought to turn the dancers into a Greek chorus of sorts. “The concert scenes are playing to an arena that holds 15,000 people, so all the movement has to be extremely exaggerated. Larger than life. The dancers are coming with huge pulses of energy,” says Kozaris. “In the same breath, the choreography also takes on very intimate details and blinks at what the characters are going through off the stage. And the soundtrack is scoring the entire film and really pulls from Lady Raven’s personal/relationship experiences or her traumas, and also builds the intensity of the lead characters and what they’re experiencing off the stage.”
Besides creating the songs for the movie, Saleka also helped inspire the idea for the film. “‘Trap’ was created by me and my daughter Saleka from our conversations together about music and movies,” says director M. Night Shyamalan.
“Trap,” distributed in the Philippines by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Discovery company, opens in cinemas July 31. #TrapMovie
