Nainita Desai - Film Composer

Nainita Desai - Film Composer | Podcast

From Foley to Peter Gabriel to Netflix

Published October 2020

Nainita Desai in her studio

Nainita Desai chats to Caro C about her distinguished career, from her beginnings as a foley artist right through to becoming a busy and successful award-winning composer. Recent projects include the feature film American Murder for Netflix and a 360 degree score for The Reason I Jump, which won World Cinema Documentary Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival 2020.

Show Notes

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction
00:54 - Current projects
03:40 - Mixing up the creative process
06:09 - Electronic and mathematical roots
09:39 - Discovering the industry
14:51 - From foley artist to Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios
22:08 - Pioneering spirit and inspiration
24:43 - Capturing the magic of performance
27:14 - Hardware and plugins
32:53 - Getting expression into a performance
36:59 - Methodologies and storytelling
44:36 - Ending

Nainita Desai - Biog

Ivor Novello award nominee, Nainita Desai is a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit and International Film Music Critics Association Breakthrough Composer of 2019.

Amongst various BAFTA, Oscar, and Emmy acclaimed productions, Nainita’s recent features include critically acclaimed Oscar 2020 nominated film For Sama, also nominated for Best Music at the BIFAs.

Nainita Desai

Film4 labelled her as one of the top 5 "composers who should be on your radar" for 2020 and her projects have been in the Top 5 Film Scores and Video Games Scores of 2019 by Scala Radio.

Recent projects include Sundance 2020 winning feature The Reason I Jump, Netflix original series Bad Boy Billionaires, American Murder (exec prod: James Marsh), and BBC drama series Unprecedented.

Following a degree in Maths, Nainita began her career working as a sound designer on features for directors including Werner Herzog and Bertolucci and as an assistant music engineer to Peter Gabriel.

Nainita moves seamlessly between working with orchestras, to scores that utilise her collection of custom-made instruments, incorporating electronics, found sound, and experimental sound design which has informed her experimental, deeply immersive approach.

https://nainitadesai.com/

http://soundology.com/

Interviewer: Caro C - Biog

Caro CPhoto: Shirlaine ForrestCaro C is an artist, engineer and teacher specialising in electronic music. She started making music thanks to being laid up whilst living in a double-decker bus and listening to Warp Records in the late 1990s. This "sonic enchantress" (BBC Radio 3) has now played in most of the cultural hotspots of her current hometown of Manchester, UK. Caro is also the instigator and project manager of electronic music charity Delia Derbyshire Day.