Oscars 2014: Steven Price wins original score for ‘Gravity’
Steven Price, who brought an experimental edge to the sound of “Gravity,” Alfonso Cuarón’s 3-D outer space disaster film, won the Oscar for original score. Full of tension and a mixture of orchestral and digital sounds, Price’s score serve as one of the film’s characters -- the never-ending galaxy that is the film’s setting.
“Every element was manipulated through a synthesizer so that you’re never sure what’s organic and what’s electronic,” Price recently told The Times. “We were very keen to avoid the conventions of a typical action score.”
Times critic Kenneth Turan singled out Price’s work on ‘Gravity” in his review of the film, and described the music as an “an intense, immersive score.”
“I was trying to write emotional music but none of the conventional instruments were cutting it,” said Price. “I spent a full day throwing ideas at it — then I got a cello and played it through a guitar tremolo pedal. It had a fluttering effect, which really got the melody going. It was the start of what became Ryan’s theme, which you experience in its fullest version at the end of the film.”
Price doesn’t have the lengthy résumé of some of his peers in the field, especially John Williams, who has been nominated for 49 Oscars, but has been prolific of late. He’s worked closely with director Edgar Wright, scoring his 2013 effort “The World’s End,” and is already at work on Wright’s upcoming Marvel Comics film “Ant-Man.”
Price bested Williams (“The Book Thief”), Alexandre Desplat (“Philomena”), Thomas Newman (“Saving Mr. Banks”), and William Butler and Owen Pallett (“Her”).
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