“Captain America: Brave New World” Composer Laura Karpman Crews a New Beat for a New Cap
The Academy Award-nominated composer Laura Karpman is now a consistent voice in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She scored Ms. Marvel, The Marvels, and What If? Now she adds Captain America: Brave New World to her impressive resume, which also includes American Fiction and Lovecraft Country.
In the tradition of Captain America movies, a conspiracy is afoot. As Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) unravels a mystery involving President Ross (Harrison Ford), villains operating in the shadows, and the introduction of the big-brained mind-controller, The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson), he fights his own personal battle to determine if he’s ready to carry the red, white, and blue shield. For Karpman, the score had to communicate the government intrigue, comic book thrills, and Wilson’s internal battle.
Recently, Karpman spoke with The Credits about how she approached Wilson’s fight, the influence of New Orleans, and the more offbeat choices she wanted to make in director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World.
You’re a fencer. Given your experience with fighting, how does that influence how you score action scenes?
The whole thing about film scoring is that it’s about empathy, and you have to empathize with what characters are going through. Before fencing, I think I could write really good action music, but I had a sense of working through my own hesitation. When you’re attacking, you might think it’s just about running into somebody, but it isn’t. That doesn’t work. You have to be smarter. I think that really relates to this particular project because Sam, of course, is not a super soldier. He’s got to use his wits, his skill, and a little help from the Wakandans to do what he needs to do. That helps me create a real sense of empathy for what this character is going through.
The drums especially provide drive to the action. Which drummers did you play with?
I started out with New Orleans drumline percussion. I got a drumline together, wrote a lot of rhythms, and we went into the studio before I wrote a note of music for this movie. Soon after, I went to the UK and recorded English musicians playing the same rhythms, performing really basic military beats. The idea was to combine the swing and swagger of New Orleans in combination with the straight Military feeling you’d get with more traditional playing. So, I started with percussion, and that was really the beginning.
How did that influence what came next?
It wound up in places I didn’t expect. I thought we’d use it for the hero moments, the Sam stuff and all that, but it really informed everything. The whole conspiracy music started with the really tight drumline. At first, it was almost like their fingers on the drums, then they picked up brushes, and then, went into the sticks. There was a rhythm we recorded in the UK that later became the foundation for the Stearn music, though we messed with it electronically. It was recording rhythms, then deciding where to keep them acoustic and where to manipulate them electronically.
Electronic manipulation is just right for Stearns, whose intro track sounds so alien. How did you emphasize his presence throughout the story?
Strangely, I went and got my mother’s analog radio and found that place between channels where you get squeals and static. That became a huge part of his sound. You can hear it, really, dialing in and out. The idea was for how Stearns uses sound to manipulate and taunt his victims.
Any other unconventional tools or instruments you used for the score?
We used little wind-up toys for the conspiracy theme, as well, because we wanted something that was tight, in your face, and intense. For The Marvels, I went to a prop house and rented space junk – actual pieces from spaceships – and used them as percussion. In every project, you look for what works well and where you can push boundaries. For this score, I had an upright piano, and I had the piano tuner come over and tune all the F notes out of tune. They are radically out of tune. We recorded that and transposed it down two or three octaves. It became this massive, scary sound that you wouldn’t ecognize as an out of tune piano.
So creating flaws to create the effect?
Sometimes a lot of music evolves out of the flaws, out of the things that you don’t expect. Sometimes even when I’m just recording instruments around the house, recording something, manipulating it electronically, it causes it to do something else that winds up cool.
For a Marvel film, what are some of the conversations you have about the balance between sound effects and score?
Before the final stage, the music is mixed, and I work with two unbelievably gifted engineers, Peter Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley. They did Deadpool, a lot of Marvel films, and American Fiction. They have a cool way of bringing out every layer in my music so you can hear everything. When we get to the stage where you’re dealing with sound effects and music, Marvel works with someone I absolutely adore – Lora Hirschberg. She’s incredible. She has big ears and knows exactly how to do this. Honestly, there are very few notes at that point.
When you’re in a room with a lot of creatives, as a composer, what do you find is the best way to communicate your ideas?
You strive to listen to what everyone has to say and then try to make sense of it all. A lot of times, people are saying the same thing but don’t realize it. With music, that happens a lot. Some filmmakers feel insecure talking about music, though that wasn’t the case with this group. Kevin [Feige] and Julius [Onah] are well-versed musically and know what they want.
What does the best note look like?
The best notes are character notes. I remember one scene at the end of the prison sequence with Isaiah, when Sam is there. The question was whether we wanted to emphasize Isaiah’s trauma in that moment or lean into his anger.
When speaking with Kevin Feige and Julius Onah, what’s paramount to communicate about your vision? And what are the elements you really don’t need to explain?
The percussion element, for example, was something I just went ahead and did. I didn’t know if it would work, so I didn’t want to say, “Oh, I think we should go record New Orleans percussion, and it’ll be like this or that.” It’s almost over-promising. I wanted to do it first for my own musical curiosity. The first meetings for Marvel projects usually focus on themes and sounds without picture. It’s a long-term vision for what the characters’ music might sound like, either by putting the theme through different paces or just presenting it as you see it.
How else did jazz influence your Captain America score?
I always find my way into jazz. The opening of the film has a bassoon solo, right? I knew I wanted to bring that back in the end credits, coming out of the Kendrick Lamar song. But I didn’t want to simply repeat the bassoon solo. So, I called up Elena Pinderhughes, one of my favorite collaborators and a phenomenal jazz flutist. She played on American Fiction and The Marvels as well. I asked her to play this a little jazzy – not too much, just a little. So, when you hear that theme return, it’s Elena playing it. Instead of the classical bassoon sound from the beginning of the film, it has a bit of swing. It feels jazzier. A little sexier.
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Featured image: Captain America/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in Marvel Studios’ CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 MARVEL.
