The Music of Manchester by the Sea (2016): Amazon & the Prime Age of Indie Film Scoring

Through primary interviews with Composer, Lesley Barber, this video essay analyses the compositional strategies and commercial contexts of scoring the critically acclaimed ‘Amazon Original’ feature film Manchester by the Sea (2016). Scored predominantly using multi-tracked solo vocals, performed and recorded by the Barber’s daughter in her college dorm, the film earned an ASCAP Composers' Choice Award nomination for ‘Film Score of the Year’. The film was also nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two. However, Barber was disqualified from Oscar consideration due to existing classical repertoire featuring heavily in the film’s soundtrack, exposing tensions between ‘temp’ music, licensing and original score within film.

Produced independently of major studio support, within a limited budget, the film secured a subsequent distribution deal through newly founded Amazon Studios at Sundance Film Festival. This paper explores the challenges Composers face when tasked to score ‘indie’ films with budgetary restrictions and a lack of supporting infrastructure, such as the scoring stages at major film production studios, as well as revealing the creative solutions to music making composers employ under these conditions. While independent filmmaking, and scoring, is no new phenomenon, developments in digital technology and the emergence of online streaming services, such as Amazon Prime, provide new platforms and opportunities for Filmmakers, Composers, and audiences alike.

Differing facets of digitisation are interlocking in the changing status of the Composer, from the tools they use to the way their work, film music, is consumed. These changes are having material effects on music for new media and are explored through this case study.