How ‘CODA’ Director Siân Heder Used Silence as a Key to the Movie’s Soundtrack | Wrap Video

thewrap.com:

Screen Actors Guild’s Best Ensemble Cast, strengthening the movie’s chance of scoring one of the 10 Best Picture Oscar nominations.) And Heder used that key recital scene to show both Ruby’s passion for music and the fact that her family can’t experience it in the way she does.“The concert scene — the audience has a set of expectations going into that scene,” Heder said. “You’ve watched Ruby rehearse this song over and over, multiple times, and you’re waiting to hear what comes out of her.

Yet at the moment when Ruby steps up to sing, I wanted to suck out the sound, turn the cameras on extras in the audience and have Ruby’s parents, Frank and Jackie, kind of looking to strangers to understand what’s happening with their daughter in that moment.”Ruby performs “You’re All I Need to Get By” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell with her classmate Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), but just as they start to sing, the camera pulls back from the stage to where her family is seated and the sound fades out until it goes completely silent.

We see Ruby and Miles looking at each other and mouthing the words, while Frank and Jackie study the reactions of fellow members of the crowd, many of whom are visibly moved.

When the duo finishes the song, the soundtrack returns and Ruby’s family joins in the standing ovation. “It was a challenge in the edit,” Heder said. “I think we recut that scene over and over and over again so that we could really live with her parents and her brother and be in their perspective, watching Ruby.” Even though Jones (who is not a trained vocalist in real life) sang better than she had in any rehearsals, Heder did not change her mind. “We were recording live on set and I remember the moment she went to sing, she hit this.