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Pitch Perfect 2 lands in Australian cinemas this week and I had the chance to speak with vocal director Deke Shanon about the world of a cappella and his role in bringing this film together…
Matt: You were involved in an a cappella group when you were studying at college, is that correct?
Deke: That is correct. It was at Tufts University and we were the Tufts University Beelzebubs
Matt: Is the a cappella industry as competitive as this film makes out?
Deke: It wasn’t when I was in college but after I graduated, I wanted to create a lot of excitement about a cappella. I wanted to come up with something that was the equivalent of March Madness for college basketball so I started a competition that took off like wildfire.
Matt: Are there big titles that people compete for?
Deke: Yeah. The finals just happened and there were 300 groups competing this year in America. When I started it, I called it the NCCA which stood for the National Championship of College A Cappella but it’s now international as we had groups coming over from England. I hope that one day soon we’ll also have some Australian entrants in the competition.
Matt: Since the original Pitch Perfect came out, do you think there has been more interest in a cappella music?
Derek: Absolutely, no question whatsoever. There were 200 college a cappella groups when I graduated and now there are 3,000. It’s so much fun. You can become a rock star on campus, you can pick whatever songs you want, you get to tour other states and other colleges, and it’s really the best thing of American college in my biased opinion (laughs).
Matt: You’re credited as a vocal producer on Pitch Perfect 2. Exactly what does that role entail?
Derek: There were a lot of levels. I helped choose the music, arrange the music, and then teach it to all the actors. Once it’s all done and recorded, when then shoot the scenes. I sit in the corner and watch the actors performing the songs to make sure that the lip syncing matches up perfectly.
Matt: I was going to ask that about the recording process. All the songs are recorded in advance in a studio, right?
Deke: Yeah. We had a studio in our production offices where we recorded the actors one by one to get the parts exactly right. We’d then mix it together. There’s so much going on in those performance scenes and the microphones would be impossible to have in the right place all the time so we record the music first and then the actors have to lip sync to themselves.
Matt: How hard is it for them to even lip sync when they’re running around all over the place?
Deke: It’s quite hard. If you look at old movies like Singing In The Rain, the only time anyone is lip syncing is when they have the melodies and it’s easy. We have these giant production numbers and I have to try to watch all of their mouths. You can’t have them only doing the melodies as it would pop the bubble and ruin the experience for the audience.
Matt: You mentioned the songs that you picked for the film. There appears to be a hell of a lot of songs in this movie. How do you work out which ones are right for the film?
Deke: First of all, you think about all the different moments in the movie. What do you want emotionally there and what is the story you are trying to tell? At the same time, you have an overarching thought that you don’t get the rights to every song. Some artists won’t give you the rights and others ask for too much money. On top of that, you have to take into consideration the different characters and their personalities and what they will enjoy singing. You also want to make sure there is a nice breadth of sound and style. You want some current stuff and also some classic stuff. You want pop, rock and hip hop so as to try to span different genres.
When we were making the first movie, it was so small that we weren’t even planning to make a soundtrack. Success has many side effects and there were a lot of opinions about what was going to go into this second movie. Because the first film made so much money, a lot of people wanted to make sure that every choice was exactly right. I had to remind people that the big breakout song from the original movie was an old, folky 1930s country & western song sung by a single woman sitting on stage with a plastic cup. In other words, there’s no way you can know what is going to be big so we may as well just pick songs for the movie and not worry about it.
Matt: How much preparation goes into getting the cast ready before you do those final recordings?
Deke: We had a cappella boot camp about a month before we started shooting. I run rehearsals with all the different actors based on what’s going to happen in the movie. I make them all sing every note perfectly for me from memory before they go into the recording studio. The idea is that if they’re looking at sheet music and trying to remember their part, they’re never going to be able to perform it.
When we put them in front of a microphone and they sing for us, we’re pushing them for more energy and more personality because in the end, we can take the very best moments and cut them all together. When they’re running around on stage in that finale, they need to sound like they’re running and singing for their lives.
Matt: Are they generally pretty confident or is that something you have to help them build up?
Deke: I would say they’re not so confident, especially in the first movie. It was difficult to create an ensemble sound from 10 actresses where only 1 of them had sung a cappella before. Only one of them is singing a melody at any particular moment. The rest are singing harmony parts and beat boxing and making instrument sounds. It’s really quite complex. Each one of them is very different personally which makes it difficult to create a smooth, consistent vocal blend.
Matt: Of the main cast, was there someone who stood out for you? Someone who you think was the most talented?
Deke: The great thing about the cast is that they’re all talented in different ways. Anna Kendrick brings a sassy snark to her character and she’s a total professional. She actually came into the project late because she’d been making Into The Woods and she didn’t want anyone saying she was behind. By the end of our first hour together, she sang all of her parts up to that point perfectly by memory to show she’d been working hard behind the scenes.
Rebel Wilson has a fantastic spark and energy and creativity but it’s not entirely chaotic in the same way that Robin Williams would take time to craft his humour and write jokes carefully. Rebel puts a lot of time in to make sure her performance and time behind the microphone were spot on.
Matt: It feels like we’re living in the age of the superhero movie these days but do think there’s room in the market to revitalise the musical genre? It feels like we’re not getting a lot of them these days.
Deke: The superhero movies have crazy large budgets and it feels like they keep making the same movie over and over. The great thing about Pitch Perfect was it was a tiny little independent movie from a studio that only had one big hit previously, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. So when we were making the film we had the freedom to do whatever we wanted but I have to admit, even I didn’t think it would be the success that it was. The fact that it was that big proves that you don’t need a lot of money. If you tell a good story and create great music, you’ll have an experience for viewers that they want to go back and see again and again.
Matt: I realise that it has a strong presence in the U.S. but do you have any idea if there’s a strong interest in a cappella here in Australia?
Deke: Oh it’s huge. There’s an organisation there called Vocal Australia and you can look them up online. They’ve got the AUS-ACA Awards coming up very soon. There are different regions all around Australia with different a cappella groups from high schools and colleges. There are some professional groups too who are fantastic. Definitely check them out because you will be impressed.