Twilight: On the right track

Published on Thursday 17 September 2009 18:55

TWILIGHT, the vampire romance film released last year, was by any measure a hit: £119 million in gross ticket sales, three million sales of the DVD, and countless magazine covers graced by its brooding heartthrob, Robert Pattinson.

For the music industry, though, its soundtrack is practically a miracle. According to Nielsen SoundScan, a US chart company, the soundtrack has sold 2.2 million copies, a once-routine quantity that in an age of depressed sales has become tantalisingly rare. So like vampires drawn to the scent of blood, record labels, publishers and artist managers have spent much of the last year aggressively pursuing The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the second in the series, which will open in cinemas in November.

Alexandra Patsavas, the music supervisor on both films, was hired for New Moon in January but says that the pitches for the soundtrack started coming in even before then. And although the list of songs for New Moon is still being completed, music executives say they have already begun pushing to have their artists included in the third film, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, scheduled for release next June. "This is definitely a bright spot in an industry that can use some bright spots," Patsavas says.

Major record labels have long viewed soundtracks as low-risk, high-reward vehicles for promoting mega-singles. And until that model was eroded in the early 2000s by the rise of single-track downloads, there was a steady stream of multiplatinum hits. The Bodyguard, from 1992, has sold 11.8 million copies.

But along with recent films like Juno, Twilight has emerged as an example of a new approach: choosing songs that are entwined with a film's narrative, and which appeal to viewers through emotional resonance rather than superstar familiarity.

"There have always been amazing soundtracks, like Flashdance and Saturday Night Fever, where the music was attached to what the story was about," says Livia Tortella, general manager and executive vice president of Atlantic Records, which is releasing the Twilight: New Moon album soundtrack in October. "Somewhere along the lines it became about a single tie-in opportunity and not about the film itself. It diluted things."

One of the few exceptions to the recent sales trend for soundtracks is Disney, which has had multiplatinum hits with its High School Musical and Hannah Montana franchises.

Patsavas, known for her work on television shows such as Grey's Anatomy and Gossip Girl, says she is confident that the New Moon soundtrack will include Thom Yorke, Bon Iver and Band of Skulls. Death Cab for Cutie's Meet Me on the Equinox, the first single, had its premiere on MTV.com on Sunday, as part of a Twilight promotional blitz surrounding MTV's Video Music Awards.

There has been extensive speculation in the music industry all summer about who else would be included. Representatives of Grizzly Bear and the Killers said those groups would be on the soundtrack, but Patsavas declined to comment this week, saying the track list would be completed and announced today. For bands, placement in a Twilight film means huge potential sales and wide exposure.

"If you're an artist that's successfully branded with a film as enormous as Twilight, you get a lasting benefit beyond the movie and the soundtrack itself," says James Diener, president of A&M/Octone Records. "You're able to access marketing dollars that the film company has been spending beyond what a record company could or would spend."

The first soundtrack had a loud, full-throttle sound with artists including Paramore and Linkin Park, but the songs on New Moon have a soft, melancholy touch. "This is a much more sombre movie than Twilight," Patsavas says. "There is a lot of love lost, so the artists that are going to make up the soundtrack reflect that longing – a lot of acoustic instruments, a lot of a cappella singing. This soundtrack definitely feels a bit more indie than the last one."

Indie style is also important to the film's marketing. To reach young people Atlantic and Summit Entertainment, the film's studio, have made extensive plans with MySpace, iTunes and especially Hot Topic, the US chain of clothing and pop-culture stores whose most loyal customer might be a teenage girl with a roomful of Twilight posters. Among the plans for the movie is a national tour of Hot Topic stores with artists from the soundtrack, Tortella says.

MTV has also been a key promotional outlet. Trailers for New Moon were shown at the MTV Movie Awards in May and on Sunday at the Video Music Awards, where the movie's stars were ubiquitous. "Any time there is Twilight news, the MTV audience just eats it up," Tortella says. "Demographically it's a really good fit."

To attract and keep its audience, the Twilight team has employed a tactic that some marketers call "massclusive": distributing a product on a mass scale but using the language of niche subcultures, and including plenty of special, so-called exclusive content. That gives fans an intimate connection no matter how huge the audience gets, says Alain Sylvain, a managing director at Redscout, a brand strategy firm in New York.

"Words like exclusive, remix, edited, curated – all of these things add layers of depth to a story," Sylvain says. "People are just consuming everything: the books, the movies, the soundtracks. Twilight is a big, immersive narrative, and the soundtrack is playing a part in that story." All the music for New Moon is new, and Patsavas says some artists have been shown scenes from the film as a guide. Chris Walla, a guitarist in Death Cab for Cutie, says that he had read two of the Twilight books when the band recorded Meet Me on the Equinox, in July, but that the lyrics, sung by Ben Gibbard, were more suggestive than literal. "It's not so specific that it has to be tied to the film," Walla says. "All of Ben's lyrics have a universality about them. It's not like the song is about Jacob turning into a werewolf."

For Patsavas, the pitching was not limited to record labels. "I can't tell you how many submissions and suggestions I get from fans who found my name out somehow," she says. "They not only suggest their friends' unknown bands but maybe their 50 favourite songs. This property has really connected with people on a very emotional level."

• Twilight: New Moon is in cinemas from 20 November. The soundtrack is released on 20 October

SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT SOUNDTRACK

&#149 Top Gun (1986)

Some of the best songs in the film – notably Otis Redding's Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay – didn't make it onto the CD version of the soundtrack. The tracks that did feature, however, were pure 80s bombast, and as such were an ideal accompaniment to the film. Take My Breath Away by Berlin, Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins, Hot Summer Nights by Miami Sound Machine... not an ounce of irony between them.

&#149 Pulp Fiction (1994)

Rarely, if ever, can a director have created such an effortless blend of music and action by taking pre-existing songs straight off the peg rather than hiring a composer to create a bespoke score. But that's part of Quentin Tarantino's genius – sometimes he doesn't direct his films as much as choreograph them. Thanks to its heady mixture of high-octane surf guitars (Dick Dale's rendition of Misirlou, The Lively Ones' Surf Rider) and spine-tingling soul (Al Green's Let's Stay Together, Dusty Springfield's Son of a Preacher Man), the Pulp Fiction soundtrack sold over 1.5 million copies in the year of its release, reaching No 21 in US charts.

&#149 Trainspotting (1996)

Many of the songs on the Trainspotting soundtrack will forever be associated with individual scenes from the film. Taken together, though, the tracks selected by director Danny Boyle and his team – notably Lou Reed's Perfect Day, Iggy Pop's Lust For Life, Underworld's Born Slippy, Blur's Sing and New Order's Temptation – speak eloquently of the soaring highs and crashing lows of addiction.

&#149 Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

The killer strain of black comedy running through this film, which has John Cusack as a pro hitman at a high school reunion, is reflected in the soundtrack. Highlights include Guns N Roses' Live and Let Die and Faith No More's do-gooding popstar parody, We Care A Lot.

&#149 A Knight's Tale (2001)

A medieval romp with a twist, that twist being a bizarre but successful fusion of ancient and modern. Anachronistic dialogue aside, this effect was mostly achieved through the soundtrack, which includes Queen's We Will Rock You and Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back in Town.

&#149 Juno (2007)

Ellen Page, the young star of this brilliant, bittersweet film about a pregnant schoolgirl giving her baby up for adoption, had a big influence on its sound. Director Jason Reitman asked her what music her character would listen to, and she namechecked Kimya Dawson and her bands Antsy Pants and The Moldy Peaches - all feature prominently. The Velvet Underground's I'm Sticking With You and a couple of Belle & Sebastian numbers add extra whimsy.