The Music
The soundtrack to a film can have a huge influence on your reaction to what you see onscreen. Can you think of any moments in this film, or other films you've seen, where the soundtrack is especially important?
In the soundtrack to Sounds Like Teen Spirit, we hear the Eurovision contestants' songs as well as hearing music from established bands. When a filmmaker wants to use a band's songs in their film they have to pay a fee to the people who own the 'rights' (or copyright) to those songs. This is a source of income for songwriters and performers. In the case of this film, some of the record companies helped out with this process.
Elizabeth Karlsen, the producer, explains: "Jamie selected the tracks used in the film - ABBA, The Who, Bryan Ferry and Henri Mancini. Luckily a few record companies, like Universal Records, had seen the film and loved it so helped to clear the tracks with the artists. I think we ended up with a great sound track"
- Why do you think the record companies might have wanted to help out the filmmakers in this way?
- How would the film be different if the soundtrack only included the entrants' songs?
- And how might the competition be different if the entrants covered other peoples' songs, rather than writing their own?
