JONATHAN WEBB CLOSE INFO

THE SOUVENIR

Sonic Storyboard full length: 43:34min
A24 Films →

Sonic Storyboard forThe Souvenir (2019). Commissioned by and produced in collaboration with writer-director Joanna Hogg between 2016-17.

A sonic storyboard is a form of film pre-production research that relies exclusively on sound to explore the creation of place, character and narrative on screen. It is an audio translation designed to inform and enrich the film’s creative development as the story progresses from page to screen. Just as a traditional storyboard artist uses illustration to convey action and inform scene composition; or a production designer employs image mood boards to express an overall visual aesthetic; so a sonic storyboard artist assembles archival recordings, music and other audio materials to concretise a story’s setting and explore its various moods and tonalities.

 

A shy but ambitious film student (Honor Swinton Byrne) begins to find her voice as an artist while navigating a turbulent courtship with a charismatic but untrustworthy man (Tom Burke). She defies her protective mother (Tilda Swinton) and concerned friends as she slips deeper and deeper into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship that comes dangerously close to destroying her dreams. The Souvenir is an enigmatic and personal portrait of the artist as a young woman, combining passionate emotions and exquisite aesthetics into a lush, dreamlike story of young adulthood and first love.

 

The Souvenir is executive produced by Martin Scorsese and was the winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.