Straight On Till Morning, which premiered at Dances With Films and just played FilmQuest, is the story of two dreamers who fall for each other on a spontaneous road trip gone wrong. Director Craig Ouellette worked on the film off and on for 15 years and entrusted sound designer and re-recording mixer Christopher Woll of Downmix Post to help bring his long-wrought vision across the finish line.
Here are Ouellette and Woll in conversation about the importance of quiet moments, original music, and how the hypothetical notion of casting of Natalie Portman changed everything. Straight On Till Morning was made with a proud assist from MovieMaker Production Services. —M.M.
Chris Woll: How would you describe the movie?
Craig Ouellette: My co-writer Neal McLaughlin always described it as a combination of True Romance meets Hostel. People always think Hostel is just a torture-porn movie, but it’s actually a brilliant suspense engine. I like that sigh of relief (or not) in a movie, depending on how things end.
Chris Woll: What was the genesis for making this movie?
Craig Ouellette: I met Neal in 2009 and he had the first draft of Straight On Till Morning, but it wasn’t a queer film at the time. We were having a ridiculous debate about what would happen if Natalie Portman wanted to play the female lead. We already had a mutual actress friend who wanted to play the lead, so I said Natalie Portman can play the other lead, and we’ll turn it into a lesbian story.
And we both thought that was a terrible idea. And then we met up again and realized that it’s actually the best idea. It adds a level of subtext that is fabulous. We’re telling a queer story about love, and the beautiful and terrible things people do in the name of love.
Chris Woll: Natalie Portman would have been a good get. But what you got in Kelsey Christian, who plays Dani, is incredible.
Craig Ouellette: Kelsey is amazing! And she also sings a lot of the original songs in the movie. There are times where the singing is part of the dialogue and the drama scenes, so we needed an actress who could sing.
Chris Woll: So use of music in any feature film is obviously very important, but when it’s bespoke music written for the movie, you have to handle it more delicately. The wall-to-wall music really drew me to the project.
Craig Ouellette: We have one song written by Neal. We have another song called “Rootless Tree” written by my friend Brandon Miquelon who had a fantastic backpacking experience in Europe and wanted to capture that emotion. We have lots of different arrangements of the songs as well as other songs for the opening credits and opening sequences. I hope the music makes it feel like a bit of a unique piece.
Chris Woll: I have a music background and went to music school, and getting thrown all this music and getting to play with it in different parts of the film, finding the emotion, was awesome.
Craig Ouellette: I always thought it would be cool to have the first part of the movie be a needle-drop movie, where we have lots of songs, lots of freedom, lots of rock and roll, and then things start to get more serious and more heavy.
Straight on Till Morning Director Craig Oullette and Downmix Post Proprieter Chris Woll on Bringing All the Elements Together
Chris Woll: Like you said, the film does start with these needle-drop moments. And then it kind of develops into more underscore, and the way that you edit and mix those two styles of music is completely different. I’m going to approach a needle drop more like mixing an album. And for underscore, you’re really playing energy, rather than music. And the timing of that is crucial, a few frames left and right, make all the difference. So that’s a challenge to switch gears in a single film.
And one of the ways we were able to accomplish that is by asking the incredible composer Thomas Corkran to send us every single stem [a group of instruments or individual instruments just printed out as their own] so that we had the flexibility.
Craig Ouellette: And then once all the pieces come together, you have sound effects, sound design, the score, the dialogue, and things will compete for the same sonic space. Right? In my mind, all of this machinery is to serve the performances of the actors and what they’re bringing.
Chris Woll: Nothing is more effective in a horror film than hearing the breath of the actress, and if there is a big drum hit the moment that SHE GASPS, and we miss the gasp, that’s the end of it.
Craig Ouellette: Because the performers are tapping into something that’s ethereal.
Chris Woll: Movies are a perceived experience — everyone’s going to have a different take. And that’s what’s really beautiful. Sound in film is sort of ethereal and unrealistic.
Craig Ouellette: There’s a sound moment in this movie that I absolutely love that involves a leg breaking. The reactions at the premiere were so fun! And everyone’s just cringing in the best possible ways to the sound. I talked to a friend afterwards and for her it was over the top. It was interesting how, for me, and the audience around us, we nailed that. But for somebody else, it wasn’t quite there.
Chris Woll: Because what does a leg break actually sound like? You know, probably not that exciting? And it wouldn’t be as loud as it is in a film. What is it supposed to sound like? What does a leg breaking sound like in your head?
Craig Ouellette: One of the things that I love in movies is being able to get into a character’s head, and sound is one of the main ways we can do that.
Chris Woll: I’m always looking for those specific sounds that are gonna leave a mark. It’s not about what the item sounds like — it’s what it should sound like. If a sound in real life has a different sound than it would in a dream or memory, I want to use the ethereal one. I think it taps into a deeper emotion. And so with the leg break, that’s a piece of celery being ripped open, mixed with a stick being broken.
Craig Ouellette: We didn’t actually break her leg?
Chris Woll: Did we?
Craig Ouellette: So what should filmmakers consider when they’re thinking about sound that they sometimes don’t?
Chris Woll: Incorporate sound as early as possible. I love coming onto a project while it’s still in the script phase and highlighting sections of the script and telling the director, this is a sound moment.
Craig Ouellette: That was one of the great things about working with you at Downmix Post. Every time we came in, I knew we were going to create, collaborate, come up with solutions to the challenges that we had.
Chris Woll: I love collaboration, I love that dynamism. My favorite sound mixes are hugely dynamic. Silence is always more important than the loud part. Films that have bad sound are too loud and just push the limit — or in audio, we call it the limiter — but push the limiter for the entire duration of an action scene, or the entire film itself. That has a dulling effect on me.
Craig Ouellette: In the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when her mom dies, everything’s just silent.
Chris Woll: Well think about real life, if something really traumatic is happening.
Craig Ouellette: It’s like everything else just goes away.
To keep up with Straight On Till Morning’s festival screenings or other news, check out LoveIsScary.com, or follow on Instagram @straightontillmorningmovie and @craigofilm. To work with Chris and Downmix Post, visit downmixpost.com.
Main image: Straight on Till Morning.