Mica Levi is just 27 years old with only one movie soundtrack under her belt, but she's already in an elite class of film composers. Her recent work on the film Under the Skin -- starring Scarlett Johansson -- won her a European Film Award for "best composer."
The frontwoman of Micachu and the Shapes, Levi got a call from director Jonathan Glazer to help with Skin, despite having zero previous experience.
"Jonathan wanted the film to happen in real time. It was important that you weren't reflecting on the past or looking to the future; you're experiencing the plot as the character does," she told The Guardian. "The music is supposed to express what Scarlett's character is feeling as she's going through her story. Everything started with one question: how would you feel if you've seen something for the first time?"
A quick explanation: Johansson plays a space alien sent to Earth to mate with random Scottish males. In a Mork & Mindy sort of setup, she doesn't know how things work in the human world.
Levi's job was to sonically accompany scenes where Johansson tries to eat cake (and fails miserably) and falls in love for the first time.
"The only way I could relate to those feelings was by remembering what it was like to be a teenager, when you start having interactions with other people and developing feelings which might be really overblown and overdramatic," she said.
She worked on the film for 10 months and had some weird dreams in the process.
"One night, I dreamt the whole of the world came out of Scarlett's face, like she was vomiting it out of her," Levi said. "When I stopped working on it, I was like, 'I have to stop dreaming about this'."
Hopefully, she has. Here's the trailer for the film:
