The soundtrack in Worst Woman is light, like a comforting gesture towards the heroine (HAN Ye-ri) as she’s spending her worst day ever, as the original title (“Worst day”) suggests. The background music in LOVE GUIDE FOR DUMPEES (2015) is adorable and lovely, as if it represented all the lovers’ enamored hearts. These all came from the imagination of music director Narae (KIM Na-rae). Since her debut in 2012, she has been diligently making film music while following her own principle that the duty of this kind of music is to support the movie.

I began my career when I joined music director Mowg’s team on Masquerade (2012). The idea of adding music to images was appealing to me. I have played the piano since my childhood, and by the end of middle school I wanted so much to compose that I decided to study music. A lot of the knowledge I learned in college have proved to be useful in film music as well. As I was studying applied music in graduate school, I was getting more confident that film music was my vocation. When I read that Mowg was looking for an assistant, I applied and was lucky enough to join Mowg’s team. 

Yes. At first, I used to work as part of Mowg’s team, doing many things like composition and mixing. KIM Jong-kwan’s short movie, Phantoms of the Archive, is the first project for which I’ve been put in charge as a fully fledged music director. My first full-length film is Like a French Film (2015) by SHIN Yeon-shick. 

I learned a lot from him, starting from the basics like how to watch a movie as a whole or how to include music to image. I had so much to learn because despite my major in music I hadn’t studied film music properly.

The good thing with these historical films is that they allowed me to write a lot of orchestral composition. These were times when I was quite confident, since I majored in classical music. Besides, I enjoyed having these opportunities to use various techniques.

It’s hard to choose only one. (laughs) My music directorial debut, Phantoms of the Archive, features director KIM Jong-kwan’s peculiarly beautiful mise-en-scéne, so even a piano melody added in a simple way produced a good result. On the other hand, the director of Like a French Film, SHIN Yeon-shick, has complete confidence in the people whom he works with. He asked me right from the beginning to do anything I wanted. Therefore, since the film was a collection of short stories, I tried different concepts for each episode. 

There are so many adorable and lovely moments in LOVE GUIDE FOR DUMPEES. In fact, actress HAN Ye-ri’s performance in this film is so lovable, too. (laughs) I have a lot of affection for this film because I did my best to give life to all these charming feels. For Kissing Cousin, I wanted to create a sense of modern music. It was interesting to add noises and various sounds to the soundtrack to make it sound disordered, because it’s difficult to do such things in commercial movies. As for Worst Woman, director KIM Jong-kwan let me insert a lot of music in the later parts of the film, and I like how the music really suits the image each time it cuts to the next shot.

There are still some parts to which I need to put the finishing touches before the release in theatres. I enjoyed working on The Table as well. At first, director KIM wanted to add music only to the inserts separating the episodes. However, it came naturally to include music in the background since the setting was a café. We first thought of choosing a different theme for each episode, but then scrapped this idea and agreed on a general uniformity. I then decided to go for jazz music, and chose the right music pieces to express different feelings, from cheerfulness to sadness, as required by the director.

Now we’ve reached the point where we don’t even need to talk to understand each other. When we work on the rough cut, there are quite a lot of common points between my ideas and KIM’s intentions. I guess it’s thanks to this synergy that I continued working with him. The images of KIM’s films are so beautiful that even simple music can have a great effect, and I like this.   

What appeals to me in indie movies is that they allow me to make experiments. Mainstream movies have relatively clear needs because they are highly dependent on commercial value, whereas independent films rely on different ideas and leave it to us to find answers. 

I never thought about it. (laughs) Now, I would like to become a ‘reliable’ music director.

I think I could use different musical techniques if I was working on a thriller or action film. I would like to show that even women music directors are fully able to handle such film genres.