Tina Kakadelis
For decades, people have turned to movie soundtracks to introduce them to new musical artists. Even in the age of streaming services, movies have a way of launching a musician’s career into the stratosphere. Needle drops have grown so prevalent that it takes someone with a keen ear to put together a soundtrack to bring a writer/director’s vision to life and Sarah Bromberg is one of those people.
One of Them Days is the triumphant return of the studio comedy. Led by Keke Palmer and SZA, the film follows two best friends as they try to scrounge up rent money that’s due before their landlord evicts them. Sarah Bromberg worked as the music supervisor, along with Stephanie Diaz-Matos, put together the high-energy soundtrack for the film. They wanted to highlight lesser-known artists from the Los Angeles area and create a blend of new and familiar songs to set the scene. Bromberg sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to explain how she got started in the industry, the initial conversations with the film’s director, and the joy of being part of a movie like One of Them Days.
The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Film Obsessive: I saw that you are not a musician, but you have a very long history of loving music. Can you talk about the transition of realizing that loving music was more than a hobby and how you developed it into a career as a non-musician?
Sarah Bromberg: Oh, I love that question. When I went to college, I was majoring in psychology. I thought that’s what I was going to do. Then I did a semester abroad in Australia, so really mostly that was about partying. I took this class on the history of pop music that was very early on Fridays. I found it shocking that it was the one class I actually wanted to go to, and I would get my hungover ass out of bed to show up for it every week.
I’ve always loved music. I’ve always been very into music, all kinds of music. That class sort of showed something to me. I was like, wow, what does it mean that I don’t even want to show up for my psychology classes, but I’ll go to this one no matter what? I loved writing the papers and doing all the work.
When I got back from my study abroad, I decided I wanted to make a shift to work in the music industry. I did an internship at Atlantic Records. Learned a little more about what the roles are, what the possibilities were, and decided for sure this is what I want to do. One of the reasons I wanted to do it was because, as I said, I love music. I wanted to support musicians. I wanted to bring their music to the world and have people hear it and be a part of having that art form be out there for people to have.
When I graduated and started actually working in the music industry, it was a really bad time. It was sort of doom and gloom. I was working at a small, independent label and I really only had bad news for the artists. It was heartbreaking. While I was supporting them, getting their music out there, and doing what I wanted to do, I was also sharing a lot of bad news with them. Your album is not shipping, we got a lot of returns, and you’re not recouped.
The one bright spot would be if we would get a sync placement. This was my first introduction to what a music supervisor was. I had no idea this was even a job or how those things came to be. Learning that, I was like, well, this is actually a positive, bright spot in music. This is making the musicians happy. They would get more sales and more people would show up at their concerts. So I thought, okay, that’s what I want to do now, be a music supervisor. That seems like a great job. I had a few lucky turns of events where a music supervisor walked into my office, and I was able to meet her, get to know her, and tell her that I wanted to do what she did.
Eventually, I started working with her. I actually, still to this day, work with her. Music supervision is very much an apprenticeship job. You really need to work under someone in order to learn all the ins and outs of how the job is done, but it’s also a job where it’s helpful to be a musician. It’s helpful for sure to know music in that way, but it’s not a requirement. I know a lot of music supervisors who do play, who do have history in music, but I also know a lot of music supervisors who don’t and just love music.
I certainly wish I knew a little more music theory than I do sometimes, but I just roll with it. I think everybody who ends up in the career they’re in, there’s usually some twists and turns so that you somehow are plopped where you need to be. I definitely had those, but sometimes I wish, all the time actually, I could go back to little me and I’m like, girl, stick with it, don’t quit the clarinet, keep going (laughs). But I did and so here we are.
I’m somebody who just picks one artist and sticks with them. Bruce Springsteen is my guy. I don’t know how to find new music, which is a huge part of the music supervisor role. How do you find new music? How has it changed with Spotify, SoundCloud, and all those different places?
When I first started, my research was very blog-heavy, very blog-based. I still do read the blogs, but I think now it’s shifted to following a bunch of music Instagram accounts. I follow all different genres and locations. I’ll follow hyper-local accounts to learn about who’s coming up in different scenes. I do learn about a lot of artists on Instagram. Then I take to Spotify and try to delve as deep into them as I can. There’s DJs and various playlists that I follow on Spotify that are constantly being updated, so I’m always listening to those.
When I hear something I like, then I go deeper into those places, those artists, and see what artists are similar to them or in that world. Shazam is my best friend. I’m that person, sitting at a bar being like blah blah blah, hold on one second. I’ve got my phone up to a speaker. I just need to grab this song and I’ll be good, you know? I have a ton of stuff on my Shazam. My ears are always on, just in case. It’s kind of a curse and a blessing at the same time.
Even though I do have very broad musical interests, obviously I don’t know all music. When I start a show, I figure out what the vibe of that show is. There’s a ton of research that goes into finding music that works for the show.
As a music supervisor, you get sent a lot of music. We’re on mailing lists for labels, publishers, pitching companies, management companies, artists themselves. I mean, a ton of music gets sent to the inbox. Going through that stuff, filtering what makes sense, what doesn’t make sense, what I want to listen to, and what I don’t want to listen to as well.
For One of Them Days, I saw that your first conversation with the director, Lawrence [Lamont], was two years ago. What does that conversation look like? How much of that conversation carried through to the final film?
We had a very early script then. One of my first questions is, musically, what are you inspired by for this movie? What is the sound that you’re looking for? For One of Them Days, we just had a very general conversation about what movies are the musical references. What sort of soundtracks do you have in mind when you’re thinking about how you’re going to approach this? What is the overall feeling that you have?
We would just throw ideas around a little bit, whether it be specific artists, songs, or references. I don’t think there’s anything from that first script that’s actually in the movie. The script had a lot of iterations, but there’s certainly homages to what was in the first script. There’s certainly songs that are in the orbit of what was in the first script. Essentially, those early conversations are a creative building block.
Going through film school, one of the things they always say in screenwriting class is to never write a song into the script. Does the inclusion of songs like that back you into a corner?
It depends. One of the questions I ask is, is this song essential? It doesn’t back me into a corner at all. I’m more than happy to try to get what’s scripted if that’s important. I’m working on the third season of P-Valley. Very often, what’s written in those scripts is exactly what our showrunner, Katori [Hall], wants, so I immediately try to clear that stuff. I’m only backed into a corner if for some reason we can’t get the song cleared. Then we have to get creative about either working to get it or replacing it.
I don’t mind music in scripts at all, because it does inform the thought process. A lot of times, I’d say 90% of the time, they’re just thought starters, you know? Something will go here, you know? Or, the writer was listening to this when writing it. We just do our best to keep whatever we can. It’s obviously dependent on budget, spending, and what we can get cleared. It’s actually quite helpful to see songs in scripts.
One of the main focuses for the soundtrack of One of Them Days is highlighting LA artists. Can you talk about it a little bit about finding those musical acts? Was that through Instagram stalking?
When we were actually finally getting started, it was right when Kendrick [Lamar] did those three nights at the Kia Forum after “Not Like Us” had come out. Each night, he brought out all these upcoming LA artists. The next meeting we had, Lawrence came with a list. Some of these artists we had already pulled, knowing we wanted to have an L.A. focus, but some were new. I hadn’t pulled a CUZZOS song yet, but they were up there with Kendrick. That was a priority for Lawrence, especially since they’re female and we wanted to highlight female artists. I was super excited we were able to place one of their songs in the film.
Kendrick kind of did the work for us (laughs). He obviously knows everybody, so he brought all these dope artists up. We made lists and I was just going through, pulling them, and sending them to post-production and seeing what we could land.
That’s awesome. It’s perfect timing. Sometimes you’re involved in the score and other musical parts of the filmmaking process. One of Them Days has a new song by Keke Palmer. Were you part of that development?
Not really. That was a studio thing. Every studio is different and with this studio, they handle anything original that’s going to be an exclusive to the film. Those deals, and even that creative team, come from the studio. The needle drops came from me and, in this case, the studio was dealing with anything the film was doing that was going to be exclusive or original. But I love that song.
When it comes to score music supervisors, the role is very different project to project. Sometimes I’m also deeply involved with the score. I’ve been involved with picking, interviewing, and hiring composers and helping shape the score. If there are issues with the score, I help with communication between the creative and the composer to sort of get them on the same page. One of the things I do is translate any frustration coming from creative to any frustration on the music side. I’m like, okay, let me help translate what’s being said here for both of you.
In this instance, I didn’t really have much to do with the score. Again, I love the score. Chanda [Dancy] did an amazing job. I am obsessed with the score. It was again studio-based as far as hiring. The creative really came from Lawrence, and he communicated with Chanda directly. She just nailed it. I know there was no translation needed because she got it right away and she landed some really great pieces. It’s such a fun movie overall. I’m laughing loudest in the theater and I’ve seen it more than anybody else. I love this movie.
I feel like it’s been so long since we’ve had something like this! I think about growing up and everybody knew the lines for Mean Girls, you know? It’s been a while since we’ve had a quotable comedy like this.
I’m older than you and I agree about Mean Girls, but for me, it was Friday. We all quoted Friday. We watched Friday every week! We all had it on VHS. We just loved Friday. For me, this is the current-day Friday. And it’s true. My counterpart at the studio and I were talking and I was like, when was the last time they even put out a movie like this in the theaters? I looked it up! We had to go back about ten years, you know?
They don’t make movies like this for the theater anymore. It was super exciting to be part of this nostalgic buddy comedy. It’s worth seeing in the theaters because it’s nice to laugh with people. It makes you laugh more when other people are laughing and you become part of this laughing community. It’s so fun!
