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A Star is Born: Live vocals,
real crowds and venues
By Jennifer Walden
Warner Bros. Pictures’ remake of A Star is Born stars Bradley Cooper as Jackson Maine, a famous musician with a serious drinking hobby who stumbles onto singer/songwriter Ally (Lady Gaga) at a drag bar where she’s performing. Jackson is taken by her raw talent and their chance meeting turns into something more.
Aside from Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper (who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay), the other big star of this film is the music. Songwriting started over two years ago. Cooper and Gaga collaborated with several other songwriters along the way, like Lukas Nelson (son of Willie Nelson), Mark Ronson, Hillary Lindsey and DJ White Shadow.
According to supervising music editor/re-recording mixer Jason Ruder from 2 Pop Music — who was involved with the film from pre-production through post — the lyrics, tempo and key signatures were even changing right up to the day of the shoot. “The songwriting went to the 11th hour. Gaga sort of works in that fashion,” says Ruder, who witnessed her process first-hand during a sound check at Coachella. (2 Pop Music is located on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank.)
Before each shoot, Ruder would split out the pre-recorded instrumental tracks, reference vocals and have them ready for playback, but there were days when he would get a call from Gaga’s manager as he was driving to the set. “I was told that she had gone into the studio in the middle of the night and made changes, so there were all new pre-records for the day. I guess she could be called a bit of a perfectionist, always trying to make it better.
“On the final number, for instance, it was only a couple hours before the shoot and I got a message from her saying that the song wasn’t final yet and that she wanted to try it in three different keys and three different tempos just to make sure,” continues Ruder. “So there were a lot of moving parts going into each day. Everyone that she works with has to be able to adapt very quickly.”
Since the music is so important to the story, here’s what Cooper and Gaga didn’t want — they start singing and the music suddenly switches over to a slick, studio-produced track.
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