I was lucky enough to attend the soundtrack press conference for Off Campus with the lead actress Ella Bright, music producer Alana Da Fonsesca and music supervisor Amanda Thomas .

Daniel: Ella, what was the most challenging part of performing the music on screen compared to acting? 

Ella: It was all so new to me, so thank you, Amanda, Alana, for being so patient and amazing, and for being the greatest teachers ever. It’s always, almost prerecorded, which was amazing.  We had a lot of prerecords in the studio like a couple of weeks before we would go to shoot. If I woke up on the day and didn’t have a voice, or I didn’t feel like hitting certain notes, I would always have the comfort of a pre-record, which was so helpful and definitely relieved a lot of anxiety for me. But on the day, we would do like a whole bunch of different takes. We would always have an earwig in or it would be on a big speaker. 

The earwigs were the most stressful because you can hear the soundtrack and the whole crew can’t.  You can just hear my a cappella singing to everybody else. It was terrifying, but then we did a couple of takes with the loudspeaker, sometimes we lip-syncing with the soundtrack, and when it came to guitar and piano, sometimes we would mute the instruments just to get like a clean vocal recording, or we’d get the whole thing recorded with both the guitar, and voice, sometimes none of it. It was all kinds of what we were feeling on the day, which made everything super collaborative and easy. 

It was definitely a very technical learning experience for me. The earwig was really funny because they were also like thousands of dollars,  I was so stressed because they’re tiny

Alana: Ella is downplaying by a major degree, her level of talent,. There are two moments, where it’s completely and entirely live. She’s playing guitar and singing live on set. So she is just an extreme talent, and when we were first finding out whether or not she could sing, because we didn’t really know coming in, I was like, ” Oh, can you just send me just a note on your phone of yourself if you want to play guitar and sing? She sent us, I was like, she could be a signed recording artist. I was like, “My job is done! It was amazing to work with her, and just every time she was in the booth, she was bringing all of her heart and soul to these songs, and you can hear it, I think, and feel it in the show and hear it on the soundtrack.

Daniel: How do you go about finding songs that help shape the overall world and atmosphere?

Amanda: The overall atmosphere goes back to , experimentation and trying things with our editors and with our team. 

We as music people are listening to music pretty constantly. We’re, reaching out to our label partners. Island was such a great partner from the beginning, we have such a good relationship with the same people over there and all the universal groups as well. So they were sending us music really, early. Because we wanted the show to feel current, we were asking for new unreleased stuff. We have Asha Banks. We were really grateful for the people who were open to sending us that type of unreleased stuff.

The song with the lyrics and the feeling and the moment, and like, even the structure just all needs to align with, like, what represents with us and the editors and the showrunners. I think one of the things that’s really special about the sync community and music supervision and pitching is that it’s humungous and everybody is really awesome, really kind and it feels like, it’s just really collaborative and supportive and wide reaching. I love getting to reach out to the labels I love listening to on Spotify and finding things on my own and checking out playlists that I know I love and I can get new music from. I also love utilising those connections I have, because then it’s just like we’re using all the resources and then collaborating with the team and it all. Then the magic happens. 

Alana: When we started this project and we knew it was gonna be eight episodes, we had no idea the amount of music that would end up happening in the show, and it ended up being, what, Amanda? Over 20 cameras for the show. Everyone from Amanda and Anna, her co-supervisor, to Louisa, Gina, and all of the right, everybody on set, and especially a huge shout out to our actors, because they had crazy schedules, and then they would come to the studio and give it everything every single time. Everyone was 110% all in on this entire project the whole time. It was inspiring, it was a joy to work on. It was so much work, and we were loving every minute of it. Everyone had their whole heart in it. So it was a great experience for all of us. 

Ella also said that listening to music while reading the script had a huge impact on the characters. She mentioned creating a playlist for Hannah to help get into that emotional headspace, which made the experience even more meaningful. Music is so impactful—it really helps drive the story forward and, for me, it also helps It really drives the story forward as just a show and also it helps me progress in the character and during my scenes. I think for all of us, like we all had playlists, which was really fun to kind of hear everybody else’s and everybody’s take on what these characters might be hearing or listening to in their day to day lives.

When asked about fan favourite moments from the book to get right musically, Amanda said, “we knew we wanted to include One Direction in the show, but had to work out how. That was really the big thing from the books that kept kind of coming back a lot of ways. At the end of the day, what a music supervisor’s job is, is to bring the story that’s being told by the showrunners and the writers to life and like that’s the story we’re bringing to life!”

Off Campus is now streaming on Prime Video.