Josh LaCount sits down with award-winning composer Nainita Desai to discuss her work on the new live-action video game, “Immortality.”
Interview with “Immortality” composer, Nainita Desai.
In this conversation, Josh LaCount chats with Nainita Desai about her multi-themed score for “Immortality,” a non-linear live-action video game immersing you into three cult movies from the writers of “The Queen’s Gambit, Lost Highway, Wild at Heart, and Don’t Look Now.”
“In Immortality, you investigate the mysterious disappearance of Marissa Marcel – an actress who was set to become a huge star in the ’70s but only ever starred in three films that were never publicly released, and players must sift through the lost footage of Marissa’s films from 1968, 1970, and 1999 to uncover what happened to her.”
Nainita discusses her start as a composer, her instrumentation choices, her composing process, her upcoming Emmy nominations, and more.
About Nainita Desai
Two-time Emmy nominee, Nainita Desai, is the World Soundtrack Awards 2021 winner for Discovery of the Year. Nainita was described by Empire Magazine as one of the Top 5 Composers to Watch for 2022 and leading UK film critic Mark Kermode’s Top 3 Film Scores of 2021.
Amongst various BAFTA, Oscar, and Emmy acclaimed productions, Nainita’s recent projects include the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, produced by Oscar winner Jimmy Chinn, for which her score has earned Emmy, HMMA, and ASCAP Composer Choice nominations. Other credits include the feature documentary Body Parts which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, as well as the interactive film-video game Immortality created by Sam Barlow.
Desai’s other credits include Oscar-nominated and BAFTA & Cannes-winning feature doc For Sama, plus Sundance’s The Reason I Jump, an immersive cinematic exploration of neurodiversity, for which she received a News and Documentary Emmy nomination for Best Music.
Recent projects
Recent projects include BBC dramas Unprecedented (James Norton, Olivia Williams), Lucy Kirkwood’s drama Maryland, BAFTA nominated American Murder (Netflix’s most-watched documentary of 2020), ITV crime drama series The Tower (Gemma Whelan), as well as Kevin Macdonald’s The Story Of Us and the interactive film-video game Telling Lies released by Annapurna Interactive. Upcoming drama series include BBC1 action thriller Crossfire (Keeley Hawes), SKY drama Funny Woman (Gemma Arterton), a major drama series for Disney+, amongst landmark series Earthsounds for Apple TV+, Predators for Sky/Netflix, a video game for Electronic Arts and BAFTA winning & Oscar-nominated director Farah Nabulsi’s forthcoming feature political thriller The Teacher.
Following a degree in Mathematics and studying sound for the film at the NFTS in the UK, Nainita began her career as a sound designer on feature films for directors including Werner Herzog and Bertolucci, as well as assistant music engineering for Peter Gabriel. An Ivor Novello, double BIFA, and Cinema Eye Honors nominee; BAFTA Breakthrough Brit, RTS award winner, and IFMCA Breakthrough Composer of the Year 2019, Nainita moves seamlessly between working with orchestras, to scores utilizing her collection of custom-made instruments, incorporating electronics, found sound, and experimental sound design which has informed her experimental, deeply immersive approach.
She is also an elected senate member of the Ivor’s Academy and sits on the BAFTA Film Committee and AMPAS Intl Committee.
“Immortality”
IMMORTALITY is the new game from Half Mermaid, a video game production company based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded in 2017 by triple Bafta-winning writer-director Sam Barlow, creator of Her Story. The game centers around Marissa Marcel, a film star who made three movies that were ever released, and then disappeared. The game will be available on August 30th, 2022 on Steam, GOG, Xbox Series X/S, Game Pass, iPhone & Android via Netflix Games.
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