Breaking Down the Soundtrack
How do you translate the cinematic world of Charlie Kaufman into music? In this session, composer Ella van der Woude takes the audience behind the scenes of her soundtrack for How to Shoot a Ghost, Charlie Kaufman’s short film about two departed souls wandering through Athens. Using excerpts, musical choices, and specific scenes, Ella reveals how the score came to life: from initial intuitions and conversations about tone, to the search for instrumentation, texture, emotion, and space. How do you decide when music should carry a scene, when it should step back, and how do you work with a film that moves between melancholy, memory, alienation, and beauty? A deep-dive session for composers and other creators curious about the creative process behind a soundtrack.
This session is Dutch spoken.
Ella van der Woude
Composer, NLElla van der Woude is a Swiss-Dutch composer whose works include Halfdan Ullman Tøndel’s drama Armand (2024), Halina Reijn’s psychological thriller Instinct (2019), and Ena Sendijarević’s roadmovie Take Me Somewhere Nice (2019).
In 2022, Ella became the first female film composer to win a Golden Calf (Dutch Film Prize) for Nico van den Brink’s horror picture Moloch (2022). In 2025, she won her second Golden Calf for scoring Jan-Willem van Ewijk’s family drama Alpha. (2024). In 2025, she composed the score for How to Shoot a Ghost, a short film directed by Charlie Kaufman that premiered at Venice’s film festival.