Home is the Ocean (2024)
Documentary

Soundtrack Available on all major Streaming Platforms: Linktree

Directed and written by Livia Vonaesch
Produced by Mirjam von Arx, ican films gmbh und SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, SRG SSR
World Sales Autlook Filmsales GmbH
Distribution Schweiz Praesens Film AG

FESTIVALS

FIPADOC Festival International de Documentaires audiovisuels
60. Solothurner Filmtage
46. Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis Saarbrücken
20. Zurich Film Festival
One World International Film Festival Prague

Plot:
In the infinity of the sea, far from the comfort zone, a Swiss family of eight has found their home.
The parents set sail 25 years ago to conduct field-based research in the world’s most remote regions and inspire youth to save our planet. Along the way, their 6 children were born, all in a different corner of the world. They live together 24 hours a day in 20 square metres of living space. Seven days a week. Each family member plays an important role in this well-coordinated team. This is the only way the system works. But as their children grow up, they face new challenges and doubts.
The filmmaker accompanied the Schwörer family for seven years and documented how the Schwörers and their six children question conventional norms of upbringing, education, home and security. Until a storm forces them to rethink their life choices and family constellation.

THE MUSIC
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack:

HOME IS THE OCEAN
Ambient, Piano, Polyrhythmic, Organic Drones

The film: When we first met the director Livia Vonaesch, she told us about this incredible family living on a small sailing boat on the ocean since 20 years and that she accompanied them during the last 7 years. It’s a documentary about their everyday lives and challenges that take place on a boat in nature’s force.
The challenge: As the space on such a boat is very limited, filming was also quite restricted also due to small cameras. It meant that the powerful, deep ocean constantly surrounding the boat needed to be felt through the music. We came to the conclusion that it’s best to musically score the nature surrounding the family. This sparked the idea to create a music that sounds like the ocean, the rattling boat and all of the different surroundings of the nature.
The approach: It was our aim to recreate the sound of the ocean in different weather stages. We asked the director to send us all of the sounds that she collected on that journey that she can relate to.
We then studied the natural sounds that you hear on a boat like the moving of the mast and the stretching sounds of wood and of ropes and re-interpreted them on a musical level. It was our goal to create our own version of ambient music symbolizing the ocean, the boat, the wind and nature. E.g. if a rope in the wind continuously hit against the sailing boat, we would then mute a piano string and hit against it in a similar rhythm. If we would hear the waves roll, we would play a piano arpeggio in the same rhythm. Distant waves would be performed with cymbal rolls. Each track in another measurement and timing but ultimately finding together in the rhythm of nature. Combining all of these tracks together resulted in a very new way of poly rhythm. Each separate track moves in its own speed and together they periodically meet at different points.
It was our very own free interpretation of poly rhythm. Not a mathematical approach to poly rhythm on a vertical tempo line, We have re-imagined poly rhythm on a more intuitive and even less predictable way. The way nature works.

We also found that the common denominator of all sounds we got delivered (from the music that the family plays on the boat, their voices, the background rumbles and waves) is the key A.
This led us to compose multiple ambient tracks in the key of A.
You can hear these in their pure form in the OCEAN SUITE track.

The score was mainly played on a prepared Ibach grand piano and a Blüthner upright piano and enhanced with an array of different percussions, stringed instruments and subtle electronics.

Nearly every track contains about five different layers of piano, each acting as a separate movement of nature and when combined, creating a bigger general movement.
The aim of this soundtrack is to let listeners dive into a musical nature.

"To date this is probably our most personal score to me", says Diego Baldenweg "because I played all of the instruments, accompanying myself layer by layer, one movement after another in the rhythm of nature".

Music by Diego Baldenweg with Nora Baldenweg & Lionel Baldenweg
Music Arranged & Performed by: Diego Baldenweg
Mastering: Benjamin Gut

Publisher: Great Garbo
Label: MovieScore Media / Reality Bytes