‘Dìdi’ Music Supervisor Toko Nagata on Making a Soundtrack That Doubles as an Aughts Time Capsule

Watching Sean Wang’s new dramedy Dìdi feels a bit of like flipping via an outdated photograph album. Starring Izaac Wang as Chris, an alternately disaffected and loving teenage boy coming of age in a Taiwanese American household in 2008, it’s rife with grainy YouTube skate movies, chats with AIM’s SmarterChild bot, and MySpace “High 8” rating pages. But it surely’s the movie’s exactly curated interval music (hey, Hellogoodbye) that makes Didi really feel particularly immersive.

Vogue spoke to Didi music supervisor Toko Nagata about placing collectively the proper Dìdi playlist, taking inspiration from Wang’s pals’ music tastes, and the current enhance in illustration of Asian and Asian American musical artists.

Vogue: How did the earliest conversations in regards to the music in Didi go?

Toko Nagata: I’m good pals with the director, Sean, so I’ve been listening to about this script for a very long time. Lots of people in LA are like, “Oh, I’m making a film. Do you wish to work on it?” And also you’re sort of like, “Certain.” However then Sean was like, “Right here’s the script, we’re going to shoot it.” We positively had lots of conversations earlier than taking pictures about what the sound would really feel like; it’s semi-autobiographical, and Sean was this age in 2008, so it’s like, okay, what was Sean listening to? Lots of characters are loosely primarily based off of individuals in his life, like Vivian, the older sister, who was in that pop-punk world. The actual Vivian and Sean grew up collectively round Warped Tour stuff, and it was actually useful that Vivian’s certainly one of my finest pals, as a result of we had a brainstorming session the place we had been all simply sitting round the home throwing out music concepts and including them to a playlist.

Early on, I reached out to Future Islands, who had been tremendous concerned in skate tradition. They had been like, “Oh, yeah, you should use this album,” which was cool, as a result of they’re large and it’s an indie challenge, so it’s exhausting to get greater bands on board. However once I instructed Sean Future Islands stated we may use this album, he was like, “Oh, superior, however that was launched within the fall of 2008 and we’re in the summertime of 2008.” I feel he did that in all points of the film, which actually cemented the authenticity of the challenge. I felt prefer it was nearly a documentary snapshot into this particular expertise.