Victim

Victim is a twisted feature length horror/psychological thriller, and is the most unusual and experimental score I have ever written. There are 2 different sides to the score. The first is dark and disturbing, using a lot of synths, backwards piano, electric violin, sounds I created by striking, rubbing, and bowing inside a piano, and other unusual percussive and processed sounds. The other is orchestral and covers the emotional human part of the film, and in particular, is centered around a creepy lullaby theme that I wrote. The lullaby represent’s Rachel’s theme, and it’s constant presence lurks behind the character of Rachel who is almost never really seen onscreen.

I’m being vague as to what actually happens in the film, as I don’t want to give anything good away….or disgust you. You’re probably thinking this is another one of those gory horror films like Hostel or Turistas, but given the low budget nature of the film, it’s not really all that graphic. It’s more just extremely F’d up and twisted in a mental and emotional way.

Anyways, the difficulty in writing this score was finding the dark and twisted tone to compliment the disturbing nature of the movie, particularly to immerse the audience in the psychological trauma experienced by the main character. The psychological nature however gave the music a dramatic role, as it has to convey feelings that can’t be seen or spoken of, and puts you inside the mind of the characters. It was a very daunting task to undertake.

The recording sessions were both exciting and exhausting. I slept very little in the two weeks leading up to the sessions and felt a little out of it when I was conducting the orchestra. The studio we used wasn’t designed for such a big ensemble, we barely fit the 10 strings we recorded on one day, and the 7 brass on the other. Also the air conditioner made too much noise during recording, so we had to shut off the air whenever we were holed up in the studio. It got so hot, it felt like a sauna, or one of those really hot yoga rooms. Which isn’t so great when you’re trying to concentrate on making music, and we weren’t exactly dressed in bathing suits either (though that would have been nice).

In the end we got what we needed to record despite the grueling temperature. The musicians were all fantastic, and I had my good buddy/engineering extraordinaire John Rodd recording the music and keeping us all focused.

If this were infra-red, everything would be red. Photo by John Rodd.

I overdubbed some amazing violin and wind solos in my own studio. My amazing violinist, Nicole, played some beautiful solos, as well as electric violin. And the beautiful expressive oboe solos were performed by Kate Green. Erin Wilson is the beautiful voice you hear in the…uh….I’ll call it the transformation scene for now.

Click below to hear excerpts from the Victim Score.
Victim Excerpts mp3

This entry was posted on July 12, 2007 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Films. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.