The first episode of True Horror was actually the fourth episode in production. However, after some rejigging of schedules, this ended up being the third score I wrote for the show and came without respite off the back of previous episodes.
I had decided to write an entirely new soundtrack for each episode, which at this point in production amounted to me having around four days to write an entire soundtrack… from scratch. Seeing as this was around 45 minutes of music it was a bit of a mammoth task. The schedule was so packed, that I was writing the last cues on the same morning as the final mix.
When I first saw the film for the episode, I almost immediately decided on the instrumentation I would use. There are a few staples between the episodes such as Tuned Percussion and a little bit of piano but the main elements of this episode were to be brass and choir.
As well as giving a tinge of Welsh-ness, the brass and choir, within themselves, both represent opposing sides of the narrative. The Choir is split into a clean sounding angelic sound and a warped, out of pitch more muddy one. There is a theme throughout the show of Christianity versus the Old Pagan Gods and within this context, the angelic vocals represent the hope that Christianity gave the tormented family. In contrast to this, the mutated choir sounds are an inversion and represent the opposing unsettling, unknown forces at play.
This duality of instrumental elements is also mirrored in the brass, with the clean ‘trumpets of Heaven’, burning through the murk of warped brass and choir more and more as the episode progresses. This can be heard in my track towards the tail end of the episode Put on the Armour of God, which has the clean brass overpowering the other instrumentation.
Structurally, due to the time constraints of only having a few days to write everything, there is a rather stripped back feel in places (for my compositional style at least) and I quite literally took the first tune I composed and developed it for the entire episode. I will do a breakdown of some key themes.
Send A Message
Blurry eyed and immediately after coming off the back of another episode, I fired up a choir and this was the aforementioned first melody I conjured up. I liked it so much that I ran with it. As this is the opening prologue of the episode, I wanted to set the scene and establish all the elements that would come into play throughout the story. A solo voice slowly falling into a murky sludge… this is the base atmosphere of the episode.
Hold It Together
This represents the struggle of faith against the troubling influence of the house. It also symbolises the power of a wife’s love towards helping her husband snap out of his current tormented state. A recurring thematic device happens again here, the choir battling over the oppressive sludge below.
Shouldn’t Have Died
This third theme represents rage. Especially at 2:22 which is the maddening state of a man under the influence of darkness. This is perhaps the worst that a character’s mental state reaches in the story (and mine when I was writing it). Even though it may not sound so on first listen (apart from the high brass) this is entirely vocal based. This is to represent how our character is completely off the path at this point, out of reach of the comforting armour of faith. The voices of the angels are now unrecognizable and merely a low dark drone, devoid of comfort and beauty.
Production Company : Eleven Film Ltd
Director : Tom Kingsley
Executive Producers : Jamie Campbell, Alex Marengo, Joel Wilson
Sound Mix : Greg Gettens (Molinare)
Music Composition : Jack Matthias