How to write a film score for an inti­mate char­ac­ter study

Brighton-based com­pos­er Jim Williams cut his teeth work­ing on the films of Ben Wheat­ley: Down Ter­race, Kill List, Sight­seers and A Field in Eng­land all hold in their respec­tive atmos­pheres the psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­sion of a char­ac­ter-dri­ven approach to scor­ing. Also an accom­plished ses­sion musi­cian, Williams set aside the pur­suit of what he calls his own ​“musi­cal lan­guage” to col­lab­o­rate in the deliv­ery of direc­tors’ visions. What­ev­er has been lost in terms of pri­vate ambi­tion is the gain of film lovers who appre­ci­ate the inef­fa­ble mood that can be struck by an emo­tion­al score and how it takes us into the soul of a character.

More recent­ly, a new theme has emerged in Williams’ work. Both Julia Ducournau’s female can­ni­bal­ism hor­ror Raw and Michael Pearce’s eerie fairy tale psy­chodra­ma Beast con­cern the pri­mal awak­en­ings of meek female char­ac­ters. Nei­ther film would achieve such peaks of tin­gling emo­tion­al res­o­nance with­out the rich­ly dis­cor­dant sound of long­ing for some­thing beyond the binds of polite society.

It’s strik­ing that two char­ac­ter stud­ies with such a strong han­dle on female lust should be scored by a man. Asked about this point-blank, Williams laughs: ​“I’m in touch with my fem­i­nine side! I grew up with two old­er sis­ters and a moth­er and a very neu­rot­ic and colour­ful father so I’ve been used to being with women. I do my best try­ing to under­stand where women are. I’ve been mar­ried twice. It goes on!” Here Williams pro­vides an insight­ful six-point guide to the art of char­ac­ter-ori­ent­ed film scoring.

Any­one who watch­es a lot films will be famil­iar with the way scores can be used to under­line a super­fi­cial­ly obvi­ous men­tal state. As Williams explains: ​“If there’s a scary scene and there’s a big slab of noisy atonal­i­ty that’s mere­ly describ­ing what’s already being filmed. The clas­sic coun­terex­am­ple is in Rag­ing Bull where you have this ter­ri­ble vio­lence going on in the ring but you have beau­ti­ful music going on under­neath so the audi­ence has to engage in the vis­cer­al­i­ty and pain that these peo­ple are going through on a dif­fer­ent level.

“You’ve got to be very care­ful not to be too on the nose, so you still have to have a poet­ic voice to help the nar­ra­tive. In the black-and-white era [Hun­gar­i­an-Amer­i­can com­pos­er] Mik­lós Rózsa would tell you exact­ly what’s going on. In all his films the music says, ​‘This is very sad’, ​‘This is very tense’, ​‘This is very scary’, where­as now you have to have a much lighter touch. Music won’t tell you what’s going on in the script but it can tell you what’s going on between the lines and in the subtext.”

Williams brings out the psy­cho­log­i­cal inte­ri­or­i­ty of char­ac­ters by chan­nelling emo­tions which feels painstak­ing­ly trans­posed from his depths. When asked if he sees him­self in the fin­ished char­ac­ters of Moll from Beast and Jus­tine from Raw he replies, ​“Absolute­ly. One is so immersed in those char­ac­ters when writ­ing a score. Some of those scenes I try to con­vey what is hap­pen­ing at that par­tic­u­lar point with­out being over the top, with­out dis­tract­ing every­one from the more impor­tant thing of what’s hap­pen­ing next. I try to under­stand what peo­ple are feel­ing all the time. There are two ways of hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion. You talk about the nuts and bolts – what time we’re going to meet – or you con­sid­er how the oth­er per­son is feel­ing about meet­ing. It’s the stuff below that’s more inter­est­ing to me.”

Jus­tine in Raw is aban­doned and insa­tiable, an 18-year-old with lit­tle back­sto­ry, only an intense new appetite pro­pelling her for­wards. Moll’s awak­en­ing is set against a his­to­ry of oppres­sion from her fam­i­ly, from for­mer bul­lies and final­ly from aware­ness of her own capac­i­ty to do harm.

“When I first saw Raw I thought it was a great film before I wrote a sin­gle note. I just tried to keep that amaze­ment about what’s going on. Justine’s con­fused but she’s also quite lust­ful and real­ly up for it and then ques­tions her moral­i­ty. It’s a roller­coast­er ride of feel­ings. I went along with it and by the end we had some heartrend­ing music. Half way through we had vis­cer­al rock. Ear­ly doors we had some naïve children’s music and acoustic gui­tars so it’s just an arc and a real­ly excit­ing one.”

“The thing about scor­ing is that it frees you from the whole angst of try­ing to find your own musi­cal lan­guage. [It] stops me rak­ing over the coals of try­ing to become a rel­e­vant mod­ern com­pos­er. First of all you have to find out what kind of sound palette the direc­tor will go along with. If you’re going to bring some aspect of anoth­er cul­ture, whether it be nurs­ery rhymes of jazz or clas­si­cal or aton­al music that can be quite tricky for a direc­tor because they have their own vision of what they want their cul­tur­al expres­sion to be. The con­ver­sa­tion is whether or not the direc­tor wants to use the pow­er of the oth­er cul­ture, like Taran­ti­no does or Hitch­cock did, or whether they want to do some­thing that’s more of a non-spe­cif­ic musi­cal cul­tur­al event that doesn’t nod to a period.

“Raw was unusu­al because I used aspects of clas­si­cal har­mo­ny. That’s unusu­al in this day and age because it’s quite on the nose. Emo­tion­al­ly it’s very direct. It brings a lot of cul­tur­al bag­gage where­as some­thing that’s a bit more sound design or ambi­ent doesn’t, it’s just part of the fab­ric of mod­ern scor­ing and mod­ern music. Then I write some stuff then a lot of that will be reject­ed, and then I’ll write some more. I don’t mind this part of the process, as long as you can get to the point where we know we’re mov­ing for­ward. With Raw, there were key themes and scenes where they were passed and oth­er scenes where there were lots and lots of revi­sions until we had a spine in place.”

Dark groan­ing strings per­me­ate Beast, some­times bleed­ing into rich­er musi­cal com­po­si­tions, some­times stand­ing apart like a sin­gle tor­tured noise. This begs the ques­tion: where does the work of a com­pos­er end and that of a sound design­er begin?

“I have tak­en cred­it for some sound design­ers’ work and vice ver­sa because I’ve done music that’s sound design and sound design­ers have done sound design that turns out to be score. I con­sid­er myself a com­pos­er but when I’m required to do sound design, I can’t real­ly do the things that I’ve been dis­cussing so far, it’s more a mood as in: is it ten­sion? is it fore­bod­ing? That’s what sound design tends to do. It doesn’t real­ly talk of feel­ings so much, apart from per­haps anx­i­ety. Although I have a straight vio­la play­er in Beast, there are tonnes of occa­sions where I’ve put delays on it and mashed it up and slowed it down and then sud­den­ly is that part of the score or is it part of the sound design? It all becomes a grey area.”

Although he says he has set aside the pur­suit of a per­son­al musi­cal lan­guage, Williams does have his own musi­cal lan­guage. Maybe it’s not front and cen­tre. Maybe it’s in ser­vice of a col­lab­o­ra­tion. But it is unmis­tak­ably him. His lan­guage is one of pierc­ing com­pul­sion. Like a knife twist­ed in the guts then com­ing up clean, ready to be plunged in again and again. There are a few place in his scores where you get to hear this sen­si­bil­i­ty unleashed, even though they are not the norm.

“I don’t think there’s much place now for flash scor­ing where you admire the writ­ing in terms of scor­ing gym­nas­tics, like you had [Wolf­gang] Korn­gold and [Mik­los] Rózsa and [Max] Stein­er and all those peo­ple doing phe­nom­e­nal orches­tral works. Hav­ing said that, with Raw I think the music is pret­ty over­pow­er­ing in the fin­ger scene. I went for a ​’70s, ​’80s fuzz bass and dis­tort­ed ham­mond organ as well as syn­the­sis­ers. I went bom­bas­tic. We didn’t bud­get for a full orches­tra so I went for this grand rock band sound but not in the tra­di­tion­al sense. There are phe­nom­e­nal amounts of pos­si­bil­i­ties when it comes to writ­ing a scene as big as this. In terms of what I use I decide on what I think cul­tur­al­ly is going to give it a slap in the face.

“Some­times when you’re watch­ing the tele­vi­sion there’s sign­ing going on for the deaf. The per­son is sign­ing very pas­sion­ate­ly about what’s going on in the image and the image is quite pas­sive in com­par­i­son. Well, the music at the end of Beast and the music in the fin­ger scene of Raw is doing what that’s doing. It’s going, ​‘Oh my god!’ We real­ly have to take note of this.’ I’m not mak­ing it big as you would do if it was a roman­tic scene in the 1950s. I’m say­ing: this is dev­as­tat­ing, or trans­for­ma­tive. I let the audi­ence know: this is how you can feel.”

Find out where Beast is show­ing near you at beast.film