Drama Film Composer

Scoring drama is largely an exercise in tastefulness. Emotion is essential, but there are many ways to create it, and the most obvious musical choice is not always the most powerful one.

A score can become bigger as the drama becomes bigger, but it does not always need to. Sometimes a simple piano-and-strings texture can carry more emotional weight than a full orchestra. Sometimes the most effective decision is to leave space around a melody rather than continually adding to it.

For me, emotional music should retain a sense of dignity and reservation. The objective is not to force an audience toward an emotion. It is to create the conditions in which that emotion can emerge naturally from the picture.

One of the most powerful tools in dramatic scoring is familiarity.

A relatively simple theme can first appear during moments that are not especially dramatic. The audience begins to know it without necessarily being conscious of the process. When that same musical idea returns against a much more emotional scene, the history the audience already has with the theme can give it enormous weight.

The music does not have to suddenly announce that the moment is important. The film has already taught the audience what the music means.

Purely beautiful music can sometimes become sentimental when a scene is already carrying a great deal of emotion.

One way I approach that problem is by allowing beauty and ugliness to coexist. A beautiful melodic idea can be surrounded by harmonic tension, an imperfect texture, an unexpected note, or something slightly unresolved.

That contrast can preserve the emotional power of the music without allowing it to become overly polished or sentimental.