The passing of Wes Craven left a hole in horror’s heart that can probably never be filled. On top of writing and directing some of the most iconic genre titles from the past four decades, Craven also produced a great many titles that have brought huge smiles across our faces, titles like Carnival of Souls, Wishmaster, The Hills Have Eyes, and more.
Earlier this month, The Girl in the Photographs, which was executively produced by Craven, hit VOD and limited theaters. Directed by Nick Simon and starring Kal Penn, Claudia Lee, Katherine Isabelle, and Mitch Pileggi, our own Luiz H.C. called the film a, “…bittersweet popcorn thriller.”
To celebrate the upcoming release of the film’s score, we’ve spoken with composer Nima Fakhara about his process of working on the movie, the instruments that evoke strong and visceral responses, and more. Additionally, we have an exclusive sampler that you can listen to below.
You can pre-order Fakhara’s score, which comes out this Friday, via iTunes.
Obviously The Girl in the Photographs being the last film that Wes Craven executively produced will have some serious weight behind it. Did his involvement affect your approach to scoring the film?
Absolutely! The entire movie is dedicated to him, including the soundtrack. When I started working on the project we all knew that we wanted to do something of a throwback to the old ways of horror films and their scores; The throwback of having “hummable” melodies as themes for each character. At the same time I wanted to stay true to the modern genre so a merger of old school ways and modern production techniques were used.
What kind of approach did you take to score this film?
Nick and I wanted thematic ideas for the characters so one of the most important things about the music was to tell a human-like story, especially for the killers, Tom and Jerry. For Coleen, our female lead, I created a a lullaby of sorts with weird twists at moments. For Tom and Jerry, I wrote a passacaglia, which is a repetitive motif that keeps building and gets bigger each time its repeated. The reason I chose this approach was to create tension, a sense of discomfort, an unsettling feeling, dread and fear at every corner. When I started looking at instruments and my color palate I decided to record four Cellos and have them play in a string quartet manner, such that the players were actually playing Violin pieces. That extreme playing style and register on the instruments created this unsettled, yet eerie sound that can be heard in the score.
The music to a horror film can often make or break the tension, suspense, and terror. How do you ensure that those emotions are triggered by your music?
Choosing the right color palate for the project is very important. One of the things that I did for The Girl In The Photographs, was to insure that organic sounds were used to capture and convey the small town feeling. Synthesized instruments were used as sound models so that an acoustic instrument can replicate that sound in an organic and analog way. For example, there is a bass sound in the music when we are with Tom and Jerry in their “House”. This sound was first modeled with a synth instrument and then replicated with multiple upright basses and electro-acoustic recording techniques on frame drums. For me, once these textures are just right, the music will sit perfectly alongside the picture as a unified story-telling character.
Some instruments can send shivers up and down my spine, no matter how they’re used. What are some creepy-sounding instruments that you personally relish the opportunity to use?
I love using orchestras and traditional instruments and messing with there sounds. I like breaking boundaries and seeing what can be created, like “going down a rabbit hole and seeing whats down there!” Experimenting and finding new approaches, sounds, textures, and techniques have always excited me and have fortunately been good to me. Even though I have crazy ideas and at times these ideas do not carry over to the way I had planned, they always create something interesting!
You worked with director Nick Simon several times in the past. How did you two form your relationship?
Our first film was Removal. I was introduced to Nick via a very good friend of mine, producer Chady Mattar. Since then I have been fortunate enough to have the privilege of working with Nick on most of his projects including The Pyramid where he was a Writer. What I love about our relationship is that we start working together in very early stages of the development of the story. Nick sends me rough ideas of the script, stories, sketches, or even pictures and we start to discuss feeling and atmospheres more than the actual music. I then begin exploring different music ideas by writing a large suite, usually 40 to 50 minutes of music … This is me, as I described “Going down the rabbit hole and seeing whats down there!” With this approach usually I have already written the music for the project even before shooting starts. Music is massaged, changed accordingly to the edit and then wild ideas are thrown around to see what other things can be done. So you can see our relationship is very much a collaborative partnership.
Horror scores and soundtracks have seen a large resurgence via vinyl records. What do you think is the reason for this? Is it that horror fans are passionate collectors or does the music in the horror world have some kind of power when played via wax?
Well, music sounds better on vinyl. You hear slight shifts and wider ranges of frequency which you usually don’t catch on different formats. Specifically for me, I thrive for imperfections; anything that has a hiss, broken hardwares, movements of the chairs of the musicians, breaths and whispers of singers, analog glitches and mistakes of players are what make me smile. With different formats you usually can’t hear them or they are masked. I personally believe with horror and thriller scores these slight presentations of frequencies are what listeners are looking for. You never know, with turns of the record you might capture and awaken things that you perhaps otherwise couldn’t!
