BY SAM GILLIES
For the past few years, Christopher de Groot has focused on writing film music amongst his other projects as composer, improviser and electronic artist. His atypical attitude to film scoring has brought a unique depth and resonance to many of his film scores, as he combines electronic and acoustic sounds to unique effect; an attitude fuelled by his appreciation of new music practices and the music of master film composers such as Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann.
Chris’ latest film score Sororal has been nominated for Best Original Music at the 26th West Australian Screen Awards, and he looks forward to its release on Swedish record label Screamworks. I spoke to Chris about working as a film composer in Australia and his unique approach to composition.
How would you characterise your music?
My music is characterised by an interest in orchestration and recording. I feel as though these two aspects of my practice have bled into one another. There is a fair amount of crossover between the two skills and I often approach my acoustic writing through the lens of my recording and studio knowledge and vice versa. In terms of film music, each project is different but my music can’t escape the funnel of my musical interests in 20th Century classical music, electronics, sound design and cult film soundtracks.
What appeals to you about working with film music?
My life has been shaped by the 1980s/90s VHS home video revolution. I watched a lot of films when I was a kid. My dad died when I was very young and my mum had to work a lot. During the school holidays my brother, sister and I would rent 10 to 20 movies at a time and watch them when my mum was at work (quite often films that were not age appropriate!). My brain is wired to a shitty old VHS player! I guess it all started there. While I was studying music at university, I began listening to the film music of Bernard Herrmann, which then got me thinking about writing film music. I still get a kick out of watching films. As a film composer, I enjoy being part of a bigger project – being a composer on your own can be lonely. When collaboration with a director works well you gain a life-long friend. Although, when it doesn’t, it can be pretty horrible.
Tell me a little bit about how you came to be involved in your most recent project Sororal.
I worked with director Sam Barrett previously on a film noir called Esoterica. We had a very successful collaboration with this film and built up a good rapport. We started talking about his new project even before Esoterica had finished post-production. Sam was interested in creating something influenced by Italian giallo films and he got me watching as many giallo’s as he could get his hands on. When I first started I thought giallo was a name of a director! I had a lot of research to do in those early stages.
One of the tropes of giallo films is their use of very expressive, sometimes outrageous musical scores. Ennio Morricone and soundtrack-band Goblin created some of the best soundtracks in the genre – they were doing stuff in their scores that you would never hear in a Hollywood horror film at that time. I’m a big fan of Morricone’s giallo scores. Atonality, free jazz, dissonance, genre mixing, and sound effects (he loves sexy women’s voices moaning… are they in pleasure or pain?) are present in much of Morricone’s early scores. They’re deliciously weird and wonderful.
I was invited on set a number of times to soak up the atmosphere, and ended up as an extra in two scenes! I think that being part of a project from the ground up helps greatly when discussing musical issues with the director. If you are a part of things early on you start to create a language around the film. Each film has its own unique language and you’ve got to learn how to talk it.
How did you approach this project compositionally? What relationships were you hoping to draw upon between the film, the narrative and the music?
Sororal uses highly expressionistic lighting, very much in the style of Dario Argento’s films Suspira and Inferno. In the beginning my idea was to have a score that matched the outrageousness of this lighting – music that had a lot of unusual timbres and textures, or perhaps more accurately unusual instrumentations melding together. I started looking into analogue synthesisers and bought some gear while I was in Europe on my honeymoon.
Sororal’s plot has supernatural elements that, combined with extremely bold lighting, made me think that an electronic component might be a good sonic match for the film. I also discovered Bulgarian choir music during the discussion stages, particularly an album called Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (“The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices”). Other music we listened to in preparation was, of course, Goblin and Morricone, but also Witold Lutosławski’s choir music, and some of Ligeti’s larger scale works.
The soundtrack is scored for brass, choir, rhythm section (two drum kits, electric cello, electric guitar, cimbalom and vibraphone) and analogue synthesisers. The two drum kits worked amazingly. When you use two kits in well-written, closely matched rhythmic patterns every beat becomes a flam, which makes the beat much wider. The effect is enhanced sonic power!
Overall, we wanted to play the emotional aspects of the film whilst also going to town on the thriller elements of the film’s action. There is a fairly deep emotional aspect to the film (love lost and then found, an artist tormented by her visions) and some of the ambient electronic pieces underscore that.
The choir permeates through the score at various points but is strongest around The Dr. Sosa character. The main character has terrifying visions that are the result of Dr Sosa’s experiments into the emotions of love. Dr Sosa’s research stems back to Greek mythology – even though the choir music is not Greek in any way, I was looking for a musical style that could reflect an idea with a long history, and had an ancient mythical quality to it. My initial idea behind using a brass section was to add weight depth to some of the synth parts, it does that during some of the more tender moments but it also helps in adding drive and power to some of the prog-rock sounding cues.
Do you find the financial restrictions of the independent film shape the music you write? How did they shape the compositional and recoding process for Sororal?
I made a decision early on in my film career that if a project interested me I would try extremely hard to create amazing music regardless of the budget. No one is getting rich off Indie features, so you may as well walk away with a killer soundtrack, and hopefully turn some heads in the process. In a way, small budgets spur me on to create ambitious scores, it’s like I’m being dared or something!
We recorded the score in four different parts: I recorded the synths and guitar parts in my bedroom, the brass was recorded at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, the choir at St Paul’s Church in Manora, and the rhythm section at Soundfield Studio. It would have been logistically and financially difficult to record all four of these elements at the same time (rehearsals would have been a nightmare too). I was able to work with the amazing choral director Micheál McCarthy who really helped me out. Micheál was able to hand pick local voices that he knew were good sight singers, which made for fewer rehearsals. We ended up with eight voices that we recorded twice to make sound like sixteen. Then after the sessions were over we pumped the recorded vocals through speakers in the church and rerecorded that. So eight voices sound like 32!
The history of film music is littered with composers that have had to compromise their ideas to work on a project or, in more extreme cases, are suddenly cut from the project altogether. Do you have any advice for film composers when seeking projects out? What are the signs of a potentially successful collaboration?
I’ve been thrown off a couple of short film projects, all for pretty dumb shit, really. I think it all comes down to you and the director doing your homework, and talking very early on. A director that comes with you on the journey and is willing to meet with you often, listen to your ideas, and approach the collaboration with an open mind is very valuable. Listening, watching and sharing music is very important. I usually try to find out as much as I can about the film I’m about to score and what has influenced it. It gives you a point of reference for discussions with the director.
Some advice I would give young film composers is that they need to like the director they are working with. If you think the director is a douche after the first meeting, get out now, because you’re going to have to see him or her a lot during the process. Directors don’t need to have a lot of musical knowledge but if they have at least checked out some different music and know a few movements within the history of cinema. That helps a lot. No film is 100 per cent original, so you can always talk about the project in terms of other films and their scores. That’s always a good place to start. I would avoid directors that are fearful of talking about music – they usually let you go and write whatever you want, and then when you’re finished, hate everything you’ve done and throw you off the project!
How do your musical and compositional intentions differ in a live context from your film music?
That’s very tough question. When writing film music your outlook is always towards the finished product, how will it sound, how will it be recorded and mixed. You try and get things perfect and timing is, of course, very important. The final product exists forever as a recording and it probably will never be performed live – so getting it right matters. In contrast, when I’m improvising in a live context perfection is not the aim. You’re still trying to create a sonic experience but the process, the act of composing before the audience’s eyes, is part of the experience. There’s an element of struggle in the performance that makes the experience electric.
How did you come to incorporate electronics into your music?
I’m a big fan of interesting sound design, sound art, and noise music. My composition is getting more and more intertwined with my love of sonic art. I started off my musical journey as a guitar player. In high school, I was obsessed with Jimi Hendrix, his sonic collages and innovative recording techniques have had a deep and lasting effect on my music. In high school, I messed around a lot with a four-track cassette recorder overdubbing instruments, and trying to write rock songs. I rejected electronics and the guitar for a while when I was studying jazz music as a pianist. I side stepped the piano to write big band music, then moved on to more avant-garde notated music, and came full circle to work with electronics and recording again like it was 1995!
I think a levelling out has occurred in relation to electronic equipment, software programs, plugins, and controllers. They’re all of such high quality now that the type of gear you use is almost of no concern. It’s all about your compositional ideas and your execution (if only Edgard Varèse were alive today!).
You made the move from Perth to Melbourne sometime in 2012. What prompted this move? What has been your experience pursuing musical projects in another state?
Throughout history artists have always gravitated to places of high cultural activity. For instance, in the 1960s, artists were flocking to Greenwich Village in New York City. I got in my car with my dog Arnold and drove to Melbourne the week we finished mixing the Sororal soundtrack. A few things prompted my move, but suffice to say some of my very good film collaborators were moving east to pursue their careers further, and I was keen to keep these relationships going and growing. I was also keen to live and work in another city for a while. I was born in Perth, grew up in Perth and wound up at a WA university – I studied at WAAPA for over 10 years! I guess I was looking for a bit of a change of scenery. I felt like I was getting too comfortable in WA.
I’ve found pursuing projects here in Melbourne tough, but not impossible. I had built a large network of peers, collaborators, musicians and friends over the course of 10 years in Perth and I had to start all over again in Melbourne. I don’t think I was quite prepared for how tough that would be, both financially and emotionally. I’ve managed to make some good connections here though, particularly in the theatre arena, and I’ve even managed to secure an agent. I’m in quite a happy and excited place now.
Christopher is currently composing and constructing sound design for a theatre adaptation of Persona with Sororal director Sam Barrett. The “1950s music concrete-inspired score with Lynchian sound design” will premier at the Monash Container Festival in late July. He is also working on a theatre adaptation of Zola’s Théresé Raquin which will be staged at Theatre Works in August.
Image supplied.
