Composing for screen has long been the field of sound art I am most interested in. Film is one of my main interests and I love listening to and analysing film soundtracks. The films that inspired me to start composing are Eraserhead, A Clockwork Orange, Requiem For a Dream, and Under The Skin. These films all have a distinct sound that struck a chord with me and started my curiosity in composing for film, whether it’s Eraserhead’s industrial hellscapes, A Clockwork Oranges’ oddly amusing and disturbing synthesiser tracks, Requiem For a Dream’s disorienting string quartet & hip hop pieces, or Under The Skin’s beautifully avant-garde soundtrack that seamlessly flows between haunting and terrifying. These works have all had a profound impact on how I see both music and film.
Horror movies and experimental cinema are the genres I primarily have an interest in composing for. Horror movies have lots of use for drones, noise, ambient and varying soundscapes, which as an artist is what I particularly enjoy creating. It is the composer’s job to evoke fear in the viewer through sound, such as using drones and inaudible tricks to evoke fear and feelings of dread in the audience. One example of this is the inaudible frequency used by Thomas Bangalter in Gaspar Noe’s film, Irreversible. The frequency is around 27-30 hz and can cause vertigo, nausea, and anxiety in the viewer. Tricks like this are very common in horror films, succeeding in subtly inducing unease.
For experimental cinema, there is more leeway to experiment with different types of music and sound. Since experimental cinema is such a vast genre and spans many genres and time periods. The reason there is more leeway is that experimental cinema typically is very different to your average movie, so sonically a lot of directors who work in this field e.g. David Lynch use sound design and scores that are very unusual. This gives the composer much more freedom to experiment with sounds. Some experimental film soundtracks I like are The Holy Mountain, Eraserhead, Enter The Void, and Fantastic Planet. The feeling a lot of these soundtracks evoke in you is anxiety, curiosity, fear, and relief.