BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
A computer hack leaks everyone’s deepest secrets. A city is driven to insanity. And it all comes together as a dark comedy thriller…with a hint of spaghetti western in the soundtrack.
Wait – what?
This is Assassination Nation, the blockbuster film that first premiered at Sundance and is today released in Australian cinemas.
So how do you score such a bloody concoction of violence, sex, and destruction of the digital world? With a little ambience, a little orchestra, and everything in between.
Los Angeles composer Ian Hultquist, a former Passion Pit member who has composed for documentaries and films with for Netflix and HBO, talks us through his soundtrack to Assassination Nation.
And yes, it’s as wild as it sounds.
Hi Ian! So, Assassination Nation. How’d you get involved with the soundtrack?
Hello there! I was originally sent the script by my agent in the fall of 2016, and once I read it I said: ‘Please let me speak to this director immediately!’. I sent off a reel of my music for Sam Levinson (director, writer) to check out, and thankfully he really responded to a few of the pieces.
He and I had a Skype call in I think December of that year, where we just talked about movies and music, and some grand ideas about this project. Then they started filming the following spring, and I started writing some initial ideas around the same time.
The plotline is wild – but hints at realism, by the looks of things. How do you go about conceptualising a soundtrack to a film based on digital hacking?
It took us a long time and a ton of experimentation to sort out the right sound for this story. On top of just the digital hacking aspect, this film covers so much ground. Social and political issues, teen high school drama; some moments are just straight up horror – it’s all over the place! We kept throwing different genres at the screen to see what sticks.
At one point, nearly the entire film was scored like a spaghetti western. That didn’t quite feel right, but some of those elements we discovered in that genre did still stuck through til the end.
How important is it to use electronic versus real instrumentation when generating a score reflecting an electronic world?
At first, I was really focusing on making quite a synth-heavy score; it was sounding very Cliff Martinez-ish. Then we did a 180, and jumped to a completely organic palette, guitars, strings, woodwinds, etc. I think once we started to narrow it in, that’s where we discovered the mesh of electronically processing audio. We wanted the music to kinda sound like it had been filtered through the world of the film. It almost sounds like a photo looks after it’s been re-posted on Instagram a thousand times. It’s degraded, and distorted, and has a weird other-worldly quality to it.
You’ve used a range of styles from trap to ambient to orchestral, and even spaghetti western as you’ve mentioned. How would you therefore describe the idea of a truly ‘cinematic’ sound? Does it need to reflect the demands of individual films like in the case of Assassination Nation, or does ‘film music’ as a genre have elements of its own?
It’s true, this score really turned into quite a crazy genre mash-up! I think having something sounding cinematic is really a matter of how it’s helping the film tell the story. If a piece of music is being placed at a certain scene to really deliver a character moment or big plot point, then it can be considered cinematic.
There are some people who say that ‘a real score can only be orchestra’, but I don’t agree with that at all. I think some of the most inspiring scores of the past few years have been ones that are really steeped in electronics, or interesting combinations of sounds. It really comes down to how you implement the sounds you’re making.
Let’s talk a little bit about you. You studied film scoring and composition in your academic years. So how much has what you learnt during your studies made an impact on your work in films including Assassination Nation?
I think that when it comes to scoring, I seem to draw from all aspects of my musical life thus far. I did learn a lot at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, but the curriculum focused a lot on the history of scoring and ‘this is how they used to do things’; most of which has completely changed with the advances in technology and instruments.
I like to utilise a lot of the techniques I learned working with Passion Pit all those years, or through doing remixes and producing songs.
First and foremost, though, it’s always a matter of how to read the picture in front you; how to emotionally react to that story through music and sound. And that is something that you continue to develop and learn over time.
Now that you’ve achieved a great level of professional success, how do you go about selecting the projects you want to work on?
You are very kind to say that [laughs]! I think it still comes down to whether or not the story excites me on a personal and creative level. I’ve tried to keep to that even when I was first starting off, as well. You end up spending a great deal of time on these projects (usually six-eight weeks; sometimes much, much longer!), so it helps to stay excited when the story is interesting and challenging.
What advice would you give to young composers looking to break into the screen industry?
I always tell people that, if they are interested in scoring, they should give it a shot, and start small. Make friends with filmmakers and see if they’ll let you write some music for a short film, or something like that. A lot of people that come from bands have told me they want to try scoring, and then once they do it they go: ‘Well, that was way too much work’, or “I didn’t want to do revisions’. It’s not an easy job!
I love what I do, and feel extremely lucky to be doing it – but I don’t want anyone to ever think it’s an easy thing to do. It’s an ongoing creative journey, and hopefully you learn something new each time you do it. And if you are lucky, it can be a life-long career; fingers crossed.
Assassination Nation is in Australian cinemas today.
Images supplied.
