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abc.net.au
February 16, 2006
Composing the score to Wolf Creek
By Kim Honan
Composing the original score to the Australian horror film Wolf Creek is a far cry from producing the debut album of Sydney singer/songwriter Lior, the beautifully crafted ARIA nominated Autumn Flow.
But as Melbourne based producer Francois Tetaz explains he was thankful not to be working on both projects at the same time as one was about a celebration of life and the other darkness.
“Different sorts of music express completely different things and I’m very much at home in many different worlds. I have quite an eclectic taste so I tend to like to get into lots of different projects like that, so for me I don’t see them being in opposition, I just see them being as part of music and part of life in that way,” he said.
His work on the original score to Wolf Creek saw Tetaz nominated for Best Sound at the 2005 Inside Film (IF) Awards and Best Original Music Score at the Australian Film Institute (AFI) 2005 Awards.
Tetaz had previously worked with Wolf Creek Director Greg McLean and after reading the script in its development was happy to work on the score.
“At that stage I don’t think it was quite as powerful as it turned out to be so the performances go way beyond I think where we imagined they could possibly go to. To start with it felt like it could go either way as a film but it’s ended up being really marvellous and really effecting,” Tetaz said.
In writing the music for the torture scenes, featuring John Jarrat (McLeod’s Daughters, Better Homes and Gardens) in the role of serial backpacker murderer Mick Taylor, Tetaz admits to feeling ill and having to turn off the sound to mask the screams of the characters.
“There’s quite a bit of score in those scenes and it’s quite detailed and quite finicky to write so it meant that in working with it I was working with a cut of the film and so forth but I had to watch those images over and over again, over probably a week for those sequences,” he said.
“Working on it like that is quite intense cause you’re kind of looking at violence close up and in detail and then looking at trying to add to it, or comment on it for an audience and that’s quite something to do because it’s not something you come across every day, in terms of interpreting the meaning of that for an audience or trying to build a bridge between the images and the audience, so I found it very effecting trying to do that honestly.”
Tetaz says what they were trying to do with the score in the film was remove the comfort zone that score in horror films often creates where it “pre-empts mood or supplies or supports directly emotionally what’s happening on the screen”.
“What we were trying to do was actually take that away so it meant that you observe the images without being guided emotionally with the music. You would then get things after the fact and so forth and get guidance but when these things actually happened there was very little score that led up to it or if it was there it was very very subtle,” he said.
“So instead of making it necessarily something that stood by itself, certainly in the beginning part of the film, the idea there was to actually remove it and make it as natural, do as little as possible really, and the idea was to stain the images rather than paint them so they don’t become a layer on top of it. They become something sort of below and then connects in a subtle way. But of course the end of the film it’s opposite to that, it’s quite grandiose and very emotive.”
One of the leading characters in the film is the landscape itself so in capturing the Australian outback Tetaz credits Alan Lamb’s renowned wire recordings previously used in The Boys and Kiss or Kill. Recorded in the 80s they are said to be some of the most unique and innovative field recordings ever produced in Australia.
“He recorded these abandoned telegraph wires in Western Australian on a property that he has there which he puts little microphones on and the wind resonates them and they make these huge sort of sound wells,” Tetaz said.
“They’re very random and so forth and they also pick up the sounds of the environment around and all the music in the first third of the film and a lot of the other pieces have those wire recordings as components. I repitched them and made them into musical works.”
“I really thought they connected really well and when I looked at this, there is something about them, I don’t know what it is, but they really work beautifully with that and they feel really Australian for some reason”.
Tetaz explains that generally what happens in a horror film where there is a particularly violent scene the music would not be in opposition to it but would tell you something about what was directly happening on screen.
“What we were trying to do with some of those scenes was actually opposing that and saying “well what would those characters, who are actually being hurt who are being tortured, what would it be like if an audience felt sympathy for that position” and you actually felt quite emotional and put yourself in their shoes so instead of actually scoring the violence we looked at scoring the emotional reaction and also trying to get empathy for those characters.”
He says the use of the string quartet in the score acted as a philosophical counterpoint to the horror that was happening. An example of this is the scene where Mick gets shot in the neck followed by one of the girls escaping from the shed.
“That score there when I was discussing it with Greg (McLean) originally I was saying “so do you want this to feel as if it’s going into some kind of paced thing” and he said “no no I want the audience to feel for the characters”. So part of the really emotive scores used underneath that scene, which is in total opposition it’s like a panicked run from a shed, it has this very lush very emotive dark counterpoint to it which works fabulously because you stay and have empathy for the characters rather than staying with the violence.”
Franc Tetaz has again teamed up with McLean to compose the score for his latest thriller film Rogue starring Michael Vartin (Alias), Radha Mitchell (Melinda and Melinda) and a killer croc terrorising the Australian outback. He also produced Lior’s recently released live album Doorways of My Mind recorded at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne.
© ABC 2006
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