What Does Fear Sound Like?

I sit down with two composers who make audiences flinch for a living. Ryan Holladay scored Zach Cregger's Weapons and this year's Resident Evil with his brother Hays. Jason Graves wrote the music for the original Dead Space trilogy, Until Dawn and Still Wakes the Deep. This is the first of Killscreen's Cross-Conversations: Horror, three free talks presented with MUBI that put people who make horror films and horror games in the same room. We start with Bluebrain, the location-aware album Ryan and Hays made for the National Mall in 2011, which grew out of the way sound changes as you walk through Myst. Jason explains how a drummer's background carried him through his first audition for EA and into Dead Space, and both of them trace the vocabulary horror still borrows from Penderecki, Psycho, Jaws and John Carpenter. Then the difference between scoring a film and scoring a game: Wwise and FMOD, and stingers that have to wait for the player. Jason walks through The Rig, the metal sculpture Matt McConnell built for Still Wakes the Deep, and Ryan talks about Abelina, the game he is scoring now. We close on audience questions and the tools they actually use, from handheld recorders to iZotope RX and Ableton. Links Scoring Fear: The Composers Behind Weapons and Dead Space The Killscreen Horror Collection Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma on MUBI, 30 days free (00:00) - Scoring Fear, and two composers in one room (02:04) - Bluebrain, Myst and music you walk through (04:59) - A drummer's ear and the Dead Space audition (07:15) - Dread, or the quiet before the scare (13:08) - Is there a universal language for fear? (18:47) - Control, and why a game can't time a joke (23:43) - Players who move at their own speed (27:50) - The objects that make a room uneasy (29:54) - Themes you hum, and themes you feel (39:00) - The Rig, and the texture of real objects (45:30) - Audience questions: instruments beyond the dark (48:14) - Keeping your nerves intact (53:53) - Sampling workflows, from field recorders to Ableton (56:43) - What's next, and where to find them Hosted by Jamin Warren. Music by Nick Sylvester. Subscribe to Killscreen for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★