The Film Scorer

The end is here! Well, the end of season 5 at least. That's right, after over twelve months the season is finally over (making it, I think, the longest season of The Film Scorer yet), and what better wait to celebrate than to chat with Max Richter? Max's (Ad Astra, The Leftovers) latest score is for the incredible historical drama Hamnet, a fictionalized account of the death of William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes's son Hamnet and how it inspired the creation of Hamlet. Unsurprisingly, we spend most of our conversation on Hamnet, but despite the quick interview we manage to cover a lot of other ground too, such as the use of "On the Nature of Daylight" over the years, the troubled production of Ad Astra, and how a musician's intent goes only so far once their music reaches an audience. Max's score for Hamnet is forthcoming (though having heard an advance version, I can vouch that it's great) and the rest of his music is available on all major platforms. You can find out more about Max on his website. In addition to Hamnet's pending release, Max just announced some 2026 tour dates.

There are a few perks to running every aspect of this site and podcast, the biggest being picking who I want to interview (and avoiding whomever I don't). Part of that, sometimes, is using film music as an excuse to interview bands that I just broadly like. Enter: Chat Pile. The Oklahoma noise rock band has one score under their belt, the 2022 indie crime flick Tenkiller, which they released as a score album after their debut God's Country, and have provided some songs for other films, most recently a track for the end credits to V/H/S/Halloween. Not to mention, they routinely talk about movies, including during their gigs. All perfect hooks to have them on, and so today I'm talking with vocalist Raygun Busch and guitarist Luther Manhole. As such, we jump around quite a bit: from their experience scoring Tenkiller, how movies brought them together and provide a mutual love, and some recent (and not to recent) scores that they've enjoyed (I'll note that at one point Ray is talking about the Bossa Nova score for Black Orpheus before getting interrupted by his dog...). We wrap up on a bit of a detour, actually talking about the economics of albums and touring, and how much a role cost of living plays into that. Chat Pile's music is available on all major platforms, chief among them being Bandcamp, or you can seek out their music physically. You can find out more about Chat Pile on their website and they have a new album on the horizon, In The Earth Again which they've co-written with Hayden Pedigo, coming out October 31st.

Although this podcast is called "The Film Scorer", every so often it's nice to chat with someone who does significant work in another medium instead. Today, that someone is Jesper Kyd (Hitman, Assassin's Creed). Jesper has been scoring for games for over thirty years, working on some of the biggest video game franchises around. But he's also worked on a number of films (like the Indian films Tumbbad and Crazxy), leading to the best answer I've ever gotten to the question "what's the difference between scoring for video games and movies?" Jesper's latest score is for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. In fact, Jesper has been scoring this game for years - it first came out in November 2022, and with new maps, characters, events, and other updates he keeps writing new music for it. The result is four separate releases, the latest of which was just in August of this year, about 25 minutes of dark industrial electronic music for running and gunning. I must have spent a dozen hours listening to those releases getting ready for this interview, and let me tell you: I was ready to join the 40th millennia's endless war. Jesper's score for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (Volumes 1-4), and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms. You can find out more about Jeremiah on his website.

I know I keep saying that the end of this season is imminent. And it is, but it seems like every time I think it's about dead it springs back to life for a little while longer. Reviving it this week is Jeremiah Fraites. Jeremiah is going to be best known as being one of the founding members of the hit alternative folk band The Lumineers, but lately he's expanded his horizons a bit. Specifically, Jeremiah has scored two films this fall: the Stephen King-based The Long Walk and the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. We spend most of our time talking about both scores, particularly The Long Walk (since Deliver Me from Nowhere isn't out yet), and of course that becomes a jumping off point for the conversation. We also cover things like how film has expanded music (including visualizing music as you write), getting his wife involved in the scoring process, the differences between writing original score and original songs for films (The Lumineers wrote some songs for The Hunger Games), and plenty more. Jeremiah's score for The Long Walk, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while The Long Walk is currently in theaters while Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere hits theaters on October 24th.

Composer Jeff Danna (The Good Dinosaur, The Boondock Saints) joins me on The Film Scorer podcast just before we wrap up season 5! Oddly enough, I've listened to quite a bit of music from the Silent Hill franchise over the last 15 months or so, and it turns out that Jeff "scored" the two film adaptations from earlier in the 2000s (I used "scored" in quotes because the real story is a bit more complicated than that). So of course, I used our conversation as an excuse to ask all about Silent Hill, including why the first film never got a proper score release, and he tells me about having to re-record and re-create every single musical sound from Akira Yamaoka's game scores for the films. Quite a feat. Of course, Jeff didn't come on the show to talk about Silent Hill movies from 15-20 years ago. Instead, we spend most of our time talking about his score for the hit Netflix series The Hunting Wives. The conversation goes from creating a unique palette for east Texas (particularly through the Croatian prim), scoring sexiness (the key is not aiming for sexy music), and plenty more. Along the way, we get pretty in-depth about what makes for a good theme, when you need to cast one aside and start over, and how thematic music requires a commitment from the composer and the director; after all, the latter has to be comfortable with a a musical commitment to their characters, as character and theme become intertwined. Jeff's score, and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms while The Hunting Wives is currently streaming on Netflix. You can find out more about Jeff on his website.