Insights: Creating the music for Steel Country
During the winter of 2015/16 we were contacted about a meeting that seemed to us to be one of those ‘too good to be true’ moments. A well regarded producer wanted to meet with us to chat about creating the score for a new film he was undertaking. So, John and I made the journey down to London and met with our then agent at BAFTA Picadilly, got a table, and waited for the producer Gareth Ellis-Unwin and director Simon Fellows to show.
What followed was an exciting discussion which was conducted in a way that already made us feel as though we were on board. This is always a disconcerting feeling for any contractor hoping to land a dream job as the boundaries of the discussion are never quite defined; everyone wants to keep their options open but talk as creatively close to the bone as is possible. Regardless, we went away believing we had represented ourselves well and had given confidence to whoever was making the decisions that we could hold our own writing music at the next level.
That January the team at JHM were able to put together some musical material that became the starting point for an ongoing musical conversation that would take us right up to the post production on Steel Country/A Dark Place. One of the pieces written at that point became the basis for the opening title music for the film, though the majority of the musical ideas came from the summer months when the film shoot was happening in America. I created a lot of material that, as with most projects, is either loved or disregarded as being too this or that, but quite quickly we hit on a combination of music and sound design that the director felt was just right. There was a hiatus at the end of summer whilst the editing process got underway and we waited for images and sequences to respond to.
Central to our musical arguments was the psychology of the main character, played by Andrew Scott. His portrayal of Donny (a garbage collector in a small town in rural Pennsylvania who lay somewhere on the autistic spectrum) was nuanced and sensitive, and gave a huge amount to work with from a musical perspective. We wanted the music to reflect how tense and pressured his inner world could get, but also what grace and perfection there was too, and how, ultimately, it was he who embodied the most compassion of all characters in the film. Our sound-world, we think, manages to echo his inner space, but also the hard edged and beautiful setting as well as the gritty unfolding of the story.
Benjie’s trusty Mandolin was called into action, e-bowing its way into becoming a main sonic feature of the score, whipping and gritting its way to the foreground as well as providing pedal type structures on which other elements could take the stage. A wonderful recording session of multi-tracked strings went into creating the musical logic for much of the chordal movement in the score, notably underscoring the finale as well as a few other key moments in the drama. This recording was based on a tight mathematical formula which was rigidly held to, emulating how we thought the character of Donny might go about writing music. Alongside this was an exploration into various layers of beeping and juddering textures with which we hoped to convey his thought patterns, and for the more intense moments in the film a more electronic sound was required. Whenever intensity is needed we tend to lean on Native Instruments’ brilliant array of software synths in order to create a growling sense of unseen threat and fear at key moments. That coupled with my knowledge of EDM production, and by fusing the already existing musical elements together, we were able to create some powerfully dramatic moments that we’re very proud of.
Throughout the post-production period we focused more on overall tone than specific moments, and maintained a continuous conversation with not only the director but also the brilliant sound designer on the project, James Hayday. His approach was singularly musical and showed great craft and command over sound as a creative resource, and not only paved the way for the fusion of the sound score and musical score, but also inspired us to alter our own approach in order to adapt to and reflect his ideas.
Unfortunately one of our long term members Tic Ashfield wasn’t able to join us for much of the composition period, but John Hardy and Sam Barnes were intimately involved in the project, and in January 2017 the three of us travelled down to London to attend the final mix. Sometimes these experiences can be cagy, fraught with inside or outside politics, or hampered by funders that have a monetary agenda which would alter the artistic identity of the project, but we were pleased to find none of these sentiments at play. In the room were the director, the dubbing engineer and assistant, the sound designer, and the three of us. I don’t know how often the music team equal the number of other people involved in a project at a dubbing session, but it was a very happy, inclusive and attentive day, and they even put up with me asking dumb questions about the camera frame rate. Largely our vision for the music was upheld, and we came away feeling that we had made a meaningful contribution to a project that we would feel proud of.
We were excited to hear that Steel Country would be getting American and British distribution to, albeit selected, cinema. 2018 in the States and 2019 in the UK. In reviews Andrew Scott’s performance was largely cited as the film’s saving grace though many found holes to poke in it. It was the script that most found issue with, which surprised us a little, though any number of reasons could have contributed to that conclusion taken by film critics.
We are still immensely proud of the film, and as part of its legacy we have created the film’s soundtrack album which is available to stream or to purchase. We hope this serves as a record of how much creative energy was poured into the project, and, in that spirit, that the film can live on in a musical sense too.
Written by Benjie Talbott