• About Us
  • Sasha Stone
  • Editor Ryan Adams
  • Clarence Moye
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
Awardsdaily - The Oscars, the Films and everything in between.
  • Home
  • Oscar Predictions
    • Best Picture
    • Best Actor
    • Best Actress
  • Good As Gold
  • AD TV
  • Podcasts
  • FYC Gallery
  • Interviews
  • All News
  • Home
  • Oscar Predictions
    • Best Picture
    • Best Actor
    • Best Actress
  • Good As Gold
  • AD TV
  • Podcasts
  • FYC Gallery
  • Interviews
  • All News
No Result
View All Result
Awardsdaily - The Oscars, the Films and everything in between.
No Result
View All Result

Interview: Max Richter on Composing the Score for Hostiles

by Jazz Tangcay
January 5, 2018
in BEST SCORE, Interviews, ORIGINAL SCORE
3

When it came to composing the score for Scott Cooper’s powerful and brutal new film Hostiles, Max Richter seized the opportunity to try to understand the language that Captain Blocker’s journey offered him. It offered him a chance to create themes not just for the characters, but for the vast landscape Blocker ventures across as he takes a dying Cheyenne chief home.

Read our chat below about how Richter worked to compose the score for Hostiles and consider Richter in your Best Original Score voting.

What’s your process when creating the score for Hostiles?

It’s an amazing bit of storytelling. It’s a journey. You have these characters against the landscape and there are two kinds of music. There’s the environmental music which is theme setting which is the orchestral, avant garde music. It’s all about the voice of the desert and landscape, this terrifying place. Then you have the characters themselves, Blocker, Rosalie and there is the title Hostiles. That’s the more thematic music, more written out for smaller groups which inhabit and populate this gigantic space.

What did you and Scott Cooper discuss in terms of the theme and sound he wanted you to create?

Scott is an incredibly smart and thoughtful guy. He had explored every dimension of this story from every psychological standpoint. When we came to music, we mostly talked about the poetic aspect of it. I went away and started to imagine things and make sketches. We got into a conversational process about the directions we thought were going to work. Scott was easy to work with and trusting of the process.

The sound is tonal and restrained. Can you talk about that as Blocker goes on his journey?

It’s these two languages colliding. You have this orchestra which is used in an abstract way. You generate these almost otherworldly drones, the voice of the desert and landscape, colliding with the thematic material. It is a thematic score, Blocker has his theme, Rosalie has her theme. These things all collide in different ways throughout. You get the melodic foreground music, especially Rosalie’s music. It has a childlike quality, it’s very simple because the theme of children is huge in the film and I wanted to evoke that for her. It’s very tender.

Blocker’s is very dark and seems to descend all the time as he’s getting sucked into the darkness and there’s a drama within the way the musical languages collide in the movie.

What about the music you have surrounding the Native American characters?

In a musical standpoint, their music grows out of the landscape. Rosalie and Blocker are separate from the desert and landscape and they almost feel like they are in an alien world out there. The native music comes from the landscape texture.

How long did the process take you?

It was quite a comfortable process in that they were some way along in the cut when I came on board. I did a lot of world-building writing doing the orchestral material and then I painted those on to the film over a period of a couple of months. I wrote the foreground music as it all came together.

The score is not your typical Western. Did anything in particular influence you?

I was struck by how beautiful the photography was. These sort of iconic and simply composed but very striking images. There’s a lot of silence in the film and not much dialogue and what came to my mind, as a composer was some of those daring and quite abstract musical languages you get in those early Westerns such as a Morricone score. A visual space like that is ripe for an experimental approach. It can accommodate lots in the music and I was excited by the prospect of populating this extraordinary visual field with a unique musical language.

What was your biggest challenge for the Hostiles score?

The thing about Hostiles is it is a very powerful piece of storytelling. It deals with life and death and why we do things and how we author our actions and what it means to be a person. It’s very existential. Why are we doing this? There’s tough material to watch. I guess the challenge is really how to calibrate what you’re doing and not telling the audience what to think. The challenge is judging how much to load up on to each moment in terms of what the music is doing.

Tags: Best Original ScoreInterviewmax richter
Jazz Tangcay

Jazz Tangcay

As a Brit, I'll say anything. Some things I love; Meryl Streep, Italians and Starbucks.

Next Post
Best Picture: The Hunt for the Elusive Frontrunner Continues as Critics Split on Favorites

Shape of Water, Blade Runner 2049, The Post, and Wonder Woman Land Art Directors Guild Nominations

Sign up for Awards Daily's Breaking News

* indicates required

Breaking Down the Animated Shorts Shortlist

Breaking Down the Animated Shorts Shortlist
by Joey Moser
March 5, 2021
0

A Q&A with the Filmmakers and Cast of Shortlisted Live Action Short, ‘Da Yie’

A Q&A with the Filmmakers and Cast of Shortlisted Live Action Short, ‘Da Yie’
by Joey Moser
March 5, 2021
0

Jayro Bustamante On the Powerful Pain of International Feature Contender ‘La Llorona’

Jayro Bustamante On the Powerful Pain of International Feature Contender ‘La Llorona’

(Photo: Shudder)

by Joey Moser
March 5, 2021
0

Fernando Frias de la Parra On the Loneliness of a Different Kind of Immigrant Experience for ‘I’m No Longer Here’

Fernando Frias de la Parra On the Loneliness of a Different Kind of Immigrant Experience for ‘I’m No Longer Here’

(Photo: Netflix)

by Joey Moser
March 5, 2021
0

BAFTA Preview: When Voting Members Can’t Be Trusted to Pick the Right Nominees

by Sasha Stone
March 4, 2021
28

Berlin Dispatch – Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

by Zhuo-Ning Su
March 4, 2021
0

DGA Preview – All Directors Great and Popular

DGA Preview – All Directors Great and Popular
by Sasha Stone
March 4, 2021
19

Berlin Dispatch – Azor / All Eyes Off Me

by Zhuo-Ning Su
March 4, 2021
0

Colman Domingo On Cutler Being a Brother to Levee and a Friend to Ma for ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’

Colman Domingo On Cutler Being a Brother to Levee and a Friend to Ma for ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020): (L to R), Glynn Turman as Toldeo, Chadwick Boseman as Levee, Michael Potts as Slow Drag, and Colman Domingo as Cutler., Cr. David Lee / Netflix)

by Joey Moser
March 4, 2021
3

‘Raya’ Bravely Confronts the Dangers of a Divided Nation

‘Raya’ Bravely Confronts the Dangers of a Divided Nation

(Photo: Disney)

by Clarence Moye
March 4, 2021
2

Diane Warren, Laura Pausini Deserve To Be “Seen” and Recognized For Their Beautiful “Io Si”

Diane Warren, Laura Pausini Deserve To Be “Seen” and Recognized For Their Beautiful “Io Si”

(Photo: Netflix)

by Kevin Dillon
March 4, 2021
0

‘Promising Young Woman,’ ‘Mank’ Among Nominees for 23rd Costume Designers Guild Awards

Promising Young Woman is Disturbing, Original and Unforgettable
by Clarence Moye
March 4, 2021
13

Watch: Scott Wheeler Discusses the Makeup and Prosthetic Work Behind ‘One Night in Miami’

How ‘One Night In Miami’ Screenwriter Kemp Powers Used an Iconic Friendship to Explore Competing Ideas of Activism and Masculinity

Photo Courtesy of Amazon Studios

by Shadan Larki
March 3, 2021
1

Join us Facebook

AwardsDaily Crew

  • About Us
  • Sasha Stone
  • Editor Ryan Adams
  • Clarence Moye
  • Contact Us

ADTV Crew

  • ADTV Home
  • Megan McLachlan, Co-Editor
  • Clarence Moye, Co-Editor
  • Jalal Haddad, Senior Contributor
  • Joey Moser, Senior Contributor
  • Kevin Dillon
  • Shadan Larki
  • Ben Morris
  • David Phillips

Follow on Twitter

ADTV Twitter

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertising on Awards Daily

© 1999-2021 AwardsDaily.com

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Oscar Predictions
    • Best Picture
    • Best Actor
    • Best Actress
  • Good As Gold
  • AD TV
  • Podcasts
  • FYC Gallery
  • Interviews
  • All News

© 1999-2021 AwardsDaily.com