Imagine a television drama minus the music. There’s nothing that enhances the storyline, the scene transitions or the the acting. The actors would have to work harder to convey the emotions they need for every scene. As the viewer, if you’re not bored to tears, you may be distracted from the story wondering what’s missing or why it’s missing.
A major part of the storytelling in television shows is the music that accompanies the scenes. Some of my favorite panels at San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC)are the behind the scene looks into how a TV show is made, and some of the most passionate and candid panelists are the musicians and composers for some of TV’s best shows.
“Behind the Music with CW3PR” is SDCC’s original music panel. CW3 Public Relations celebrated its seventh consecutive year at SDCC with two panels featuring composers from some television’s hottest shows. Attendees at each panel were some of the first to view and hear some surprise sneak peeks. A separate panel for the press allowed us some one-on-one time with the composers.
In our Behind the Music: Crime, Death & Resurrection series of interviews, we sat down with Charlie Clouser (Wayward Pines), Fil Eisler (Empire, Revenge), Mike Suby (The Vampire Diaries, The Originals), Jeff Russo (Fargo, Tut, Power), Mac Quayle (American Horror Sotry: Freak Show), Sean Callery (Homeland, Bones, 24). I had the pleasure of participating in a roundtable with Kara Howard of TV Goodness (www.tvgoodness.com) and Erin Conrad of Three if by Space (www.threeifbyspace.net)
Behind the Music – Interview with Charlie Clouser
When you ask a fan what they like about Wayward Pines, you hear words like creepy, weird, mysterious. When the showrunners were looking for a composer, they wanted to have something that kind of focused on the sort of head trauma of Matt Dillon’s character. In Charlie Clouser, member of Nine Inch Nails from 1994 to 2000, who describes his style of music as a “little creepy, kind of a little off-center, not very orchestral,” they found the right guy.
You may wonder how a member of a rock band transitioned to composer, but Clouser’s transition was in reverse. His first job right out of college was working as an assistant for a composer for a TV show where he programmed drum parts and making sounds from the synthesizer, in his words, “I wasn’t really driving the thing, I was in the back seat of the car.”
After 15 years of being in bands, making music, including programming two Grammy-nominated songs for for White Zombie and Alice Cooper, Clouser came back to composing, and is now in the driver’s seat, scoring the Saw series of films as well as Resident Evil: Extinction, and working as the composer for TV shows like Las Vegas and NUMB3RS. Check out more about his composing process for Wayward Pines in the video to follow.
