1: How did you become involved in this project? I believe this was your first time working with director Jenny Popplewell?

Yes it was our first collaboration. A mutual director colleague of ours introduced us when Jenny was looking for a producer. I think Jenny had heard my score for For Sama.

After a couple of really interesting conversations about the musical concept for the film and how I would approach the score, Jenny brought me on board. The commission for the film came during lockdown in March 2020 and so I had to be record the score remotely with the LCO (London Contemporary Orchestra)

2: Instead of talking-head interviews, for the most part, the film documents a particularly heinous murder through police body-cam footage, interview room video, the family’s home videos, the victim’s social media posts and emails, etc., which put the viewer there, directly in the midst of the investigation and the family life as it’s depicted. How did you determine where and how the music would find its place through this stylistic collage of telling the story?

The initial brief from Jenny was to create a score that sounded like a fairytale marriage and that as the film developed, the music would get darker and darker. Jenny didn’t want the music to portray Chris Watts as a monster but to be neutral and understated but still full of character.

3: The story is both delicate and straightforward in its narrative. How did the sensitive nature of the story or its telling affect how you and Jenny decided the music should operate?

One of the first decisions we made was to tell the story mainly from Shannan’s point of view as the story is told mainly in the first person. The hardest challenge was to find a balance between the ‘happy families’ music that illustrated the good times in the relationship, against the darker aspects of the film. The two extremes needed to sit together and work harmoniously.

As the early stages of the story unfolds, we didn’t want to give too much away. That being said, the case is very well known and so the film wasn’t just another procedural true crime story. It’s really about giving Shannan a voice so we wanted to handle the film sensitively. Despite the sensitive nature of the story, I still wanted the score to have a strong bold character. It really needed to drive the story forward as there are some rather dry images of stills, and graphics of text messages on screen.

4: What was your instrumental palette for this score, and how did specific scenes or revelatory moments in the story dictate the kind of instruments to be used?

The score is largely built around a string quintet surrounded by electronic elements. However as the film is based on social media and the mobile phone, I decided to use found sounds from the film into the score for authenticity. So I brought in a percussionist Hugh Wilkinson, to play various bits of hand made percussions and phone tapping on mobile phones with fingers. I then created percussion tension rhythms made up from these found sounds. You can hear them combined with the strings in the ‘letter reading’ scene or moments where you see a phone texting message on screen. It just brings those moments to life and makes it all the more real.

There are also oil tanks in the film where the bodies were found and I used these sounds of oil drums and sound effects to create ambient tension for those moments in the film. There are also modern electronic sounds but it’s a mainly organic acoustic score to empathise with the emotional relationship of the couple.

5: The film is at once both a police procedural, a record of this young woman’s life and its ending, and the exposure of a terribly cruel homicide. Was this a unique or a challenging film to compose?

It was all of those things ! The music has to help drive the story forward with momentum, drama and delicacy but still emanate sensitivity. The visual and audio quality of the footage also varies greatly in quality. The interrogation room scenes in particular were tough because the audio quality was so poor. So it was a fine balancing act.

6: Would you describe your score’s thematic/motific architecture?

There is a theme for the main title theme and other aerial shots in the film. It’s a brooding, string ostinato sequence layered with high strings that descend in pitch to create an uneasiness. You also have a recurring theme over the screen cards that indicate the number of days before or after the murder. As the investigation progresses the pace picks up. The string ostinatos create a real sense of mystery, momentum and drama to the proceedings.

The edgy texture of the live instruments also adds to the texture of the film. The final scene in the film allows us to come full circle to the beginning of the film with Shannan, so we decided to repeat the title theme. Likewise, with the end credits we do justice to Shannan’s memory and a nod to happier times with her children.

7: Was it difficult to immerse yourself in the dreadful nature of this story? Was there a need to configure the music to support viewers as they follow the investigation into this shocking crime?

I tend to have an immersive approach to scoring and so inhabiting a dark musical space comes naturally to me. This film wasn’t about Chris Watts so much, but honouring Shannan’s story so treating it with delicacy was crucial. When you realise HOW things have unfolded with the murders, it actually made me feel quite ill. I created some dark almost atonal textures with found sound of Oil drums – the sounds from the location - and extended string techniques played by the LCO orchestra.

You really are taken on twists and turns with the polygraph and the interrogation and finally with the court room trial. For example, with the interrogation room I wanted to emphasise the tension in the room with the sound of time passing with the ticking clock type sound. The constant rhythm.

We recorded the score remotely during lockdown. I would be in my studio , the engineer in his home and the musicians were recorded individually in their homes one by one with all the recordings layered like a cake. The engineer would remotely control their mobile rig

And we would all communicate via whatsapp, zoom or texting – rather apt for this film based around texting and social media ! We recorded the cello first, their parts would be sent to the violas, who would listen to what the cellos had played. Finally the violinists would record their parts on top of everyone else’s recordings. Instead of spending a day in the studio all recording together, we spent a week recording and a lot of time afterwards editing and mixing it all together. It produced a unique sound. In ideal world we would all be recording together but it’s remarkable what technology will enable us to do. Where there’s a will !...

Orchestrator: Hugh Brunt

Recording Engineer: Simon Hendry

Orchestra: London Contemporary Orchestra

Additional music and mix engineer: Javier Lago-Blanco

BUYSOUNDTRAX.COM

SOUND ON SOUND Podcast

"It’s all set to a stirring score by composer Nainita Desai, and remarkably never drags, even through long sequences of footage that’s already been widely available — such as Chris’s excruciating police interviews." VOX.COM

"Nainita Desai has composed an affecting score that increases the emotions even further than the subject matter alone. Desai also effectively creates tension during the investigation scenes involving the police." The NerdElement.com