Scoring Sophie : A Murder in West Cork came with some joyous challenges !

The cinematography was incredibly inspiring – the landscape and atmosphere of the bleak and barren West Cork was also reflected in the musical atmosphere.

The director created a mood board and look book that gave me a lot of inspiration for the monochrome look, sparseness and bleakness of the music.

The brief was to create a score that didn’t fall into tropes and clichés of True crime. Also Irish music was banned from being used in the score apart from the end credits. Sophie liked Irish music and as a tribute to her, I wrote an Irish folk piece which met with approval from her French family and was very touching.

There are aspects to the story that had to be brought out musically and various characters also had their own themes.

I wanted to treat Sophie’s story with dignity and respect; I felt responsibility towards her family and son Pierre. So the French family have their own theme that evoked sentiment, a bittersweet feel and sense of longing without falling into cliché.

Ian Bailey, the main suspect has a bizarre quirky character and so I brought in

a slightly unusual instrumentation which included the odd accordion and other elements that mirrored his personality traits.

Sophie’s theme has slightly fractured, broken ghostly vocal elements added to it.

There is also the detective, investigative side to the story so the music has propulsion and tension. At the same time the Irish police were incompetent and the slightly farse like comedic aspects needed to be brought out.

Because the setting is in the mid 90s I didn’t want to use modern electronics. The sound palette has an acoustic and organic foundation.

Being a huge fan of true-crime I wanted to subvert it musically but still craft a multi-faceted story with complex characters and multiple time lines.

I also had to highlight many elements to help clarify the complexities of the plot, the evidence and still drive the narrative forward.