Soundtrack Liner Notes

Hello there

After Thomas' ace retrospective and original notes yesterday,  today - as promised -  I bring you my accompanying liner notes to The ParaPod OST that I gave you on Christmas day. Did you not get me owt?

It’s worth noting I think, quite how complicated this all was.  Not only had I never had any experience with “directing” a soundtrack, but Thomas had also never done one either.  I’ve mentioned before that Thomas told me at the end that it had been worrying him, and then declared “I’m not actually a composer”.  It was a very safe thing to say at that point though, as he had just nailed his first soundtrack.

The other thing worth noting is that English isn’t actually Thomas’ first language.  He’s from the Netherlands, and speaks excellent English, but he was still having to decipher what I was trying to express (I’m not always brilliant at “succinct”, although I do have form, having been trying to talk to a Geordie for 5 years).  For me personally, it ended up being a positive, as it meant I was always trying to make my emails and instructions as clear as possible.

I’ve actually dug out two bits of email correspondence that I sent to TVDR in this process, so you can see how hard I was trying to be clear.  The notes probably won’t make any sense to you, but you can certainly get an idea from these as to how fiddly this got;

(This was me responding to several cues)

CUE 9 - potentially too much melody with strong chords here.  Let’s reign it in to solo piano (possibly from Cue 11)

Cue 10 - Excellent - signed off

Cue 11 - Love this.  Simon, I think we can use the beginning of this to replace Cue 9 - it’s a bit more subtle. The rest can go elsewhere as incidental music - loads of options and we can chop it up if it doesn’t fit exactly right.  Think it’s potentially good for the castle too. Thomas, can you do stuff like this for the castle intro, when I arrive, the tour, the mug smashing, etc etc - right up to when we conclude stood in front of the TV?  That’s the exact style, and will help if it’s timed to the footage.

Cue 12 - Really like.  Simon, let’s place this slightly earlier (just by a second or so).  I also like it drowning out the menial panic chat a bit (“Has he gone down?”) - adds a bit of chaos and drama.

Cue 13 - Thomas, can we get a second or two of soft underlying chords added to the beginning of this? That can slightly overlap my speech ending with “That doesn’t mean it was a ghost”

(And this was me micro-managing the original music for Codnor)

The first one, I’m struggling with.  Up to 1.28 I really like it.  
After that I think the pace of the music is sometimes at odds with what’s going on.  It’s moving at a faster pace than the action (even though it matches), and can really slow down. 
So, let’s come out of the music as soon as I’ve said “congratulations on your new home” at 1.28 (will need a concluding piano out from this rather than just cutting it)
Then keep it quiet until the mug smashes, where we can have a shock chord, followed by silence until I tell Karl and Nick to keep filming.  I like the piano here, and as we start to walk up, but then the urgency and pacing of it starts to feel far too fast.  It’s a difficult one, because a reduction of tempo may kill the unease? It definitely needs slowing down though.  Let’s make sure we come out of the music at 4.13 when I say “No-one” (that’s the natural close to the uncertainty).

For the record, Thomas had asked me to be very direct with direction so that’s how I directed it.

Right, here are my liner notes…

1 Foreshadowing

I made the decision very early on in post-production to not use the original ParaPod theme at the beginning of the film. I knew I didn’t want it to open “funny”, but rather give off a feeling of uncertainty.  There was no point just doing a re-tread of the podcast, this had to be a standalone adventure without a foregone conclusion, and the best way to put assumption out of the audience’s minds was to open with foreshadowing of an emotive part of the movie.  I needed something musically to accompany the stressful audio, and was so relieved when I heard this composition.  I immediately discarded any second thoughts I had about not using the original theme. I should have known that TVDR would be able to knock out another excellent theme track, given how many he has composed for my stuff over the years, and I certainly consider this to be the main theme of The ParaPod - A Very British Ghost Hunt. There is of course a gestural tease of the usual ParaPod theme right at the end to go with the title card.

2 Barry’s Taxi

So after all the eery musicality, this was a jolly and jaunty bit of daftness, to compliment the daftness that was playing out on screen.  This was one of the tracks that I wasn’t sure of until I saw it set to the footage.  In the movie it is further supplemented by some great sound mix effects from Danny Rowe too.  This is the track on the soundtrack that I always find myself humming for five hours after hearing.

3 Into The Vaults

This is a collection of musical gestures, that we then separated out over the vaults footage.  Because the edit of the footage was changing so often, I asked Thomas to just give me a load of moods, from creepy to uncertain to surprising, that sort of thing, rather than get him to compose directly to the footage. I didn’t want to end up having to ask him to redo huge chunks of music because I’d decided to swap the running order of scenes yet again.  In the movie, it totally sounds as though it was composed to the on-screen events, but it was a bit of a cheat.

4 Upside Down

There was a long consideration as to whether Barry’s meltdown should have music with it, or just be left raw, and I flipped back and forth over it.  As soon as I got the studio footage back and saw how Barry and I stared at each other over the vaults incident, it was clear that it needed something musically. I believe this is an extended version of what was eventually used.  I like the hammering chords, and we took a similar tactic with the East Drive lockdown moment.

5 Going Home

For somebody who claims to not be a composer, Thomas is very, very good at emotive music that gives a real feel of mood.  This is just a short bit, but it enabled us to keep the narrative of this moment concise as the music spoke up for the footage.  There’s a wistful melancholic tone to this, after the jarring of the vaults, that complements Barry’s secondary concern that he hadn’t got me to see anything spooky.

6 Winter Church

This was the first piece of music that Thomas composed for the movie, well ahead of the rest of it.  I’d asked him to integrate the original theme into a more classical scoring.  This is also the first time in the film that the ParaPod theme is played, after just giving little gestures of it here and there.  I always related it to the Star Wars prequels (as I can only ever explain myself properly by relating things to Star Wars), when there are gestures of the Imperial March all over the place until it finally kicks in.  I liked that teasing for people who already knew the theme, as the satisfaction of finally hearing it play out is quite palpable alongside the drone shots of the snow-covered church.

7 On The Road Again

This took ages.  We just couldn’t get this right for the longest time and there were several goes at it.  Danny even had a stab at it.  It turns out that scoring a montage is really hard, and I was refusing to sign things off. This was the last piece of music completed for the film, and I started to worry we were never going to get it right.  My direction was all over the place for it, and I found it hard to express what I wanted.  I probably didn’t know what I wanted.  As I recall it was the clicks at the beginning that sold this version, as they somehow give it an ongoing momentum.

8 Lockdown

This is deceptively simple, with a repetitive riff that increases in tension by slight pitch changes.  Another moment in the film where I questioned if it needed music at all, given the drama on screen.  That footage is actually pretty impactful without music, but with the added dramatic march beneath it, it hits another level.  The music always reminds me of the intro the The Trial in The Wall, as it gives a feel of impending doom.  This doom obviously gets undercut by the reveal that I’m not even in the house.

9 The Challenge

This is another piece of wrong-footing music as it has a mood of conclusion, whereas we are actually setting up for the last section of the film at Codnor. Again this uses the structure and chords of the original ParaPod theme before switching to an ongoing mood. It’s really subtle yet loaded.

10 The Old House

The most abstract piece of music in the whole film, with a jarring uncertainty.  The tonal winds and hollow sounds make it near-jazz rather than a traditional score, but the mess and inconsistency go along nicely with the freefall of the end of the movie.

11 The Oscar Goes To

A subtle bit of reworking of the opening track.  I wanted to give off a duality between us hearing Barry out of his depth at the beginning, and me apparently of my depth at the end, so it made sense to reprise the music from the start. It’s hit far more precisely and sharp in this version, without the ghostly echo of the first time we hear it.  I actually have a feeling that it is track 15 that appears in the film rather than this layered version. Both are beautifully haunting like.

12 The ParaPod

This is the same track we used on the original podcast when it was a big band number.  Thomas did a reworking of his original theme to be more celebratory for the end of a series, so it made sense to utilise it for the end of the film.

13 Paranati

Another reprise of the Foreshadowing, but with the record scratch interruption to jump to the actual original ParaPod theme.  So we wait for 100 minutes before actually hearing it.  I always anticipated making the audience wait for it, but perhaps not to the very, very end.

14 To The Convention

This was meant to be under us travelling to the Sceptics convention, but it was just too jaunty and would have undercut the taxi tour track.  It really makes me laugh how brazen it is.  I like to think Thomas was really tired when he did this and sent it to test me. It contains the most ludicrous mash up of the horn on the hearse with the original ParaPod theme.

15 The Oscar Goes To (alternate)

I’m now certain this was the actual version used in the finished movie.  I think I shifted them around quite late on because I wanted stark simplicity.  I think they’re both brilliant of course.

There we go, they’re my thoughts on the music.  It really was a group effort, with Thomas heading up the bulk of composing, but Danny added loads into mix.  Myself and Simon ultimately placed where it was, although much of it was scored directly to the movie (so the original files have huge gaps in them – I’ve re-edited them to remove the silences).  Personally, I’m a fan, and still dream of it being on a vinyl.  There’s a few other bitty cues and things that I haven’t included here, as well as Danny’s stings and the stuff that was done for the trailers, so – as this was 40 mins – it’s not ridiculous that this could fill a vinyl release…

We shall see in what direction the world turns.  Maybe one day eh? If anyone has any contacts who make vinyl, there's a potential deal to be struck there...

There's a mini-ParaPod here for you tomorrow as we continue our festive Patreon treats, that I'm going to release into the real world at some point in the next few weeks.  I'd rather you got it first, and it's a daft time to release promo when people are so distracted with other stuff. It's mainly a film promo, but it's got a few giggles in it.  We recorded it the same day as the one we did for Xmas, but I've edited this one.  Wouldn't let that scoundrel near ParaPod editing...

Hope you are having a lovely time, whatever you are doing, and sort of hope you are too distracted with that to have even read this.

Sending all the love your way

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