SEARCHING FOR EVIL
The melodies of pure Evil
Overview
'Searching For Evil' is an independent slasher short film made in 2019 that draws inspiration from classic 80s slasher films.
After notorious serial killer Ivan Astaroth escapes captivity and flees into a vast forest, two detectives follow the trail to search for the (now presumed dead) killer. However, the killer is alive and well and starts to stalk and hunt down our heroes...
The official soundtrack album not only contains the full score for the film but also a lot of material that was created over the course of production: demos, alternate versions that weren't used and variations of the different main themes.
Crafting the sounds of pure Evil
From the beginning of this project onwards, I had a strong vision of how I wanted the music for 'Searching For Evil' to sound like: it needed a dirty, unpolished sound, it needed to sound 'evil'.
The film itself is heavily inspired by the classic slasher films of the 80s and it's the same with the music, heavily using vintage synthesisers to create a familiar, old school tone.
'Imperfection' was probably one of the biggest goals for this score, the music needed to always sound slightly off and unsettling, so I played around a lot with distortion effects, changing the pitch slightly, trying to make everything sound just a bit out of tune.
One of the main sounds that reappears throughout the entire score is a loud and droning cello noise (sometimes heavily distorted, sometimes not).
I managed to get my hands on a neglected Cello with a few missing and a couple out of tune strings and it turned out to be the final piece of the puzzle to achieve the unsettling, imperfect tone I was going for. This broken Cello to me is the core sound of the score: it symbolises our psychopathic killer, our frightened detectives. It symbolises the pure evil that lurks inside the forest.
All as one - Merging the central themes
In it's very core the music for Searching For Evil consists of two themes: one for the detectives and one for the killer. The idea always was to combine and merge those two themes as the detectives and the killer crossed paths, but the two melodies should also be able to work on their own as separate themes.
To achieve this, both themes are based around the same set of notes and the same core beat, making it easier to match them or create variations as required.
This process of merging and creating variations that could be layered lead to a score that evolved throughout the film and adapted to the story and character circumstances: after the initial introductions, the main theme for killer and detectives are seldom heard on their own and are buried within tracks that play around with the notes and embed them in new compositions.
This creates a feeling of familiar, yet unfamiliar territory: some notes might be recognisable but appear in a different arrangement, not unlike the protagonists who know that there is a killer about, but don"t know from where and when he will emerge...
