“Stay Alive” Composer John Frizzell Gets Creepy With GameZone

by Louis Bedigian

 

“In a horror film you're dealing with a simple emotion like fear, so the complexity – the challenge – isn't the emotion, it's the duration, the pace of the film, the density of the music, the number of physical notes that are in the score.”

 

 

You die in the game – you die for real. That’s the premise of the clever new film Stay Alive, a horrific tale about a group of teens who play this deadly game even after knowing that they shouldn’t.

 

This brilliant idea has had me as stoked for its release as I was spooked. It got me thinking - what if there was a real game with such a huge penalty for failure? What if getting bitten by a zombie in Resident Evil meant living the rest of your life as the living dead? What if lacerations across your chest made scars appear on your own chest? It's the thought of fiction becoming your reality that will draw gamers to this film.

 

Directed by William Brent Bell and produced by McG (who is known for directing some of the most popular videos played on MTV), Stay Alive opens nationwide today.

 

We recently had the chance to talk with the game’s (I mean film’s) composer, John Frizzell.

 

“It's among some 25 films that I've scored,” said the composer, who has scored other horror films including Thir13en Ghosts, Alien Resurrection, Ghost Ship, and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. “I've also done some very different kinds of films like Office Space, Gods and Generals, and The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.”

 

 

What sort of things scare you? What puts you in the mood to write a scary soundtrack?

 

John Frizzell: I would have to say that when you’re writing a soundtrack you have to deal with very primal things. You’re dealing with what fear really is. Fear is a pretty simple emotion, it’s not like jealousy or something, it’s pretty primal. You kind of have to go with what your instinctual response to what fear is.

 

By comparison, how would you write a song that conveys jealousy?

 

JF: That’s a tricky thing. When you’re dealing with drama there’s not one sound that we can say, “That’s jealous music.” You know what I mean? There’s no way you can express that. You couldn’t play a piece of music for me that is a jealous piece of music. But you can play a piece of music for me that is a frightening piece of music.

 

In that I think you’ll see sort of the complexities of working in other types of films. For instance, working on a drama, you’re dealing with the subtleties of human emotion. And this melody played against this character lets the viewer think that this person is jealous. But in a horror film you’re dealing with a simple emotion like fear, so the complexity – the challenge – isn’t the emotion, it’s the duration, the pace of the film, the density of the music, the number of physical notes that are in the score. That’s what’s challenging in writing a horror score, the demanding amount of work. 

 

 

 

How did you dissect it in this case? Did you have the full script – did you know where each piece was going to end up?

 

JF: I worked on the picture the whole time. I had the film in here and I’m writing every minute.

 

The process on this film was to sit down with McG [the producer] and to figure out some idea of what type of tone they’re looking for in the film. Then I went and wrote some scenes, scored about four or five scenes, played them, and went from there.

 

You tend to write multiple songs at one time, rather than write one at a time and move onto the next?

 

JF: Yeah. I like to write maybe four or five to show the specs and sounds I want to deal with in the score.

 

How much tinkering does music take?

 

You mean after I write it? It depends on how much time you have. This score, I was given the ability to write what I wanted to write, which was fun. I was really able to explore. There wasn’t a whole lot of changes to things I wrote. Sometimes there are specific things that the director is looking for, but this was pretty straightforward.

 

Where the music ends up in the final picture, from what I’ve heard, is generally up to the editor…

 

JF: The editor? Not generally, no. Usually the editors tend to be pretty involved with the music. I often say to them, jokingly, “If you’re going to comment on my music I’m going to start editing the film.” I think that the most important thing is to work with the director and sometimes the producer and have one person very involved with what the director’s doing. Sometimes the editor can work in that respect. The idea is that you hire a composer not just to define what the music should sound like but to guide where the music should be and what its role should it be in the entire picture. I think that’s when it’s best utilized for what we do.

 

How did you take apart the movie and say, “Okay, this song should go here, this one should go there.” Was the director really involved with this process?

 

JF: We do a spotting session on a film, which is where we watch the film as a group and decide where music is going to go. In this film, and what can often be in scary films, you end up with a lot of music. So it almost ends up being one giant piece of music. Quite often when I go to start writing, I start to see things in a different way, and start to run off on my own. That’s why I check in with the director, producer, and usually the picture editor as well along the way to make sure that we’re hitting the mark and everyone agrees. 

 

 

 

How would you describe the music to someone who hasn’t seen the movie yet?

 

JF: In Stay Alive I had this idea to record an orchestra first. Record this simple, clear themes. I guess they were simple in that they didn’t have a lot of orchestration around them. Then manipulate them inside my software by chopping them up, running them through guitar simulators, time-stretching them, time-compressing things, really manipulating the orchestra to a greater degree than I had done before. And then using these little recorded orchestral pieces, like loops or snippets that might be more akin to a hip-hop record or something. So this was the approach. I used these pieces to write, and then I recorded and orchestrated again and again to glue the whole thing together.

 

How long was the whole process?

 

JF: About six weeks.

 

Was that how long it took to shoot the film?

 

JF: No, that’s just the scoring. The film was probably six months start to finish. I came on in post-production.

 

So they didn’t know what kind of music they wanted while filming it?

 

JF: No. They didn’t hire me till they had a pretty good edit of the film.

 

What kind of expectations did they come to you with? It’s about a fictitious video game – did they want the music to have a video game style?

 

JF: I think that’s a really good question. What is game music now? The good news thing is that the technology is so advanced that game music can be anything. There’s no longer the limitations they used to have. Having an orchestral score in a game is very common today. What I really like is that what a game sounds like, and what a movie sounds like, those lines have blurred so they can now be the same thing. [For Stay Alive] it wasn’t about making it sound like a game, but it was about making it sound different.

 

Were there any particular games or movies that influenced the direction you took with Stay Alive?

 

JF: I would have to say that I see this score as a continuation of some things I tried in Thir13en Ghosts, where I used some synth sounds in different ways. But I didn’t go all the way with recording an orchestra early and chopping it up. It was a fun movie to do. I got to make some crazy, weird sounds in that. [Stay Alive] felt like a continuation of some of those ideas. 

 

 

 

I’ve heard that there’s going to be a Stay Alive game. Can you confirm or deny…?

 

JF: I honestly don’t know. But if I’m lying I can’t tell you either. No, honestly I don’t know, but it would certainly make sense. What I find really interesting is the Countess story, this is a true story that it’s based on.

 

Really?

 

JF: Yeah. Down the road I think it’d be cool to tell that story, the back story, behind the Countess.

 

What is the story that this film is originally based on?

 

JF: The Countess. There was a woman who is a historical figure. She was a pretty wacky woman who would bathe in blood to try to stay young. That’s sort of the essence of some of the stuff we’re dealing with. I’ve gotta be careful not to spoil anything so I should probably stop there. But if you go snooping around the Internet you’ll find out more about what we’re dealing with.

 

What, besides music, inspires you? What life experiences made you want to be a composer?

 

JF: I would get so terrified by movies as a kid. I remember seeing Aliens and I think that that was what messed up my head so bad that I started thinking of these sounds. I wanted to experiment with these weird, twisted ideas. But I really do have fun scoring the limits of tonality.

 

On Inside The Actors Studio, the host always asks the question, “What is your favorite sound?” You’re a composer, I think that would have more meaning to you – so what is your favorite sound?

 

JF: My kids laughing. That’s my favorite sound.

 

What is your favorite musical sound?

 

JF: I wanna go to the beginning of the score for To Kill A Mockingbird, which I’ve always felt has been the most beautiful film score ever written.

 

Now that you’ve become a parent, has that influenced the way you write music? Do you worry that some things are too intense?

 

JF: No. When I’m writing on a film like Stay Alive kids are usually banned from the studio. I still write as aggressively as possible, but I would like to do some kids movies. I think that would be fun to do. That’s definitely in my future that would be good for the little ones to see.

 

What about video games?

 

JF: I would love to do video games. I think that would be really exciting to do. 

 

 

 

What do you have coming up next?

 

JF: I’m working on a movie called Beneath with MTV Films and Paramount Classics, and another film later in the year coming out called First Born, which is scary in a very different way. It’s more like the way The Others was scary. Really terrifying. Very disturbing, and not a lot seen, but definitely a dark one.

 

Again, where did the differences lie – how did you look at this movie and say, “Okay, I’ve gotta do a creepy score. But wait, I just did Stay Alive!” How do you make them different?

 

JF: First Born stars Elisabeth Shue and she’s alone a lot of the film. That film really wanted almost a romantic, gentle-sounding score. But you can tell that it [boarders on] insanity. It’s a little more of a classical score, with some strange synthesized elements in there. What was interesting about working on First Born is that I was able to write something very gentle yet the film is still very scary. And I have to attribute that to a very clever director.

 

What’s it about? Who was the director?

 

JF: The director is Isaac Webb. First Born is about a dancer who has a child and moves to a house in the country and is not sure what’s going on at that point. Is she losing her mind? Something is really amiss.

 

Any other projects that you’re going after?

 

JF: Yes. I think it’s too early to put in the press, but in a couple months I should be able to talk about those.

 

More horror, sci-fi, suspense…?

 

JF: Maybe something more in the action area.

 

Cool. I look forward to it.

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, it’s been great speaking with you.

 

Check out GameZone's Stay Alive Movie Review: 

Survival/Horror Games Inspire Clever Movie -- Full Stay Alive Review