By JORDAN VON NETZER

Last September Shudder announced that it had picked up Christopher Hatton’s gothic mystery, Raven’s Hollow. Almost a year later, the wait is finally over for horror fans. The Edgar Allan Poe tale premiered September 22 on the AMC Networks-backed streamer, as part of their ’61 Days of Halloween” celebration. The official logline for the film is: West Point cadet Edgar Allan Poe and four other cadets on a training exercise are drawn by a gruesome discovery into a forgotten community. William Moseley (The Chronicles of Narnia) plays the role of Edgar Allan Poe, starring alongside Melanie Zanetti (Tidelands), Kate Dickie (The Witch), David Hayman (Macbeth), Callum Woodhouse (The Durrells), and Oberon K.A. Adjepong (The Blacklist).

When watching the film, it’s hard not to pay attention to the film’s mysterious score by composer Robert Ellis-Geiger, as it almost poses like another main character. In fact, there is so much music in the film, Robert recently announced that he was putting out the original motion picture soundtrack in two volumes – the first volume being available now and volume two hitting digital sites later this year. To celebrate the release, we spoke to Robert exclusively below about his craft and what goes into creating a horror film score.

Robert Ellis-Geiger

What attracted you to the Raven’s Hollow script?

The fictional story is based on a real period during Edger Allan Poe’s life and equally important to me was director/writer Christopher Hatton’s determination and passion in bringing this movie to life.

I was first introduced to director Christopher Hatton in Singapore on July 2016 by his close friend and fellow filmmaker Gisli Snaer. Chris, Gisli, and I met up over a few beers and discussed movies, music, and life in general. We kept in touch and this eventually led to me working on Raven’s Hollow.

What did pre-production look like for you on Raven’s Hollow?

Previous to receiving the script, Chris sent images (promotion deck) and descriptions of scenes and characters along with links to movie soundtrack references. Months before shooting took place, I received a nearly locked version of the script and began sketching ideas and at the same time experimenting with sounds and virtual instruments. It was during this early sketching period before the real pressure began that I created the “monster theme” that later became the cue for Raven’s Reveal, which can be heard in the soundtrack album, track 20: Graveyard and Raven’s Reveal. The “monster theme” as I initially call it remained in its original form and a cue built around it for the revealing of the Raven.

For Raven’s Hollow I had a customized supercomputer built in Hong Kong, similar to that of Hans Zimmer, but on a much less budget. My goal was to build a unique template of virtual instruments and sounds that could be loaded into one computer. Without getting into the technical side of this, the Cubase (developed by www.Steinberg.net) master template allowed me to have all of the film’s music cues in one huge project juxtaposed to all seven reels. All virtual instruments and sound libraries were loaded into Vienna Ensemble Pro that Cubase communicated to, all inside of the same computer. I used Cubase to record what I played on the midi keyboard and to record acoustic strange sounds.

I developed an iterative process of proofing potential virtual instrument and sound libraries and at the same time composing sketches that would then inform which instruments and sounds would be added to the mega template. This was a game changer and well worth the months developing.

One of the first important scenes to be shot was in the boarding house where Charlotte Ingram, played by Melanie Zanetti sings the classic English folk song, The Unquiet Grave, to the tune of the Irish ballad, Star of the County Down. Chris asked how best to approach the planning of this shoot, and I suggested for Melanie to send me rough recordings (just from a phone) of her singing the tune in two naturally comfortable keys without instrumental accompaniment. After receiving the recordings via email, I then made a guitar arrangement for Mathis Landwehr to perform live on guitar as the character Lutz Becker. I sent Melanie two versions of my arrangement, one with the melody (virtual flute) and guitar, and another without the melody. For Mathis, I made a video showing the figure positions for the chords and runs, which he practiced for weeks before the shoot. When it came to the shoot, Chris said that this was the first scene to shoot and they got it in one take!

Because Raven’s Hollow is in the horror/thriller genre, did you feel like you could be more experimental and over the top with your soundscapes?

This is what Chris wanted me to do, but as this was a new genre for me, I initially took a little time to break out of my traditional approaches.

The score is a combination of various acoustic (woodwinds, strings, choir, ethnic voices, brass, and percussion) performed in contemporary ways and electronic (analog) virtual instruments mostly from Spitfire Audio and Native Instruments, electric guitar, and real flute playing multi-phonics.

My son, Sebastian Ellis-Geiger, recorded eerie sounds from rubbing huge glass sliding doors, scraping chairs, and brushing on the soundboard of an acoustic classical guitar, vocal utterances. These sounds were then edited and imported into an audio sampler Kontakt that allowed me then to trigger these sounds from a midi keyboard.

How was scoring Raven’s Hollow different than other films you have worked on?

This movie required a huge amount of score (music and soundscape design), and was a new genre for me. My first major feature-length score was for Election 2 (2006) directed by Johnnie To, which has been referred to as Hong Kong’s own God Father story. Other scores I have composed are more drama based, including a number of documentaries from Mainland China and Hong Kong, including music for Oscar award-winning director Ruby Yang’s documentary My Voice, My Life (2014).

What specific scene was the most challenging for you to score? Why?

The opening scene, I spent more than four weeks experimenting with various music ideas until I reached a point where I said to Chris: “I need to move on and try the next scene as I have no idea how to start your movie”. This was the best discussion to make as we came back to the opening after most of the score had been created.

Congrats on your Raven’s Hollow album release. Do you have a favorite track from the album?

Thank you. This album is not for relaxation, haha, as it had a very specific function. In saying that, I do love listening to track 24, End Credit Roller, as it is a summary of all the main themes, track 22: Into the Twilight is very different from all other music cues and works so well with the imagery and William’s (Poe) performance in the final climatic scene of reel-7. In terms of my favourite horror music cue, it would have to be track 20: Graveyard and Raven’s Reveal, which I think made me sick after working on it.

Did you watch any other similar horror films to get inspiration for your Raven’s Hollow score?

For me, Insidious (2010) was very inspiring in terms of how to build tension and release within a scene and Chris gave the following important score references:
Cosmic horror: Under the Skin (2013), Color out of Space (2019)
Blade Runner (1982), The Witch (2015), Hereditary (2018), Dunkirk (2017) Doctor Sleep (2019)

Raven’s Hollow is about real-life author Edgar Allan Poe. Were you familiar with him before you started working on film?

A little; I was aware that Poe’s short stories were a major influence on Bob Kane and Bill Finger, the creators of Batman and other movies such as The Crow (1994), Sherlock Holmes, and the detective fiction genre.

Are there any specific directors you would like to work with one day?

Ethan Cohen and Joel Cohen, Quentin Tarantino, Mike Flanagan, Leigh Whannell, Adam Robitel, James Wan, Christopher Nolan, Danny Boyle, Anthony Minghella, Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee.

You can listen to Robert’s Raven’s Hollow score here.