|
A few years back, you scored the movie The Dissection Table -
and before we go into your music, could you tell us what that movie is
actually about?
The
Dissection Table is a psychological horror movie about a disturbed man who
thinks by kidnapping people and forcing them to confess their sins on a
sort of video confessional show he'll get to the bottom of what's wrong
with himself... but as things get more and more violent he spirals
out of control and starts to lose his grip on reality. Now how did you get involved with the
project in the first place?
I
had worked with Max Gideon, the star and writer of the project on a few
projects previously. It's been so long since we did this that I honestly
can't remember the order of everything we worked on... but we definitely
had done my music video If Only Tonight I Could Sleep which he
starred in along with Victoria Viveiros, the other lead of The Dissection
Table. We'd also worked on a bunch of short films, and on the set of one
of them, he asked me if I'd score the feature he was developing. At the
time I think it was only my 2nd or 3rd feature length film. So what can you tell us
about your score for The Dissection Table, from composition to
style to instrumentation?
My
main goal with the score was to capture Cadmun's deteriorating mental
state. It's pretty clear that when we first meet him he's NOT OK at all...
And so to start from there and go from bad to worse was key. As for the
actual style, a big inspiration for me was the score to Ex-Machina from Ben
Salisbury and Geoff Barrow. It's mostly electronic in nature but so full
and lush that it feels much more musical and organic. Things build and
build until they can't build anymore... and then they keep getting bigger
from there. Of course, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross' The Social Network
score was another big inspiration as it was to pretty much every movie in
the few years following that score. Scoring a genre movie, is one
automacitally influenced by music for similar movies, and/or other sources
of inspiration?
I
think it's inevitable that some things are going to be present in almost
any genre movie score. Of course hopefully you find new ways to do those
things and make them your own... A big thing for me with this score was
Max was totally cool with me taking an almost song-like approach to the
score, which was really key to it being such a perfect score for me to
release as an album. I've released all these albums of instrumental
electronica music over the last decade, and really, half of the tracks in
this score could have been tracks on my albums. They have beats, they have
rhythm, they build and fall in almost song-like structure. It really
allowed me to kind of go all in on the music and worry a little less about
hitting specific beats in the film the way a more traditional score does
(although of course that was still necessary in places).
What can you tell us about your
collaboration with the film's director Douglas Binford and/or the creative
team, and how mush input did they give in terms of the score?
Really
all of my interaction was with Max. Along with writing and starring in The
Dissection Table, he was also the producer, and as I detailed in the blog
post on my website about the background of the project, when the team ran
out of money, time and resources to finish the film, Max kind of took the
reins to finish it himself. He became the editor on top of everything else
and it all pretty much was left in his hands. Unfortunately he then got
busy as a working actor and writer in Hollywood, and the movie continues to
be unfinished and unreleased to this day. But during my time working with
Max on the score, he pretty much gave me total artistic freedom on the
film. He had a few ideas for how the emotion and vibe of certain scenes
should be, but once it was time for me to actually start working, it was
just me, alone in my room, soundtracking this character's mental decline -
my favorite way to work. Now
it should be noted, The Dissection Table has been shot in 2014 but
still not yet been released - care to elaborate on that?
 |
So
as does happen with a lot of independent films, there's just a lot that
can go wrong in the process of making a movie. Max has explained some of
what happened (he says a good long conversation over a coffee would be
necessary to go down the whole rabbit hole), but basically the original
editor left, leaving him to take over as editor, a skill he didn't even
have yet at the time. Reshoots were necessary as well as some additional
scenes to flesh things out, plus ADR, foley, post production, special
effects... all with an exhausted budget, and all after everyone else had
moved on to other projects including Max himself (he is a working actor in
Hollywood now). So he's just been slowly but surely piecing together all
the little things that need to be done all this time. He is still hopeful
to finish the film soon as he's recently been able to get the budget and
some of the other pieces needed to actually finish everything. Now it's
just a matter of time. So
what inspired you to release the score for The Dissection Table
despite the film being caught in post production hell?
So
I'd always had on my "career to-do list" (which is like a mile
long): "Release the score for The Dissection Table." I figured
that I'd of course wait for the film to come out to do that. But then I
recently released the score to another feature Beater in 2020.
I also readied the score to another feature in 2021 called Inexistent, which I'll be releasing in 2022, but will be
posting early on my Produced by David Rosen Patreon for Patrons
exclusively. While putting the album version of the Inexistent score together I thought to myself, "what if I
do the same thing with The Dissection Table?" So I went through my
hard drive looking for the old Dissection Table folder from 2015, and to
my great surprise... I had already readied the soundtrack album! I
literally forgot I ever did it! It even had a notes file in the folder
with an intended release date of June 2016 listed and names for all the
tracks and a note to finish an unfinished song as a bonus track (which I
did and it's the only actually newly made music for this project). And it
was all just ready to go! So I messaged Max and asked him about releasing
it and he basically told me to just go for it whenever I want. So I
decided that since it's been a year since my last album, the self-titled David
Rosen, and Halloween was coming up, why not just put it
out now? Do
talk about the actual recording sessions for a bit!
This
is the hardest question here for me to answer because it was so long ago!
Sometimes when I'm listening to my music I can remember every detail of
making it. Coming up with melodies and beats and ideas and how I felt
making them... but listening to The Dissection Table almost feels like
someone else made it. I was in such a different place 6 years ago,
musically, career-wise, life-wise. It feels like a different time. But I
do remember getting goosebumps from some of the biggest, creepiest, most
off-putting moments in the score, and I knew I was on the right track when
that happened. So
where can your soundtrack for The Dissection Table be obtained
from?
The
Dissection Table is now available on iTunes, Bandcamp and all digital
music stores. It can of course be streamed on Spotify and Pandora and all
of those streaming services as well. I also have a special Halloween
playlist on Spotify of some of my darkest, creepiest music, and it of
course includes a few tracks from The Dissection Table. Any future projects you'd like to share?
I've
got a lot of music in the works for my next regular song based
instrumental albums. During the pandemic I finished my last album David Rosen but had also started another 20 or so more tracks,
and I've started more since. I really want to just blaze my way through
finishing everything I've started so I can plan out a couple years worth
of releases including the Inexistent score and a compilation
album of score pieces from various short films that I've worked on over
the years. And aside from music, I also have my Piecing It Together
Podcast that keeps me busy (too busy really since it takes me away from
finishing all this music, but I do love doing it).
 |
Feeling lucky?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results?
(commissions earned) |
The links below
will take you
just there!!!
|
|
 |
Your
website, social media, whatever else?
https://www.bydavidrosen.com is
my website.
https://www.facebook.com/bydavidrosen and
https://www.twitter.com/bydavidrosen for
social media. Anything else
you're dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask?
I just want to thank you for checking out the album and interviewing me!
Also, I'm planning on digging up some extra bonus and extended tracks
from the overall The Dissection Table score to post on that previously
mentioned Produced by David Rosen Patreon, so that's even more content
that's coming soon! Thanks
for the interview!
|
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
