Composer Daniel Pemberton says that the most challenging score of his career was the one he created for “Project Hail Mary,” re-teaming with “Spider-Verse” directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. In an interview, Pemberton talked about creating a consistent theme that included different moods to support the scenes on earth and in space, human and alien, comic, exciting, and tender. That included some unusual instruments and sounds, from a rare 1950s instrument made of glass to a squeaky faucet and a bunch of children clapping and stomping for percussion.
The film takes place on Earth and in space, with distinct visual cues separating them, including changes in aspect ratio. How does the score help separate the locations?
There are bits with the music where I’m very conscious of delivering a huge widescreen IMAX-scale score in moments. But then there are other bits where it is quite intimate. And there are different tones, that mix of humor with the grand majesty of space and awe and wonder. That is not something that often happens in sci- fi. Sci- fi is often quite cold. One of the great challenges of this film was jumping between many different ideas and moods while still maintaining continuity and keeping it interesting. Chris and Phil wanted it to be positive. They called it “hopecore.“
It must have been nice to work with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller again. What was your first conversation with them about this movie like?
We talked about making something that felt very organic and connected to the earth and the universe, so we wanted to create sounds that were tactile, like wood, metal, glass, and water. We wanted to construct a sound world that didn’t rely as heavily on traditional sounds as a normal film score. They were very keen on trying to score the entire film on one woodblock. But I pointed out that might not work for a two-and-a-half-hour movie.
You had some very unusual instruments, including human bodies as percussion.
We were really keen to connect it back to earth and back to humanity. So we talked a lot about using the human body as much as possible. There is the kind of obvious stuff, which is the voice, which is used very heavily. solo sopranos and a lot of manipulated voice work, and experimental voice work. And yes, there’s a lot of percussion. It is actually a bunch of school kids from Wells Cathedral School who have a percussion course. I roped them in. Because Grace is a teacher, I thought it’d be fun to get a whole bunch of school kids singing. They do a lot of stomping, clapping, and body-slapping.
And one of the “instruments” on the soundtrack is a squeaky faucet?
Yes, there is a squeaky tap that is a big part of this score. A friend of mine has a big, old country house. I was staying there, and it had an en suite bathroom. I went to brush my teeth. I turned the tap on, and because it is such an old house, it just made this horrific noise, and I was like, “That is really interesting,” because anytime I find a good noise, I am like, “Okay, there is something there.” The squeaky pipes and the water, recorded on my phone, are a really cool tone because it’s actually very pure, almost like a sine wave. But it’s got imperfections, which for me is a lot about the universe, which is beautiful but imperfect. Electronic music is often quite clean and perfect. It’s very square and ordered, but the universe is not like that. I was trying to capture as much as I could of this organic feeling of variation and mutation within the score.
And what is a cristal baschet?
It’s an amazing instrument from the 1950s with all these glass rods. It looks amazing. It’s almost like a synthesizer, and it is completely organic, all about touch, water, glass, and metal. It became a big part of the score. We got a really great player called Thomas Bloch, whom I’ve worked with a couple of times before. He’s an amazing cristal baschet player. Again, it’s trying to pull these sounds in that are unusual and unexpected, because I really wanted the palette to feel unlike scores you’d heard before, pulling different ideas in, which made it very complicated and challenging to write. But if you are trying to write a score that you don’t know where you are going, in a way, it felt a bit like being on the Hail Mary spaceship.
So, it’s kind of like playing with your finger on wine glasses with different levels of water?
Yeah, it’s a bit like a wine glass. There is also a glass harmonica, which is more like playing on a wine glass.
Most of the movie is just two characters, a human and an alien with super-hearing and a musical language.
When Rocky comes in, that’s the first time we really introduced this slightly more electronic, manipulated vocal work. I did a lot of early research and development with singers, voices, and noises. I built sample engines where I could play something expressively. For Rocky, we started introducing them in ways where the sounds are manipulated so they feel unusual and alien, but still have a connection to the voice, because so much is about communication between two different characters. I wanted the alien-like sort of tone to feel familiar because they have found a way to communicate. But I still wanted it to feel strange, not what you’d experienced as a voice. There are these manipulated vocal sounds, and then they all blend together throughout the movie.
I especially want to mention the score for the funeral scene. It was very moving.
I really wanted people to connect to the humanity of the story. I think we all really wanted to pull people back into a world of hope and belief in other people. And that moment for me was very important for that because you’re looking at people who’ve sacrificed their lives for the good of the rest of the planet and the fragility of life. I just really wanted to capture the beauty of that, really.
What is the best part about working with Phil and Chris?
They have a fantastic ability to push the idea of films as far as they can go. I love their enthusiasm for trying to make something new and different, which is the enthusiasm I have. You can see it in all their movies. There’s so much love, attention to detail, and care that go into them. That permeates across everyone who works on those projects, from story to editor to costume design to sound, and hopefully to music.
What are you doing next?
I just did a movie called “The Drama.” That’s the furthest away in terms of complexity. “Project Hail Mary” is one of the most complicated scores I’ve ever done in my life. “The Drama” is one of the simplest, just three flutes, nothing else. And then I’m just almost finished on “Masters of the Universe,” which is the new He- Man movie. It is going to really surprise people because I don’t think they realize how much fun they’re going to have seeing that movie in the cinema.
