Cinemax's hit show Banshee is one of the darkest, most exciting series on television today. The music of the show is clearly part of the draw and expression that keeps viewers coming back each week, resulting in a recent third season confirmation from Cinemax. Kris Dirksen of Methodic Doubt, the musical team behind Banshee's score and main theme, took some time to answer a few of our questions about the show and his experience in the scoring industry.
What's your background?
Both myself and my partner are self taught musicians/producers/composers, neither of us have formal training in our field. I went to law school and after my first year, decided it wasn't the path for me. I ended up interning and later working for an indie record label and in music publishing, with no real intention of creating music. During that time, there were opportunities that would come up to demo songs for commercials and movie trailers, so I would work my day job at the label, then go home and stay up all night demo'ing songs at my kitchen table with a laptop and a cheap guitar. Usually these would go nowhere, but after a couple years of learning my work started getting some traction. My partner (Dane Short) moved to LA from Pittsburgh after college, and put in several years working at various trailer houses in LA. We first crossed paths in the trailer world, where we became friends and started writing music together. Dane had been using the name Methodic Doubt since 2003, and in '07 we partnered up and began working together full-time. We really cut our teeth scoring movie and video game trailers and have amassed hundreds of credits in those fields.
Dane and I score projects as a composing duo under the name Methodic Doubt, but we also have a boutique music company called Methodic Doubt Music, which spans beyond our own scoring projects. Our headquarters are in Los Angeles with a staff of six, and we work with a team of composers/artists/producers in LA, Brooklyn, London and beyond.
Banshee has some reoccurring emotional themes such as anger, despair and lust. Do you relate to these feelings when you're scoring scenes that involve them, or do you have another strategy to convey these emotions in your music?
There's definitely a raw emotional element that's integral to the scoring process. There are opportunities to watch advance cuts of each episode, but I make an effort to avoid watching those as much as possible until it's time to start writing. I prefer to see it fresh (as the audience does) and rely on my gut reaction to a scene as the initial source of inspiration. When you watch a scene potentially hundreds of times it's important to capture that initial push of emotion, as that first impression can quickly get distorted once you get caught up in the more technical aspects of scoring. It's especially easy to get lost in the woods when it's 3AM and you've been staring at a screen for 18 hours trying to meet a delivery deadline!
Do you pull from any music influences for these scores, such as other television shows you remember or possibly recording artists?
To be honest there haven't been many direct outside musical influences on Banshee's score. Fortunately we were able to establish a general ballpark tone for some of the main elements of the show early on, so it's largely been a matter of building on that base rather than looking outward. The show has such a unique blend of characters and elements it's really hard to draw comparisons. The one direct influence that I'll cop to is that of Brian Eno, the godfather of ambient music, whose influence looms over some of the more, dreamy ethereal moments in the show - the Carrie/Lucas love flashbacks in season one certainly owe a debt to Eno.
In general, as composers we don't really look to current film or TV scores for influence, as talented as Hans Zimmer and his crew are we're not really interested in sounding like them. The minuscule amount of success we've had we can probably attribute to trying to bring a unique sound to the table, rather than attempting to mimic whatever the flavor of the month is in the scoring world. If anything we're influenced by our own musical tastes and whatever we're listening to at the moment - trip hop groups like Massive Attack and Portishead, and post-rock acts like Mogwai, Sigur Ros and Godspeed you Black Emperor have probably had a greater influence on us more than we'd care to admit.
While scoring, do you just add in what you think works or is it more structured than that? Is there direction or influence from producers, etc.?
It's a collaborative process, once an episode is ready to score, there's a "spotting" session where I watch the episode with the show's producers, editors, and music supervisors. Greg Yaitanes (Banshee's showrunner) gives direction on what his intended goals are with the music in each scene and what emotions he'd like the music to convey. It's then our responsibility to go back to the studio and interpret that direction and put our own creative stamp on the process.
We're lucky that the producers and Cinemax have given us a great deal of creative latitude with the score and are very open to taking risks. Greg has been very supportive and hands-off with the score since day one, he's placed a great deal of trust in us and gives us space to do our own thing - which is a rarity in the scoring world.
Do you consider yourself a fan of the series, or is this just a job in your mind and you're trying not to get too "caught up"? Or does it help to be a fan?
I quit law school because I wanted to be passionate about the work I was doing. Like any other job there are headaches and frustrations, but we're fortunate to be in a position where we can make a living off of music in a time when many musicians struggle to do so. If it begins to feel like a job, it's likely time to do something else.
Working on a TV series can be an all-consuming process for a composer, long hours, seven days week for months on end. I commit about 5 months of my life each year to Banshee, I think you have to be a fan of what you're working on to make it through the grind. Banshee's been a scrappy underdog from the start and we're all very proud of what we've been able to achieve with the show.
Do you have any other projects besides scoring Banshee (other shows, bands ... feel free to elaborate on those)?
We recently scored a documentary for DC/Warner Bros. called Necessary Evil, which delves into the history and psychology of villains in DC Comics. Our movie trailer and video game advertising work continues on steadily. The show was just picked up for a third season so we'll be back in Banshee soon.
What's your favorite part of working on Banshee?
The creative trust that has been placed in us from the start by both Greg and Cinemax has made the show a very rewarding environment to work within. For the most part, we're given free reign to do what we want without any real boundaries, which is a composer's dream. The show covers such a broad range of ground every episode and throughout the season, and we're constantly being given new characters and scenarios to explore, so the work never gets stale and repetitive.
Read some more of our coverage of Cinemax's exciting series Banshee here!
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