As part of my ongoing Q & A series on "Alien: Ore" (2019), here is part three of my three-part interview with the film's composers, Rose Hastreiter and Gerry Plant of Leonty Music.
Rose: Approximately two months, from auditioning to the final mix. Composition, recording and tracking were all happening at the same time, in our case. We didn't have any luxury of budget towards a live orchestra. So, we were resourceful in our design of sounds. Everything was arranged and produced in our studios.
Rose: We didn't aim to recreate any Alien sounds. As composers and artists, we really attempted an original piece of music with only some influence from the original score (as well as the visual environment that we saw on film).
Nick: Certain sounds produced in Alien were "replicated," in Alien: Isolation. Most notable was the "space whale" sound effect. The studio licensed it and other sounds/melodies, which Sam Cooper and Byron Bullock reproduced. In this interview, Cooper and Bullock explain how modern technology allowed them to experiment, giving their "whale" a unique stamp.Did you ever try re-create older sounds for "Alien: Ore," albeit with a similar, modern slant? Or did you "play it by ear," listening to the music and using your own tools and devices, without trying to replicate the original (music and sounds) quite so much?
Rose: We took great care in designing a sound library for the [score. For] the opening title scene, we used several layers of sound to create the "whale" sound that you hear right before the cut to the first scene. We tried to keep "synthetic" choices over organic elements—hence the "species" of sounds that related to the environment: metals, wind through the tunnels, etc.
Rose: Yeah, the wok lid is surprisingly still usable for food, haha! We didn’t have the luxury of heading into the mine. On a feature, we'd definitely consider doing that. For our work, "found sounds" are always a favorite approach.
The twins have worked with Leonty Music for years.
Nick: Music-wise, how did you come to use Leonty Music? Did you have them in mind, early on, and did you want them to emulate a specific composer (Goldsmith’s Freud [1962], for example)?
K & S: We LOVE working with Rose Hastreiter and Gerry Plant at Leonty! We had previously worked with them on "The Mary Alice Brandon File" (2015) and "CC" (2018). Rose had taken the lead on both of those ("The Mary Alice Brandon File" was released on the Twilight Saga Facebook page and can be seen there. Give that music a listen. It is beautiful). We love Rose [for] her beautiful attention to detail.
[Music is important.] The sounds and tones of the music help build [an] understanding of the world [the viewer is] placed in—for the story, as well as [the viewer's] understanding of who the characters are. We knew going into this project that we wanted the music to have a very close relationship with the soundscape—[for] them to almost play off each other and for there to be "music moments" that could almost sound like the diegetic world [of "Alien: Ore"].
[For that, we] wanted to use Rose and Gerry right from the beginning. We knew that they would bring something special to the score. They were amazing with what they brought to this film, [too.] It was a different approach then what we had done with our previous films. [Rose and Gerry] used metals and sounds that could have almost been from the mine itself to create musical tones and "moments."
