‘Immaculate’ Composer Will Bates on Delivering the Film’s Score
In a year already overflowing with horror content, leave it to superstar Sydney Sweeney to deliver one of the best and most divisive horror films of 2024. A long-gestating personal passion project, Sweeney’s role in giving life to Immaculate was as important on-screen as it was behind the scenes. As both star and producer, Sweeney helped select a skilled team of individuals she trusted and knew could help her create the best version of Immaculate possible. This circle of trusted creatives included director Michael Mohan and composer Will Bates.
After a positive experience working together on The Voyeurs (2021), the Immaculate reunion of Mohan, Sweeney, and Bates was practically fated. Mohan and Bates became fast friends while working on The Voyeurs, and Bates’ rich background made him a particularly perfect partner to score Sister Cecilia’s (Sweeney) dramatic Italian journey from awe to awful. For one, Bates’ connection to horror is literally hereditary as his parents starred and acted in many iconic Hammer horror films. Continuing the family tradition, Bates has since cultivated his own impressive list of genre credits, including Blackout, Mayfair Witches, Depraved, Charmed, Nightflyers, and more. However, it was perhaps his work on Netflix’s Devil in Ohio that ended up serendipitously serving the story of Sister Cecilia the best.
To ground Sister Cecilia and her nunsploitation-inspired story, Mohan envisioned several original Catholic-inspired hymns that the convent’s citizenry could perform. While certainly not unheard of, having a composer involved during pre-production to create diegetic pieces for a scene is a slightly rare occurrence. Luckily, Bates had experience doing this exact thing when he wrote original hymns for the cult in Devil in Ohio.
Dextrously integrating and expanding upon the palette established in these hymns, Bates’ score for Immaculate feels equally fresh and respectfully referential. Fully embodying Sister Cecilia, delicate lines of strings and vocals with melancholic minor progressions allow the audience to feel her awe and reverence for her beautiful new surroundings. Similarly, Sister Cecilia’s growing confusion, dread, and suspicions get telegraphed via foreboding low reverberations, tangibly unsettling textures, out-of-tune piano lines, and subtle, heartbeat-like percussion elements. Inextricably tied to Sister Cecilia, Bates’ score is the vessel through which we become fully acquainted and invested in the character and her terrifying journey.
We recently had the privilege of speaking with Bates to learn a bit more about his process and approach to scoring the tragic and terrifying tale of Sister Cecilia. During our time together, we also discussed working with Sydney Sweeney, the Immaculate sound design team, and the fascinating story behind the score’s perfectly imperfect piano star.
Dread Central: You’ve worked with director Michael Mohan before, but this is his first horror film. Did he have some ideas of what he hoped the score for Immaculate would sound like? What did those early planning stages entail?
Will Bates: Totally. We had worked on The Voyeurs together and we became really good friends. After that, we’d just hang out a lot. He started letting me know that this project might happen, sent me the script, and I read it. Then we went out for lunch one day and talked about music and all sorts of stuff. He made a playlist of quite classic horror scores. However, he and I were hanging out quite recently and he reminded me that we basically abandoned that playlist almost immediately. [Laughs] Because of various things that happened right at the beginning, we just stumbled on this language that we were able to move forward with.
One of the things that came up during that lunch was that there was a page in the script where there’s a trio of nuns performing as Cecilia arrives. And he was like, “What should they be performing?” So we had this long, boozy discussion about how this subsection of the Catholic Church is kind of stopped in time and is somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. And maybe, that could be reflected in the instrument choices. So I was like, “What about hurdy-gurdy, psaltery, and zither.” And he was like, “Great.”
So he went off, went to Rome, and sent his props guy out to go and find those instruments. Then I went and found mine as well. I just started writing sketches using those instruments and sent them to him. They were playing them on set and that was the beginning of us starting to think about the tone, the instrumentation, and this idea that there is something familiar and somewhat ecclesiastic sounding, but a little bit off, a bit weird, and kind of untouched by the outside world.
DC: What drew you to this unique trio of instruments specifically, as they don’t necessarily feel like an obvious choice?
WB: So I found those instruments and handed them off for those cues, but then I started thinking about the score. I feel like, as composers, we’re always throwing obstacles in our path. At least, that’s something that I do deliberately to try and make me not take the easy route. It’s something that will make me stumble on a melody or a feeling that’s not what I would normally reach for.
So I found this really weird thing in the back of my room here called a Hungarian zither. It has, like, 30 strings on it, and it plays in this quite unusual scale. You slide your finger up and down the key bed and play it with your right hand. And, I wrote the melody for Sister Cecilia’s theme using that instrument. I used that to start writing melodies. Then I gave them to my singer, Maiah Manser.
I wrote some words in Latin based on the Kyrie Eleison from the Requiem and, using that melody from the Hungarian zither, started to construct my themes with it. I feel like that’s a thing I like to do; find a tool that will always be forever evocative of one project. The Hungarian zither will now go and live in the back of my studio. We have this room back here called “the orphanage” where all the gear that gets used once goes out to pasture. I feel like that instrument is so connected to her like, I can’t ever touch it again.
Moving forward, I used it to create some of the beds and some of the spooky, ambient textures, but it was always simplicity. We talked about that a lot. I think Mike thought that Immaculate was going to be quite a quiet film at first when he was cutting. But as we got more into it, it seemed that the score just seemed to be working. It ended up being quite featured, but generally, he wanted things to be quite simple in their construction. I think that’s really effective. It’s not that layered.
DC: This score feels so profoundly connected to Cecilia. More than just the general emotional undercurrent for Immaculate, this score allows us to really feel what Cecilia is feeling at any given moment. It’s an incredibly effective choice. Was that intentional and always part of the plan? Or was it more of an organic development?
WB: Yeah, that’s a really great question. It’s actually something that we kind of made the decision about halfway through post. Because of the cold open, we’re with that other nun who’s having that other experience, so we as an audience are aware that there is something off with this place.
However, when Sister Cecilia arrives at the airport, she’s dazzled and intoxicated by this new place. There was a version initially where we carried on that feeling that we started, that feeling of dread. It was actually one of the producers, a guy named David Bernad, who’s amazing, who was like, “I think we need to be with her.”
So we started that first scene over, and it was really just to do with that first cue when she’s arriving. It then evolved from that. Mike and I, and basically the whole team, then decided that maybe the score in Immaculate is really from her point of view. It was a very conscious decision, and it made it kind of complicated sometimes because there are moments where there is this feeling of awe that she has for God, this feeling of majesty, and this almost magical-like feeling that needs to be evoked but is also slightly dark. We know that there’s something wrong, don’t we? But she doesn’t. She slowly starts to discover what’s happening.
So I think that the score going along that journey and being really connected to her became a really powerful story device. Having that theme and being able to put it in different contexts was really helpful.
DC: That’s so fascinating. It really makes me now understand and appreciate how important the few jumpscares we get are. Those moments allow us, as the audience, to follow Cecilia’s journey without making those final discoveries feel jarring. They remind us of where we are in a really smart way.
WB: That’s right. Exactly. And there was even a version of Immaculate where we went too far in that romantic direction before reinserting some of the horror back in, where it did become a bit too much like a slightly whimsical art film. It was a bit of a knife edge to try and thread the needle.
DC: I wanted to ask you about the sound design, as there are lots of creaks, whispers, footsteps, and echoes throughout the space. Did you have to do anything on your end to help support and work around that sound design? Was there any collaboration or relationship with that team to ensure everything was given the proper space?
WB: Yeah, we got very in the weeds together which was really important, I think. When you finish the score, you separate all the tracks. It’s called running stems. You separate all the parts so that the mixer has the capability to move things around and place things normally. And I’m not very precious about that stuff. They’re the experts, you know what I mean?
Normally, that process is happening with the director, and you kind of accept the way that they’re going to do it. But I ended up attending the mixes a lot. So did Sydney, actually, which I thought was super cool. She was there every day. It was very kind of technical and mathematical where things were being placed and what space was being carved out within the score to allow for the sound design to breathe.
The supervising sound editor, Bryan Parker, and Christian Minkler, the re-recording mixer, they’re just magicians. I think it was one of the first times that Mike had an experience on a dub stage and really understood the power of what’s possible. He was constantly texting me like, “You’ve got to get over here! This is unbelievable! You wouldn’t believe what they’re doing to your score. It’s so cool!” So, I ended up attending and seeing what was going on. It was just amazing.
I mean, sometimes with composing, you do that stuff very early on with a sound designer. Here at Fall On Your Sword, we try to encourage that. We have a Dolby mix stage, and we do a lot of sound design and scoring in tandem. This wasn’t entirely like that because it didn’t mix here, but we were able to really collaborate.
When I started to understand that they were using the score in the same way that they were using their sound design, it became a lovely, synergistic thing. We were all coming from the same place of drawing in an audience as opposed to constantly bombarding them. You can draw in an audience by being minimal. Even I, that moment where she’s in the confessional booth and she sort of leans in, I mean, I feel like that kind of sums up the whole thesis of the way that the music and the sound works. When she moves in, and you hear that creak, that’s the power of sound to me.
DC: That’s super cool to hear that Sydney was involved with the sound and music. What was it like working and interacting with her as a producer?
WB: Super cool. I mean, I didn’t expect her to be at the mix at all, but she was there every day. I’d be like, “Am I having a discussion about the level of a legato string line with Sydney Sweeney? This is like a weird fever dream.” She participated on that level. Like, “Is that too loud?” And I’d be like, “Yeah, it is. You’re right.”
I don’t know what that must be like as an actor to be looking at yourself. It must be very surreal to have to be in the mix and score your own performance. I think she just really wants to get to know every department. Mike was saying that she was involved in location scouting, like in the car picking places for them to film. At every level of Immaculate, she got involved, and I certainly saw that as well, which is amazing. She’s very switched on. It’s really cool.
DC: There’s, understandably, a noticeable post-pregnancy tonal shift for Cecilia. How did you navigate that transition while ensuring the music remained cohesive with everything you had already established?
WB: I think for me, that’s the power of melody. As a composer, when you stumble on that theme, when you’ve got the thing that is the theme of a character, certainly a main character, it’s this sort of God-like power. All of a sudden, it’s like, “I found the thing.” I call it a “Eureka Moment.”
I think finding that theme that we’re introduced to right at the beginning, when she’s having the ultrasound, that theme comes back, and it’s intentionally far more terrifying. We start to recognize it as her theme. We start to understand that she’s now being thrown into this completely different context and that she’s slipping out of control of her life. I think that was really helpful.
There’s also something always slightly elegiac about her theme. We understand early on that she’s quite a damaged person. She’s escaping stuff that’s happened in her life that maybe she needs to confront. That feeling is in there. That sadness is in there. I feel like it was important to draw that out and have that theme used as a way to frame the horror that we’re about to enter.
So it’s that and also just bringing in more of the little breadcrumbs that I’ve started placing at the beginning in the cold open with the red-veiled nuns. They have their own theme, and you start to hear more of that as their influence becomes more real and less abstract. Then, by the end, it’s a full-on horror score.
DC: I’m glad you mentioned the red-veiled nuns. I loved seeing that little nod (as well as others) to the rich sub-genre of nunsploitation films. Did I also catch a Bruno Nicolai needle drop during the montage scene? Were you at all inspired or influenced by Italian film music while composing for Immaculate?
WB: There is a Bruno Nicolai track, yeah. I’ve been accused of sounding like him, which is kind of funny because it is actually him. [Laughs] I was really sad that we couldn’t put it on the soundtrack album for all sorts of boring grown-up reasons. I love that piece.
I will say that the hardest cue of the whole movie was probably the cue before that one, where she’s being shown the convent for the first time. Sister Isabel who’s giving her the tour. And I love her performance in that scene. I think she’s amazing in the whole movie, but she’s very funny.
There’s a version of that score that is more whimsical and leaning into the comedy of it. And I think that was inspired by Bruno’s track there. In the end, we felt like we had to reign it in a bit. It became the sticky wicket of the whole film, to be honest, getting that one just right. As the audience, we’ve been led up to this moment. We know that this is off, and yet she’s so dazzled by this place. It was like, “How do we balance those two things?” Some of the playfulness, and it’s certainly in that cue, came from there.
I think in the end, if I was inspired by other movies, it was unintentional. I think it just landed that way. The Hungarian zither played a huge part for me. The hurdy-gurdy seemed like an obvious choice because of this notion of an ancient place. I also wrote all of the hymns. That’s the other thing that Mike needed me to do.
That’s another scene later on, immediately after the ultrasound scene, where she’s being ordained almost and they’re singing this hymn. You’ve heard a little bit of it before that. There’s a moment during the tour where she stumbles into a rehearsal and they’re rehearsing that hymn.
So he was like, “Can we have our own hymn? That would be cool.” I’m like, “Yeah, of course, let’s do that.” So I took the Te Deum prayer, set it to music, and wrote this thing that has a feeling of majesty but is also slightly off and wonky. I think writing that led to other things, other choices, these big chords, big sort of hymn-like chords.
I talked a lot about trying to capture that feeling when you’re in a church, or you’re in a recital, or something that has a big organ in it. And at the end of the organ [performance], he or she would lift their hands off the instrument and there’s a trail of the echo that’s left.
It sort of happens at the end of the beginning piece of 2001: A Space Odyssey, at the end of that big piece. I love that feeling. It’s sort of like this pregnant pause. I felt like that’s something that I constantly tried to recapture, this feeling of reverb trails and the feeling of what just came before extending. So we talked about that quite a bit in terms of minimalism.
I also work with a wonderful violinist called Lev Zhurbin, who works out of New York. I’ll write my parts and then email him a PDF, and he’ll just record in his apartment and send it back to me. So, all of the strings were recorded that way as well. There are no big recordings. It’s just layers and layers of him. In a way, there is also something slightly weird about that. He’ll move the mic around his apartment and use different instruments, but really, it’s all him doing all of that stuff. I think it is subconscious, but I think it makes it all feel just slightly strange.
DC: You also wrote all the original hymns for Devil in Ohio, although those were much more folk-oriented, versus these that leaned hard into the Catholic tradition. Is that something you are personally familiar with? What was it like to develop these original pieces that felt traditionally religious?
WB: Very fortunately, when I was in high school doing what in England is called my A-levels, I was doing A-level music where a teacher did a whole semester on Requiems. That stuff just lodged in my brain. I know quite a bit about classical music, but as I got older, for some reason, with composers, I would always be like, “I wonder what his Requiem is like. I wonder what that composer’s Requiem is like.” So I have quite a big collection of Requiems. I think it’s all because of that module at school when I was a kid. So, I’m familiar with those.
I think that was helpful for the Kyrie. I just nicked that text for the opening of the movie. That’s just a set, ancient, thousand-year-old Latin text, right? And I think because of knowing all those Requiems, it was easier for me to figure it out. I did have to get a bit of help with the grammar because my high school Latin wasn’t really cutting it. A friend of mine was able to guide me a bit more because I had to kind of change things around. But I’ve always loved Requiems and I’ve always found it a really good way of understanding a composer. Hearing what they do with their interpretation of a Requiem is always interesting to me. So that was helpful.
DC: We also get the classic Ave Maria and Carol of the Bells pieces. Did you re-orchestrate and arrange those as well?
WB: Yeah, it was so fun. Really fun. My assistant Erik Lutz did a lot of the choral arrangements for the Carol of the Bells, and we used this wonderful choir in London called the Hi-Lo Singers. They recorded that.
And then Ave Maria was obviously used in Immaculate. At the end of the movie, we were sitting in here, and Mohan was like, “What do we do at the end? What’s the plan here? Do we carry on with the same feeling that we just had?” We tried a few things and it didn’t seem to make sense. Then it was just like, “Hang on a minute. We’ve got this amazing Ave Maria thing. Why don’t I add to it even more?” So I did this thing with the toy piano and the Ondes Martinet and it just seemed to make sense. And, you know, what else is left to say at the end of that movie? Schubert seemed to know.
DC: Talk a little bit more about the use of piano in Immaculate. Did you have a physical piano you were using? Or was it more of a digital effect? I’m always a sucker for a piano that sounds like it’s being tortured.
WB: Yes, there was much torturing done to pianos in Immaculate. [Laughs] When we first started talking about this movie over margaritas years ago, Mohan was like, “Maybe there are no synths. Let’s try having no electronics.” In the end, I think a couple of things snuck in there; there’s a bit of a Moog and a bit of a CSAT in the earlier section of the film, but there are certainly no plugins. It’s all real, and that was very intentional.
I’m very fortunate because my wife has become addicted to estate sales here in L.A. We went to one in Long Beach, and it was amazing. This antique hoarder had died in this giant mansion, and, in the corner, there was this enormous piano. I was looking at it, and it said “Free.” I said to myself, “Forget it. That’s ridiculous.” And the woman who was running the estate sale was like, “I can tell you’re interested.” I was like, “Of course I’m interested.” And she said, “If you don’t take it, if no one takes it, we’re taking a chainsaw to it tomorrow morning because we can’t figure out how to get it out of the building.” So I was like, “Shit.”
I called a Siberian guy who knew exactly what to do with this thing. It’s called a square grand piano and was from about 1850. He figured out how to get the legs off, got it out, and got it into my garage. I found out later that is used to belong to General Phineas Banning, who is the guy that designed the Port of Los Angeles. Like, he designed Long Beach and San Pedro and stuff. I don’t know how this guy ended up with this piano, but it’s very strange. The thing about it is that it has these two soundboards. It’s right before they figured out how to put pianos upright, so it’s like a grand piano, but the soundboards are kind of on top of the other. So it’s perfect for prepared piano stuff.
I started scraping it with my fingers, I took a mallet to it, I put the EBows on the strings. A lot of the howling sounds in the score are from that thing. I had a guy look at this piano and he was like, “This belongs in a museum. Don’t ever try and tune it because it will break. It hasn’t been tuned in a hundred years, and it will basically just fall apart.” That piano now lives in my garage.
While the Siberian guy was at the estate sale, he was like, “They are telling me you can have this one too. Do you want it? There’s room in my truck.” And I’m like, “Alright.” So they also had an upright Steinway, and I grabbed that as well. This whole affair has led my assistant to call my garage the piano farm. There are now five pianos in there from various estate sales. I feel like it’s an adoption agency of pianos that would all be chainsawed. It makes you realize how often pianos are probably destroyed in this city.
DC: That’s so wild. You gave it another life! There’s also something kind of beautiful about the fact that you can never tune it.
WB: Yeah, I agree. Just accept it as it is. It’s what it is that’s perfect. And unfortunately, you know, I feel like it’s like the Hungarian zither in that I can never use this piano again. You literally play a note on it, and it’s like, “Oh, yeah. That sounds like the convent.” But I can’t get rid of it, so it’s just gonna sit there forever, probably.
The Immaculate score is currently available on all major streaming platforms via Lakeshore Records. Neon’s Immaculate is also now available on VOD.
Categorized:Interviews
