‘Together’ Composer Cornel Wilczek on Making the Score Sing (and Squelch)
In the genre-bending debut feature Together from Australian writer/director Michael Shanks, body horror, romance, and humor collide. Literally. Alison Brie and Dave Franco star in the film as Tim and Millie, a young couple whose complicated love story gets even messier when they encounter an ancient, otherworldly force beneath the surface of their shared life. Equal parts intimate exploration of long-term love and visceral body horror, the film weaves moments of tender connection and disquieting disconnection with disturbing, mythic rituals, challenging audiences to feel as much as they fear.
For a story this tonally delicate, Shanks turned to composer Cornel Wilczek to bring balance and craft the film’s score. A fellow Aussie, Wilczek’s boundless creativity and instinctive approach to creating inventive and exciting scores have produced a diverse resume of wonderful music. From the unnerving atmospheres of Talk to Me and the haunting textures of Bring Her Back, to scores for Destry Spielberg’s Please Don’t Feed The Children and Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar, Wilczek’s insatiable sonic curiosity brings something unique and compelling to every score he touches.
A true creative collaboration made in cinematic heaven, Wilczek’s score beautifully embodies and accentuates the layered dualities present in Shanks’ script and the performances from Brie and Franco. Forging an “elastic score” of gliding strings, processed vocalizations, and subtle electronic gestures that ebb and flow with the film’s shifting rhythms, the music of Together bridges the gap between concept-driven ideas and reflexive musicality.
Dread Central recently spoke with Cornel Wilczek about capturing the innate duality present in Together, how his bold choices deeply impacted a pivotal scene, and how sometimes, a score just needs some creepy vocals.
Dread Central: Together isn’t just the first film you’ve worked with Michael Shanks on, it’s his first feature film ever. How did you get involved with this project? Was there anything in particular that creatively attracted you to it?
Cornel Wilczek: That’s a good question, and I can’t tell you the backend because I was invited to pitch for it and to meet up along with a lot of other people. So I’m guessing what put me on the radar was something like Talk to Me, which makes a lot of sense. Part of the pitching process for this was asking what I thought of the script and if I had any ideas. I was obsessed with the idea of Together. I read the script, and I loved the script. Immediately, I had a few ideas about this musical idea of converging and sympathetic resonance, and all these ideas ended up becoming a big part of the film.
If I were to say my favorite subgenre of film, it would probably be body horror. I grew up with a friend who worked at a video store. And at the time, a lot of horror movies, anything R-rated, were banned. But he had a customer who would get stuff for us. And it just so happened that there was a lot of body horror that was banned at the time.
So originally, those ideas made sense in my head, and then they managed to make their way in. Conveying that really early on went down really well. After my first meeting, I met up with Shanks, and then I met up with all the producers and Dave Franco, pitching the same thing. About a week later, my mind hadn’t really changed. I read it again, and I thought, “No, this is what I want to do. I want to attack it like this.” I wanted to tell a love story as well, which was the other thing. There’s this very romantic element there.
DC: That’s so interesting that you only had the script. No early cuts or visuals to spark ideas. Do you have a preference? What is the difference for you when starting a project between seeing something, even if it’s in the early stages, versus just reading a script?
CW: It is different, but there’s something very pure about responding to a script. It’s all concept, it’s all ideas. There’s sometimes rhythm and a lot of the cinematic disciplines that you use embedded into it, and there was a lot in this film. There were a lot of really interesting things described in there that I hadn’t seen described in a script before. So it did immediately conjure a lot of the cinematic ideas that would then become the film.
But responding to a script, then suddenly you’re all about concept. Because they don’t want to hear a piece of music, they want to talk about it. And you have to find parallels between what you want to do and what you’re finding in the script. I find that process really fascinating because it’s sometimes just too easy to respond by jumping in front of your instruments and trying to start making stuff. There’s something easy about that.
But actually, it can be very challenging because you can just fall into tropes. You can fall into things that you’ve done before, uncomfortable areas, whereas responding with an idea might actually create some rules and push you into an area that you feel a bit uncomfortable in, and you feel a bit new to. There were a lot of new ideas in this. And in fact, just about everything I pitched, I got off and thought, “Oh fuck, I don’t know how I’m gonna pull some of this off. These are great ideas, and I found the parallels, but I’m gonna have to do some research. I’ve got a bit to delve into.” That was really fun.
And there is something very rewarding about getting a job based on your ideas as opposed to your music, because they’re investing in something that you haven’t done yet. And that’s exciting. Then you can build the world together as opposed to just giving them something that you’ve already got. I love that process, and I immediately felt very comfortable with Shanks. On the first film call, we had some very fun musical references that we both gravitated to, and it was like, “Ah, okay. He knows the deal.”
DC: Considering this is his debut feature film, what was it like working with Shanks on this? Did he lean on you and your experience as a seasoned film composer? Or was he a fairly hands-on director and collaborator?
CW: First of all, I will say, yeah, I’ve got more experience than him in terms of credits on films and stuff like that, but I still feel very new to this. What I liked about him, and something that I feel sometimes about myself and people I find that I gravitate to, is that you just feel lucky being able to do this for a job. I always feel very lucky. When I get a job, no matter what it is or how much I’m being paid, it’s just “Oh! You chose me, and you’re paying me, and I get to make music! God, thank you so much. I just wanna give you all a hug!” I feel very honored.
And I find that my favorite people are very similar. When something is greenlit, they’re very honored to be in this position. He immediately had that quality about him. I find that you can sometimes get a job and not really know what you’re in for. You don’t know who you’re working with. But straight away, he was very humbled by the experience, the whole time. Even though it’s his vision, it’s his script, it’s his story, it’s his film, it was very much a collaboration. He never dictated anything. And that process remained the same throughout.
Even in the mix as we were finishing things off, if we would disagree on the level of something, it would never be, “I’m the director, this is happening.” We’d try everything. And it was, honestly, the healthiest situation that you can be in when making a film. I think, too, that the script had a clear vision. So, what I realize now is that I probably got to something he liked fairly quickly. Because our references were the same, and the script was really clear, which probably helped the process.
As a first-time director, it was really natural and clear, and very rewarding because we both got to explore equally, and never at once did I feel like, “Oh no, this is the way you have to do it. Hurry up and get on my level.” It was never like that. We worked equally and at the same pace. That’s a pretty beautiful thing and a testament to him.
He’s also a very funny guy. There’s a self-deprecating humor that also comes from the place that I was talking about, just being honored to do this stuff. And I can’t imagine him ever not being like that. I think I’m always going to be like that, no matter what the gig is. I have just started a new job, and whenever I start something new, I’m like, “I better not fuck this up.” I always feel like this is the beginning again; every job is like the beginning. And I get the sense that he’s a bit like that, too.
DC: There’s an interesting duality thing going on in this film—the couple’s relationship versus the supernatural world. Can you speak to the ways in which you reflected those two separate, but intertwined, story elements musically? Did you assign thematic ‘territories’ or specific instrumentation choices to each one?
CW: Yeah, that’s a good question. And to be honest, that was probably more conscious while reading the script; [this idea] of keeping the duality and then they converge. However, when it came time to do it, one of the simplest ways I found, which actually happened quite naturally, was due to the way the film begins.
The way the film starts, it has an opening sequence that delves into that Lovecraftian, mythical world. The sound of the cave, in particular, was established really early on. Then it was being able to bring that back in very careful areas in [Tim and Millie’s] daily world. It was a really fun way of converging things.
Initially, there was going to be more of a distance between the two worlds, but this is the thing. You can be very strict with your rules, but then you get the edit, and that divide is really there in the visuals. So suddenly, I didn’t have to feel so burdened by that. I could cross that line really carefully when I wanted to. So, I actually crossed that line between the daily and the mythological world really subtly early on because it was always there. And then the sound design and everything else kept those things really distant.
I do this thing really early, which is like an energy map. It might sometimes just be literally playing a guitar, some sort of sound, or some instrument that I can play along with the film. I’m just literally improvising and creating little maps of energy. It doesn’t matter what it is; it’s just the intensity of things. I very early realized that getting the energy level right, [figuring out] where the score came in, and the tempo was a great way of defining those two kinds of places as well. I really enjoyed that.
Saying all that, there is a lot less music in the first third of the film. There are also some very big palette differences. There is a more conventional kind of palette that works for daily life. And then there’s the otherworldly palette of the cave and the influence of the mythology. It’s just careful playing. But I did bring it on fairly early. I wanted to give some strong hints, but that kind of goes without saying because that first scene really establishes that. You know right away what you are in for.
DC: That energy map idea makes a lot of sense now because this score feels so fluid. Not just fluid in the way it weaves the sound of the supernatural in with Tim and Millie’s life, but also in the literal execution of notes, chord progressions, and dynamics. Which also works really well with the body horror of it all.
Was this style a conscious decision, or was this more of you just going with the flow of the film, and that’s what it needed?
CW: Very conscious. One of the original ideas was an almost elastic score that had the ability to bend and stretch to different scenes and different cuts. I very early on realized that, being a body horror, there would be (and this is something you can only know when you see the cut), but there’d be frames close to another that you want to get to. Rather than doing jump scares for everything, the idea was for everything to glide from one scene to the next, and where possible, converge and find ways to come in and out.
There was a strong interplay between progressions that gradually get closer and then further apart, and closer and further apart. And this idea of will they, won’t they, and is this going to happen really early? Because you get an idea of what’s going to happen fairly early. I think that’s pretty clear, and that’s not something I wanted to fight and be mysterious with. We know what’s going on.
DC: It’s a huge part of the marketing, too. [Laughs]
CW: It’s in all the marketing, yeah! [Laughs] It was clear that was going to be a big thing. So it was more about when it would happen, and also how it would happen. This idea of being playful with everything converging, the best way to do that was to keep it really fluid. Because in the script, and in the film too, there is a lot of bodily fluids mentioned.
Actually, there is something I find very gruesome about fluids. Also, it’s hard to score like that. Suddenly, when you are using strings, it’s “Oooh, we have to get these glides right.” That gets into fairly advanced territory with the orchestration and everything else. I feel like that was a bit of a challenge very early on, working out how to do this. Also, the tempo at which these glides happened. So it was a very conscious idea to keep everything elastic. In fact, I think one of the words in the pitch I used was ‘an elastic score’ that felt like it could bend and stretch at the tempo it needed to. That was very fun.
DC: The use of vocals and vocalizations adds such an intimate, human layer to the overall soundscape. How did you approach recording and integrating those voices, and who exactly do they belong to?
CW: That’s a great question because initially, when reading the script and everything, it was like, “Vocals would work really well here.” However, I had just done two scores that used vocals very prominently, and one of them was horror. So I didn’t want to go there again. That wasn’t on the palette, that wasn’t on the cards.
Then, after getting the job, during one of the first meetings with Shanks, he was like, “I keep on hearing vocals.” I was like, “Yeah, I don’t really want to go there. I’ve done this before.” I don’t think he really understood how much I didn’t want to go there because I’m really scared of repeating myself. I think it’s something that I am just really reluctant to do.
Before I’d seen the cuts, he talked about the intimacy and how close [Tim and Millie] would be in a lot of scenes. I then saw the first cut and realized that it would really absorb vocals well. So I thought, “Okay, if I’m gonna do it, I’m going to find a really interesting way of doing it.” When I first saw the cave stuff, in particular, with all the faces that have meshed into the walls, it was like, “How could you not use voices?” There’s even a scene in the cave where they say, “It feels very crowded in here.” Let’s face it. I can’t escape the voices now. [Laughs]
Actually, before even seeing anything, I did a lot of vocalization myself just in the studio. There’s an instrument I’ve got behind me over there, which is an old carburetor that has springs attached to it and a contact mic in there. It also has a jack that the contact mic plugs into. I found by singing into it, vibrating the springs, and what it picked up on there gave it this sound of…Oh, I don’t know how else to describe it other than it comes from behind a veil. It comes from behind a curtain, so to speak. That became a big part.
So, I recorded the stuff for me and then brought it into a sampler and started scripting and doing interesting glide stuff, working out how to glide from one note to the next while sounding a bit unreal. But also, real. I wanted to find this middle ground. I didn’t want to make it too realistic because I wanted it to sound strange. So, it was some really fluid things between pitch and form and stuff. Also, stretching as it moved. I found a really great way to do that, and that was really fun.
Then, I realized that I needed more voices. That’s when Alex Olijnyk, who was a co-writer on this, got to work on some cues early on, because we had a very short time to do this.
DC: How short are we talking?
CW: Oh, boy. I got the cut late, so it was under a month. I asked Alex if she’d be up for it. I had some scenes for her, and I had the themes all there. We have worked together a lot before, and somehow our vocals intertwine really well. We complement one another, and we knew that very early on. So she did some vocals, too, and there’s a whole bunch of scenes where it’s almost duets between our two voices. Except they’re played through samplers, and it’s very fun.
Then I realized that we needed more. So, I got some friends — Hannah Crofts and Ryan Downey. I didn’t want to get them to do a lot of vocal performances in scenes because it would’ve gotten really tricky. So, rather, I went through all these scenes, slightly mapped them, had some strong direction, and recorded a whole bunch of stuff in [my studio].
From memory, it was a very hot day. They were in the studio that I’m working in right now, and, as you can see, it was quite small and quite intimate. It was so strange getting them to do all this vocalizing, but it came out really well. That became the foundation for just about everything. Putting it all together became more of an edit process than a performance thing, and I wanted it to be like that. I wanted the otherworldly, synthetic, gliding shifts to be a big part of it.
Then, there was one scene where, no matter what we did, we couldn’t get it right. That’s the bathroom scene where [redacted for spoilers]. We couldn’t get that right between our voices. So we got another person in to vocalize just that part. It was a specific tone that we were after with a specific kind of power and glide as it converges. And we found this person, Hannah McKittrick, who actually, strangely, ended up living quite close to me.
Hannah came in and performed that, and that was all live. But it was the processing that made it quite otherworldly. Then, from that, a lot of that was passed through pedals that did strange delays, backward stuff, and all that. I would get some of that and think, “That’s cool! That’s almost a new composition!” Then I’d reperform that. So, it was a dog eating its tail, slowly reperforming all of these process things, and it just eventually became that big mush that it is now.
DC: There’s a pivotal scene in the film (that I will not spoil) that is scored more beautiful than terrifying, which feels like a bold choice for a film flirting with body horror. Was that a larger, creative decision? Your decision? How did that choice come to be?
CW: Very early on, it was pretty clear that this was more than just a horror film. It was this acceptance, this giving in to living with someone, and merging bank accounts, and all that. A lot of people who have responded to this film, I think, could identify with it.
I remember when me and my partner decided, “Should we just move to one bank account?” It was very scary. Almost as scary as living together. Maybe scarier because there is nowhere to hide. Coming out the other side, it’s a very liberating decision. Not that there’s anything to hide, it’s just that giving up things like that actually allows you to be completely free within a relationship.
I read that scene and I thought, “This has to end on a positive note. It has to be a beautiful, transcendent moment.” And I can’t remember exactly when we talked about it, to be honest, but it was never going to be any other way for me. I remember in the mix, I was probably a bit brutal with Michael. I remember after saying, “Oh, god. Have I just offended him?” But I just thought the sound design was up way, way too loud. He was like, “But it’s a horrifying moment!” Yes, but it’s also beautiful. And I’m really happy with the balance of where it finished.
It sounds really good because, without that, it’s almost like you’ve disregarded the main theme. It had to end like that, and that was always on the cards. That theme is echoed throughout the whole film in little moments. We give premonitions to that really early on, and not in the obvious ways either. The tempo and the little points at which that premonition of that theme and where it comes in were really important to me. And when I finally got it there, I was like, “Yep. This has to stay in there.”
To be honest, that was one of the last cues that anyone had heard, even though that was the first cue that was written. I was just like, “No one’s going to like this. It’s odd.” It’s a lot of guitar, and guitar doesn’t have a huge place in movies at the moment. I just thought, “It’s going to fall on deaf ears and I’m going to have to write something else.”
But I feel like, after delivering the whole score and putting hints of that earlier, when I finally sent it to everyone, it went well. They liked it! So, I was really stoked. And again, testament to Michael, he was just like, “Wow. I love it. I don’t know what it sounds like, but I like it!”
DC: I love that decision because it’s not the decision everybody would make. It wasn’t an easy choice, which is respectable.
CW: No, it wasn’t. It would’ve been easy to score in a horrifying way or in a brutal way. That would’ve been really easy because you’ve got these bones crunching. It’s just too easy to do. But it’s a lovely moment. And also the ritualistic aspect of the cult that it’s based on and all of that, no one gets attracted to a ritual if it’s brutal. No one gets attracted to a cult if it’s absolute agony. There has to be something transcendental, beautiful, and lovely about it. That was the opportunity to do that.
DC: Your score for this film is out now to stream, and it operates so well as an enjoyable, cohesive listening experience, even when separated from the film itself. Is that listening experience and overall flow something you consciously think about when composing a score? Where does that fall on your list of concerns?
CW: It’s actually a huge concern. Sometimes I think, what’s the point of putting out a soundtrack if it’s weightless without the film? If it is just a bunch of cues and doesn’t have as much value without the film? I can think of some soundtracks that do that, and it’s, “Oh, I kind of like it in the film, but independently, it’s just not that interesting.” I don’t think that has to affect how you write. You have to write for the film.
Talk to Me was initially a bit like that for me. It was a bit broken and a bit fragmented. It worked so well for the film, but it was a set of cues. So, [what I did for Talk to Me] and very early on what I did with Together, was just literally throw all the cues in a basket and reimagine everything. And wasn’t scared to do some editing together and fuse things together to recreate the film.
For Together, I got all the cues and went, “Ok. How do these all work?” It was then a matter of ranking them, how well they worked independently without the film. Then I did a big old edit on them and recreated the film. Not necessarily linearly, either, but as an alternate film. I was trying to create a similar narrative, but not exactly the same linear narrative. I didn’t actually record anything new, but I took the stems and reworked them. It was just a rebalancing, an edit, and a joining together of things.
I found it very rewarding because I was able to create a lot of those sensations without the imagery. That’s important for me. It’s one of those things that’s almost like another little bonus — if you like the film, you’ll like the soundtrack. You’re not getting it exactly as it was because some extra love has been put into this. It becomes its own standalone thing. I love that and I think that’s really important.
I don’t think anyone really wanted to hear the cues exactly as they were because it’s just not as strong as this. It just so happened that there are some cues that have really strong links to one another, but were in very different parts of the film. Once you put them together, they create that one sensation, and that’s the strength of scoring. It can work non-temporally. You don’t have to be bound by the linear thing. You can create premonitions here and create these little portals and time travel moments from scene to scene. The soundtrack was a way to unify some of that and expose some of the little tricks. You won’t hear those cues exactly the same way as they are in the film. It is its own thing, but that was important.
DC: Switching gears a little bit, I wanted to ask you about the Australian and New Zealand film scene, as it is having a moment lately in horror. We, of course, have Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, as well as Dangerous Animals and the upcoming Wolf Creek: Legacy project.
What sets the Aussie horror or general movie scene apart? Is there anything unique or any notable stylistic differences that you feel make something feel Australian?
CW: I would love to know what other Australian filmmakers think of that question because I genuinely don’t know. It’s gotten to a point where I feel like, through social media, I’m being hounded by a lot of fan horror fans and other horror filmmakers from around the world to work on stuff, and they’re like, “We want that Australian thing!” What Australian thing? What is that? It’s something I haven’t worked out.
Even if you’re just looking at the two films that I’ve had that came out this year, with Bring Her Back and Together, they’re entirely different. They couldn’t be more different. Bring Her Back is just absolutely devastating, traumatic, brutal, and sad. Together is like a pop song. It’s fun! Even stylistically, there are so many differences, and I can’t even compare the scores. They’re an entirely different part of my brain. I don’t think there’s anything Australian about either of them. They’re just interesting stories.
What I will go on to say, that I feel it is possibly something and is just a theory, but as Australians, we’re very far away from Hollywood and Europe. I do wonder if there’s something we do that, like, “Hey! We’re over here!” With the filmmakers I’m talking about, there’s a desire to find something unique. There’s a calling to be unique in what you do. We don’t have the luxury of a big industry here, and we have to make ourselves heard throughout the world. So, actually, really trying to find something original and unique is extremely important.
Maybe some of those bold choices is the Australian thing. That’s the only thing I can think of. If I stood back long enough, I might be able to see that, but right now I can’t because I’m too immersed in it. But maybe that’s it; this need to be bold. Not for the sake of being bold, but more to just make sure that nothing’s diluted. That the pure essence of an idea is there.
There’s probably a lot that you could garner from that, too. If you look at Australian history, this idea of generational trauma could be a real thing and could be something really important. If you look at the history of brutality in Australia with the first white settlers being convicts, and then the indigenous population being massacred, there’s stuff there. It probably is something that creeps through things. But like all generational kinds of trauma, it’s not easily identified by the people doing it. I wouldn’t say that where we live is rough or dangerous in any way, but it has been. Maybe that’s something that is always bubbling around in the background.
DC: You mentioned earlier that you really love body horror films. What are some of your faves?
CW: I haven’t watched anything for a while because I’ve just been busy working, and I find that I can’t watch while I’m working. But if I go back, the two films that set up my love for scores are The Thing and The Fly. As a kid, and then again watching them as a teenager, those films just really stuck with me and kept on recurring in my head every time I’d watch other things. So I would say that not only were they the first body horror films I’d seen, but they’re the ones that affected me the most. I love them. I love them so much.
Then, moving on, as a complete nerd and a late teen, it was trying to find things that were banned. I remember we saw Society, and me and my friends were like, “Oh my God! This is a genre!? This is a thing!?” There was something about that film, too, that I really love. It’s just a romp.
That was one of the first things I mentioned to Shanks. I said, “Oh my God. This is just as silly as Society!” To a point where there’s a scene towards the end of Together where shit’s real. It’s heavy. Tim and Millie realize what’s going on and run out of the house to go on this adventure and stop it from happening. And it was like, “We’re changing the score here. We’re turning this into an 80s romp.”
It was one of those things where Shanks was like, “Cornel, I’ve got this idea…” It’s so easy when you’re working on these cerebral-style films to always be a little bit pretentious with your references. But he wanted to reference a lot of 80s, schlocky adventure films. As soon as he said that, I just saw a little glimmer in his eye, and I knew where he was going with it. I was like, “Oh, let’s go there.”
That also allows the audience to know that this is fun. You are allowed to have fun now. And that was really important. So that nod to all those films just meant a lot to me. Those three films are just perfect. They are the perfect distillation of body horror, and now it’s so great to know that there are more still being made.
Together is now playing in theaters from NEON. You can also stream Wilczek’s music for the film now via Lakeshore Records, available on all major streaming platforms. A vinyl release is also planned, with details to be announced soon.
Categorized: Interviews
