Composer Max Aruj spoke with CineConcerts about the score for the upcoming film The Tank!

CineConcerts (CC): What inspired you to become a film composer?

Max Aruj (MA): I'm from Los Angeles and I started playing piano around the age of six, jazz and classical, and did that for a bunch of years. And then when I was 12, I think something changed where I fell in love with it and decided, this is actually a lot of fun. And then in high school, my friends and I made a film and I did the music for that and actually acted in it also. That was a really fun experience where we had to get a few buddies together in someone's garage, a little jazz band together. It was about a jazz singer who had this Frank Sinatra sort of character. And that was so much fun. I did it with a friend and we had such a blast, and I think that was the moment where I decided, I want to check this out and see where it goes and what happens. And then that's what I did.

CC: Do you compose with moving images in mind or what is your process for that? How do you sketch out ideas?

MA: For many years I sat at the piano only and I would do it, and then I'll just write at the piano and keep building. But I think in the last two years, once I've been writing more themes, after I'm kind of out of the remote control world and on my own, I actually do some thinking while walking and kind of workshopping melodies and ideas because being away from the piano and being away from a system just forces you to think a little more freely, maybe, and without inhibitions. Let's say I've already written a massive piece and I want to change just a couple of things. It might take a long time to do that at a computer, but when you're walking, you're just thinking, “If I change this and I change that, just a couple of notes here and there that would make it better.” And that freedom and detachment from sitting in a workstation is helpful for sure.

CC: Do you compose anything on your own outside of film and television?

MA: I work with some other artists on stuff not to picture, but I personally am not a singer, so I wouldn't say that I have a vocal career in my future, but I'm happy to work with other artists and help them with that and write songs and try a little bit with lyrics. But most of my stuff is to picture, and I like it that way.  

CC: What's the story behind you getting involved with this project?

MA: Well, I worked for Lorne Balfe for many years and I had met the director of a movie that Lorne worked on called The Frozen Ground. His name is Scott Walker. He's from New Zealand, and I've met him a bunch of times over the years and spent some time with him. And then The Tank came up and Lorne gave me a ring. And I absolutely wanted to work with Scott again. He's a great, great director, super easy to work with, very creative. And when the opportunity came up, we connected easily and I just went for it.

CC: I find that the composing community is so cool because you guys really do help each other. So, talk a little bit about the community. How does it feel to be a part of a business where you guys look out for one another? And, if one composer doesn't want to do it, they'll call somebody and be like, “Hey, do you want this?” I think that's just awesome.

MA: Yeah, that element of it is very cool. I think the key word is “earn.” When you earn that relationship with someone, then it's great because you form a great relationship. I think when you start to make your way in Hollywood, you realize there's certain people that are so fantastic. And at the same time, if you don't have that shorthand with someone, with another composer or another musician, then it can be a nightmare. But if you work with someone for years and build a working relationship with them, then yeah, it's fantastic. You know, let's say something comes up and you need help and you’ve got to be able to pick up the phone and call your friend and get them on board.

CC: Do you mean like a shorthand of understanding just the musical perspective of a composer?

MA: Exactly. Let's say there's a scene where you have a piece that's in a certain time signature of 4/4, and then you have a meeting and the director says, “Actually I want it to be a waltz,” which is in 3/4. So, let's just say that happens, which it can and has and you need to change a five minute piece completely and cut out every single part of every bar. So, a pretty brutal amount of work. And let's say at the same time, you have a recording session the next day. So, it's got to happen. Two things need to happen on the same day at the same time. You need to have someone, know someone that can help you with that or else you can't call yourself a professional and not deliver when things get really tough. So, to have built these relationships is crucial.

CC: What kind of experiments and crazy stuff did you do in this score? Because I feel like anything that has a horror element to it, I find that composers, they'll remix down the footsteps or something like that.

What was your starting point and where did you go? And what kind of cool stuff that you do in this one?

MA: I think the key is that the director wanted to sound kind of ancient because this monster has been around for millions of years. I had some separation from the score and then I listened to it again a couple of days ago and I really feel like if the people in this movie had had a similar experience millions of years ago, or rather this creature was hunting whoever millions of years ago, they could be hearing a similar score. So, achieving that was…it took some time to get that sound right. So, for example, the creature motif that you hear, it's very primitive and gritty and making it sound like an ancient orchestra, like somehow people were making these sounds millions of years ago. But in addition to that, the tank, which is obviously the name of the movie and where the creature lies, I wanted to create a metallic world, so I actually scraped some knives together and then transposed them in a really weird way so that when you're down there, you're hearing these really low but metallic booms that kind of really make you feel like you're in a foreign and a cold place.

CC: And so that metallic sound is something, obviously, that the tank is made up or some element of the space when you're inside it. So, there’s this claustrophobia, is that what you're talking about?

MA: Exactly.

CC: So musically, making a sound ancient is fascinating to me because how do you pinpoint what that is like? Do you go around your studio and you pick up different instruments and experiment?

MA: I would record, let's just say, a really beautiful cello solo, which we did some recording on, that wasn't sufficient because it needed to sound more out of tune. So, what we do is we would layer the cello solo, which has this beautiful, beautiful arc and dynamics, and then I would start to double it with a cello doing a tremolo, which is going back and forth really quickly. And then I might also take another recording of a cello and start to slowly pitch it out of tune. And then when you stack them, then all of a sudden it sounds like an imperfect orchestra, which is exactly the sound that it makes you feel like something is off. Something's not right, you know, they're not playing a Mahler symphony. It's something much more sinister than that.

CC: Were all of these ideas originally done on piano then ultimately went to orchestra?

MA:  In general, yes. When I'm writing a theme or a motif, I think to be able to boil it down to a piano map or at least a score that someone can read, I try to do that because if I can boil it down to that, that can be put across the whole score and in a healthy way. Whereas let's just say if the idea is kind of amorphous and the director says, “I want what you've done, but I want it to be different, I want to be bigger,” if you're not able to pinpoint what exactly you've done and what the notes are and the sounds you've created, you might have trouble recreating that in a different setting, in a different key and a different scene.

So, to be able to look at your musical footsteps, so to speak, it helps you understand how to dissect that and then maybe make a longer section or make a shorter section, make a louder section, and do different things to it. So, you're not repeating everything you've done verbatim every time, because then it would start to sound repetitive.

CC: Talk a little bit about beginning the creative process on this one. Did you read the script and then get musical ideas or did you watch and start composing after you saw an edit?

MA: On this one, it was really smooth and really great. I didn't read a script, but they sent me the cut and it was basically a final cut and I was just able to dive in. It was a really smooth, awesome process. And the director had been living with the film for a while. He knew exactly what he wanted, so stepping in was really such a joy. And I watched the film and then I wrote a few suites not to picture, so I wrote a family theme and then I wrote a creature motif and then I wrote an action theme. Those are the pieces I started with, and I sent them to the director after a few weeks of living with the material. And he said it seemed like a great set of building blocks. And then from there I went and scored a couple of the most important scenes in the movie, one of the family scenes at the beginning when they drive to the house, because nailing that is important, because it gives you this small framework for their whole journey. And then I scored one of the big action scenes when they're having their bout with the monster. And then it just went over really well and he gave me some notes and it was a beautiful process, actually.

CC: Some directors have exactly the sound that they have in mind. I suspect that because you were sending some different motifs as ideas, that he may not have known precisely what it was he was looking for. Or were you able to define that for him? Was it that type of process?

MA: Yeah, it really was. There were a few things that were like way, way off. But he was very specific about pinpointing things like, “I love this five second section.” It might have been some weird metallic bend I had done. And he said, “I love that. I want that in the section where they're in the house on the second floor and they're talking to each other.” And he was very specific and he knew every frame of the movie. And it made it really a joy to just plow through the whole thing.

CC: That's an important note from a director. As a composer, if they say, I love this and it may be like three seconds of your music, you then take that three seconds and you can apply that esthetic to more of the stuff throughout the film, and you try to capitalize on that. How hard is that to do?

MA: Like anything, practice makes perfect. Let's say a director goes, “Oh, I love these couple bars,” but you can't repeat four bars for 10 minutes. So, you get practice it knowing, okay, he likes when the strings are doing this short figure. It's three notes. Okay, so you do that and then you might change it to a different three notes, but it might have the same shape. So, if it's going up-up-down, you don't have to start on, let's say, C every time, you could start on F another time, you could do it twice as fast or twice as slow. You can change instruments. So, it's kind of having this tool ready to just be prepared to take one simple idea and stretch it out to multiple minutes because that starts to become a pretty regular activity that you need to do, right? So, I think you get used to it.

CC: Is there something specific that that you did in this score that you hadn't done before or some practice in composing that you didn’t know if it was going to work? Any creative experimentation?

MA: I think my focus on this score was to be as economical as possible, and by that I mean be very clear with the motifs, don't overuse them because in this sort of movie, if you overuse a melody, then it can become annoying and it can lose focus. So, using it when needed and not just frivolously. The creature motif, for example, in this sort of movie, of course you could use it at every possible moment when you see the creature, but you don't want to do that, it's not creative to do it that way. Be selective about when to use it and how to use it. And I think the difference between action and emotion is not just cutting from one to the next really blindly, but creating these smooth transitions so that the score just feels seamless and purposeful. An example would be if they're running from the creature and then they reach safety. It can’t just be night and day. You want to feel organic the same way their heart might be pounding, so the music might have to cool down with them and just creating this seamless score that perfectly follows their emotions and what you're seeing on screen.

CC: You're obviously composing scene by scene, but you also have to make sure that you remember everything else that you've composed already. That must be a learning process, a skill you have to hone.

MA: Yes. I think watching the movie and doing a spotting session with the director where you choose the key scenes and then you have a roadmap where you know you are going to have these big cinematic moments. So, it might be choosing those moments first to hit and then working around that and leading up to those. It helps when you last heard the family theme or when you last heard the creature theme and to know when you next hear it and starting to think, if it's been, let's say 10 minutes since we had the family scene, we could hear it again. And you only know that after having gone through the film and mapping things out. You have a moment and then 60 seconds later, there's another family moment. You can't just repeat verbatim. You've got to switch it up and keep it fresh for the audience.

CC: You must have color codes for these things, that's what I would do. Like, the family theme is green and if there's too much green when you step back then that means you need to adjust.

MA: Exactly. I should start doing that. Family is green and then danger's red.

CC: Right? And then, if there's too many clusters of one color, you need to spice things up.

MA: Exactly.

CC: Are there any cues that you're particularly excited about in this score? I think there's like 19 tracks.

MA: Yes, I think the family theme, so the final track on the album, that's pretty emblematic of the emotion that I'm trying to reach. And then I think my favorite action track is Track 12, “They're Inside” because I think that embodies what we were talking about, where I'm trying to give the creature theme, I'm trying to play the action. I am creating smooth transitions between one place and another, so whether they're outside or inside. And then in the last third of the track, we have this really intimate family moment. And then at the end, this kind of little heroic moment, I think it kind of sums up the score in all the things I'm trying to do, these ancient sounds, the intensity, and I think that would be my favorite if I had to choose one.

CC: What do you listen to? What are your musical inspirations?

MA: What I've been listening to lately, the past few months, is bluegrass, actually.

CC: Really?

MA: Yeah. I think it's so natural sounding and the voices are beautiful and just a reminder of how much you can do, let's just say, without electronics. And I think it's educational to see how creative people can still be writing music the same way you would 60 to 80 years ago, where you've got a small band and the tunes are typically 3 minutes, 30 seconds. And I think again, the word is economical and being very selective with what they do and how they do it. And I actually went to a show and there was a great opener. Her name was Andrea von Kampen. Her voice was like crystal, so beautiful and pure, and the audience was just listening so intently. They were silent, focused on her, and I was just reminded of how arresting just a guitar and voice can be when done well.

CC: What’s next for you? Anything you can talk about?

MA: It's not announced yet, but I'm finishing a Netflix show right now. It's an action show which has been a lot of fun. And then I'm working on also an action movie as well. So, I'm keeping busy. And there's another movie that I worked on called Kill, which I don't know when that is going to come out, but that one is wrapping up and that's been a lot of fun as well.

CC: When is The Tank coming out?

MA: April 21st it comes out in select theaters, and April 25th it's on VOD.