Composer’s Notes

The Scroll of Morlock is a short film you can see on YouTube. DreadCentral and Nightmarish Conjurings reviewed it.

The film pays homage to the German Expressionist films of the silent era. The supernatural concept embodies the idea that a part of our humanity is captured on film. The performers of the silent era have now all left this life, but their shadows live on. This story features a young arthouse projectionist who gets a little too involved with the film, with predictable results.

The score features two main ideas - the machine rattling of a film projector, and the idea of breath signifying the presence of a spirit. The film projector sound design is heard in all 4 of these cues. It is mangled to breathe, attack, or stalk its prey. And breath is all around, as the orchestra creates textures that involve wind players breathing through their hollow instruments.

The climactic cue pays direct homage to 19th-century Romantic music - the style of which dominated early Hollywood films. It uses a chromatic sequence progression which is found all over operas and symphonies form that period. The progression leads to a hold-your-breath moment, followed by the payoff - unleashing all the horrors of the 20th-century musical experimental techniques that for the basis of countless horror scores.

You can see The Scroll of Morlock on YouTube. Best played on a large screen, loudly, in the dark of course.