TIFF24: Hanan Townshend Talks Scoring “Went Up the Hill”
This review was originally posted on Film Obsessive.
Grief manifests in a multitude of ways. Went Up the Hill is a modern, gothic horror film that shows loss almost personified as a ghost that lingers behind when a person passes away. The film follows Jack (Dacre Montgomery) and Jill (Vicky Krieps) in the immediate aftermath of the death of Elizabeth, mother to Jack and wife to Jill. In order to make sense of all the emotions going on in these characters, there needs to a subtle, internal score that supports the images on screen. That’s where composer Hanan Townshend comes in.
Fresh off the world premiere of Went Up the Hill, Townshend sat down with Film Obsessive’s News Editor, Tina Kakadelis, to talk about picking up music to avoid chores, the vocal-heavy score, and the collaboration between himself and director Samuel Van Grinsven. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Film Obsessive: With composers, I always like to ask how you got your start playing music and if film is another longtime love of yours?
I grew up on a dairy farm in rural New Zealand and music was always an escape for me. Living on a farm, you get pulled into chores a lot, so music was just a way of doing something completely different and get out of doing a lot of chores (laughs). I grew up playing in bands and playing in church, that was a foundational place for me. Scoring came later for me. I think the first time that I thought I really want to do this as a career when I saw The Lord of the Rings. I know I’m a Kiwi, so it’s a little like, oh, you would say that. Truly, though, they just came out at that right time when I was fifteen or sixteen.
Then, I just really started to fall in love with all these British scores. Clint Mansell’s score for The Fountain was like, wow! I realized you could do the Howard Shaw kind of stuff like orchestral but then you can also do something quite different as well. Films were a part of my life, but probably not until a little later did I start to go back and watch the classics.
I also picked up music as a way to avoid chores, so I get it.
Yes! Whenever i was practicing at the piano, I think my parents were just like, oh, just leave him (laughs).
When I was doing preparation to talk with you today, I kept seeing people say that you have an unconventional style of scoring, but I didn’t know what that meant. Can you talk a little about what that means for you?
Unconventional could be anything, right? So, yeah, what does that mean? When I score a picture, one of the things that I’m really drawn to is the internal world of the character. I have to write from that perspective. Even this film, Went Up the Hill, it’s a very internal film. I just find that as I’ve often I don’t try to define my music, but other people tell me things. Like it’s this way or it’s that or I felt that way. I’ve just noticed that i tend to try to really go inside the character’s mind. A lot of that probably comes from my work with Terrence Malick. He often wants me to write these metaphorical pieces of music that represent something inside the character. That’s what I think I mean when I talk about unconventional.
Hanan Townshend. Courtesy of Hanan Townshend.
With Went Up the Hill, when did you come into the process? Was it early stages or was the film already shot?
Yeah, it was quite early when I came on, which is my preferred way of working. We didn’t create the specific cues that would work in the film. It was like we created a whole bunch of variations that were tonally exploring the world. Specifically, using the vocals because it’s a very ambient, vocal-heavy film. I love doing it that way because they can use it on set which Sam [] did. He played it for actors in certain scenes. Then, the editors get a chance to use that music rather than just temping it with whatever music is available. I love working that way when I can.
The vocals and is it safe to say the heavy breathing elements are part of the score?
Yeah!
Another journalist and I couldn’t stop talking about the heavy breathing work in the film. What does it look like to compose what is essentially a breathing rhythm?
(laughs) We did notate a lot of the music at the end because we did a larger vocal session with a number of vocalists. Not a choral group, but a little more of an experimental vocal group. The breath stuff was improvised initially and then we layered it. It’s really more of a sound design element, but that was one thing Sam really wanted. We blurred the lines between the sound design and the music. As you’ll hear in the film, the sound design is almost like a character in the film. All the vocalists I worked with were such troopers to be willing to do strange things. I had them hitting their bodies, tapping on their vocal cords. We used contact mics to pick up the sounds of the body. We tried to pick up as many sounds of the body as we could.
There were a lot of nature sounds, too. Was that part of the sound design or the score?
I did use some in the music, but a lot of it was probably done through the sound design. The lines between them were very blurred.
Courtesy of TIFF
What about Went Up the Hill made you interested in being involved with the film?
When I spoke with Sam, I had read the script. It was a very curious premise for me. I was very interested in how he’s going to approach music with this. When we got on the phone, he wanted to have a completely vocal score. As you know, having seen the film, it’s not all vocals, but a lot of it is. I was just interested by that. It’s a challenge for me to figure out how to do that because in the past, I’ve worked with professional singers and it felt like that wouldn’t work for this. I’ve also worked with choral groups and I also didn’t think that would work for this. I had to really cherry pick vocalists. We had one vocalist in particular and I don’t want to say she’s an amateur vocalist because she’s not, but she didn’t have all of the training. So she sang in a way that was very unique and fit the film very well. As a composer, you use sample libraries to mock up the sounds that you’re going to use and nothing like that existed for what I needed, so I had to build it all from scratch. It was a really fun challenge.
One of the main instruments that plays a role in the score is a piano. If Sam wanted a mostly vocal score, why piano?
The piano was a very intentional choice because we wanted an instrument that had very mechanical sounds. Yes, I am a pianist, so piano is my first instrument, so I love it for that reason. In the film, Jill (Vicky Krieps) uses the weaving machine and we wanted an instrument that mirrored the way she was pushing her feet on the loom. The way we mic’s the piano was to actually bring out all the mechanical sounds as much as we could.
It’s not an outright horror. It’s a very difficult movie to kind of describe because it does have the horror elements. When you were scoring it, did you look to the horror genre as a basis for your composing?
That’s a good question. I don’t actually really like horror movies or gory movies. There’s one moment in this film that’s quite intense, but I won’t spoil it here. I think what gives the film its strength is that it’s between genres. If I was immersed too much in horror movies, I would probably just go to using a lot of the tropes of horror movie music. I approached as I wanted to make people uncomfortable as opposed to jumpscares. I really think of it more of a thriller movie than a horror.
I’ve been describing it as a modern gothic horror where it’s more eerie and unsettling. Did you get to the attend the premiere? What was that experience?
Yeah, it was great. It was really wonderful. It was my first time meeting Sam in person because we did it all remotely. A chance to meet the cast and some of the crew. It was so nice to celebrate with everyone.
Thank you, Hanan, and congratulations on the score!
Thank you!
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