Vents MagaZine Music and Entertainment Magazine
Related Articles
Today we are speaking with an award-winning film and television composer, Sandro Morales-Santoro. David Benjamin Steinberg and Sandro Morales-Santoro recently scored the Tribeca feature documentary, Explant. Sandro’s other film credits include the Marvel Animation, The Secret History of Venom and the Daytime Emmy Award winning documentary, Out of Iraq. Sandro’s television composition credits include Netflix’s Outer Banks and What/If, AMC’s Dietland, Bravo’s Girlfriend’s Guide To Divorce, Freeform’s Good Trouble and HBO’s Adventure Time: Obsidian. Sandro also works to promote diversity in the entertainment industry by serving as a member of the Executive Committee of the Composers Diversity Collective. In this interview, Sandro goes into detail about his composition process and the score for Explant, exciting recent projects and his advice for new composers.
What are some of the different roles you have held for the score or sound of a project, and how do they influence your success as a composer?
I started out as a copyist on a few independent films, then worked as an orchestrator on David Kitay’s score for the Amy Heckerling comedy “Vamps”. This film had some major talent like Sigourney Weaver and Alicia Silverstone, so having a role to play in its music felt surreal after having just arrived in LA a few months earlier. This experience gave me the confidence to seek out more work as an orchestrator, which in time helped me understand, appreciate and prioritize working with live musicians whenever I could. On the other hand, one of my first experiences as additional composer was on the Crackle web series “Chosen” by Ben Ketai, working for my dear Andres Boulton, which had a completely electronic score and pulled me into the analog and modular synthesizer wormhole which has enormously influenced my music since. Even more, as I got to become a co-composer of the score by the third season of the show.
Can you walk us a bit through the elements of the score on Explant and how they supported the film’s narrative?
Director Jeremy Simmons had a clear vision of how he wanted the score to emphasize each story beat, starting with the absurdity of how the breast implant was invented, to the sadness and horror of how it affected the lives of some of the women who opted for this procedure, and a conspiratorial tone for the corporate system that denies and even mocks their suffering. David Benjamin Steinberg and I used a melting pot of influences, from classical to electronic to South American folk, to create an absurdist and even carnivalesque tone, with a mashup of sounds that include a Solo Cello, a Venezuelan Cuatro and a Bolivian Ronroco, Analog and Modular Synthesizers and an out of tune organ, among others.
What is the first step of your composing process? How do you get in the right mindset to score a project?
My first step is watching the film on my own, without thinking about music or taking notes, just experiencing the story in order to really understand it. Then I watch it again with the director and discuss their vision for the film as a whole, and the role of the score and the silence, which we all know can be as important. A lot of times I look for inspiration from other films and how music works to support their narrative. Some of my influences include filmmakers like Charlie Kaufman, Wes Anderson, Bong Joon Ho and the Safdie Brothers.
I know this industry can require a lot of hours, but it is surely a labor of love. What do you all find to be the most fulfilling or favorite thing about your job?
Having an infinity of possibilities every time I start a new project, that’s my favorite part. Working with the Director or Producer of the project on figuring out the right concept for the score. Playing around with different instruments; playing those instruments in different and unexpected ways and coming up with some crazy or beautiful sound and texture that I’ve never used before in my music. Getting to use a new synthesizer or dusting off an old one that I haven’t used in a while. This whole exploratory phase is what I crave the most about this work.
Any big wins or recent projects you are excited about?
I recently scored the short film “The Secret History of Venom” for Marvel Animation. It was a dream come true, not only writing for Marvel characters and getting to create a theme for this iteration of Spider-man, but also scoring the history of my favorite villain. For this score I recorded a 60 piece orchestra remotely in Hungary with Budapest Scoring, and it heavily features my analog synthesizers. It was also an opportunity to work with world class singer Uyanga Bold, whom I met over a decade ago when we were both attending Berklee College of Music. Her improvisations and surreal vocal qualities brought this score to a whole other level that supported the story of Venom and the Klyntar so well.
Have any of you gotten a chance to use a unique sound, odd instrument, or musical easter egg in one of your scores?
Being from Venezuela, I love finding ways to use South American instruments like the Cuatro, Charango, Ronroco, and Afro-Caribbean percussion in my scores, without making it feel like folk music, in the way that Gustavo Santaolalla does and it feels ethnically ambiguous. Those unexpected instruments gave a unique character to the score for Explant, providing an organic texture that does feel somewhat foreign without hinting at any specific culture or place.
What piece of advice do you have for composers looking to break into film/tv scoring?
Be patient, perseverant and dependable. Building a career takes time and a lot of sacrifice, but it’s a path needed in order to develop the musical and interpersonal skills that will help you thrive in the future. It’s a tough path where we deal with a lot of rejection and criticism, but it is all part of the learning process, and if you can turn what feels like a defeat into an experience that makes you a better composer and a stronger person, you’re well on your way.
— You can learn more about Sandro at his website https://www.sandromorales.com. Thank you for reading!
