Saw X‘s composer breaks down the Saw franchise’s musical scoring which has possessed a character perpetually tethered to Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw and John Kramer.
Few scenes can emulate the dreadful revelation and shock audiences were subjected to at the end of the first Saw film. It’s difficult to forget that plot twist when Tobin Bell’s John Kramer was revealed as the prostrate corpse who stood up and literally sealed Adam’s fate. Die-hard Saw fans are also keen to point out that sequence might not have been as effective if not for the “Hello Zepp” theme that swelled to a crescendo and abruptly stopped before the movie’s end credits. In an interview with /Film, composer Charlie Clouser explains how the franchise’s musical score has evolved into a mainstay character of all the Saw films.
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“It’s pretty amazing that the music for the Saw franchise has become sort of a character in the films,” Clouser remarked. “As actors, directors, and writers have come and gone in the franchise, somehow the music that I wrote for the first one had become sort of almost like Tobin Bell’s character. You can’t make a Saw movie without some of these pieces of music. So I feel dang lucky that the way this franchise shaped up, is that the music has become kind of an indispensable part of what makes it a Saw movie.”
Two Decades of Composing Saw’s Themes
Clouser composed the music in all Saw films, a franchise still going strong after almost 20 years. He’s humbled seeing how his work contributed to Saw‘s success but admitted he didn’t expect his music to be this enduring. “It wasn’t planned that way, but I feel pretty lucky that’s become the case,” he said. “Certainly, I can’t put myself on John Williams’ level in any respect except for the sheer number of movies that we’ve scored within a single franchise.” Williams is a prolific composer to many franchises including nine of the Star Wars films.
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“Hello Zepp” is Clouser’s most popular Saw theme, which has also become an alter-ego of sorts to John Kramer or Jigsaw, Tobin Bell’s interchangeable character personalities. Clouser noted that Saw X‘s music is unique and out of character compared to other Saw movies, saying, “It was about scoring his desperation first as he receives a diagnosis, then the tentative hope as he thinks he may have found a solution. So there was this path of following that emotional arc as his character goes through that in the first third of the movie.”
Saw X is now showing in theaters.
Source: /Film
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