Yes, Theodore Shapiro — the American composer behind the popular music for Ben Stiller’s multi-award-winning series “Severance” — is well aware that Amy Poehler and Bowen Yang brought up his popular theme song on a recent Saturday Night Live show. In fact, the composer is generally aware of the popularity of the works in this series, calling them “amazing” and appreciative.
“One of my great heroes is John Williams,” he said while speaking at the World Soundtrack Awards roundtable at Filmfest Ghent. He was nominated for TV Composer of the Year for his work on the Apple TV show. “I think about the great themes that he wrote about that have become so ingrained in the culture. It’s crazy to experience something that you’ve written suddenly being on SNL or The Tonight Show. I felt like I was in the middle of a dream that was coming to an end. I’ve been working on Season 2 for probably two-and-a-half years. It was really thrilling and satisfying to work so long and so hard on something and then see it come to fruition and people respond so positively.”
When asked if the popularity of his music puts pressure on him to work on the ongoing third season of Severance, Shapiro jokingly replied, “Thank God the main title theme is the same.” “I do feel some pressure,” he added. “I feel pressure to stay rooted in what’s come before and keep it interesting and keep evolving. That’s going to be a challenge.”
Shapiro said of working with Stiller that their conversations ahead of the new season were “about specific places the story was going.”
“In the second season, we talked a lot about episode four, which takes place in the forest,” he added. “We talked a lot about Mr. Kobel as well. We don’t really talk conceptually about where the music is going. That’s not Ben’s idea. He has amazing instincts about music, so it was more about trying things out and trying to find sounds that would help define new places for the story to go.”
Shapiro was joined on the roundtable by fellow WSA nominee Martin Phipps, who was nominated in the same category for Black Doves. Camille was nominated for Best Original Song for “El Mal” from Emilia Perez and Best Composer for the same film. and Robin Carolan, nominated for Discovery of the Year for Nosferatu.
Carolan is also a composer who is already looking ahead. The British musician is already working on his next collaboration with Robert Eggers, “Werwulf”. Although he could not discuss the film in detail, Carolan praised the director’s “attention to detail” and said that being on the director’s set was a big inspiration for his songwriting.
“On his set, everything is as it was then,” he said. “One day I was on set[of Nosferatu]and they were filming a scene, so I started getting ideas right away. Rob is so obsessed with everything feeling authentic that it’s easy to get lost in the space even though you’re on set. That’s the inspiration for what I’m doing.”
One challenge with this level of authenticity, at least when it comes to music, is that all the instruments used in Egger’s film scores must match the era in which the films were made. That wasn’t too difficult for Nosferatu, a movie set in the 1830s, but proved more difficult for The Norseman, set in the 10th century. “A thousand years ago, people were playing completely different kinds of instruments, and no one completely agreed[on that]. With ‘Nosferatu,’ you just got carried away. It didn’t require a lot of research.”
