Making the Mesmerizing Sound of ‘Midnight Mass’ – with Trevor Gates and Jonathan Wales

With Halloween right around the corner, there’s a slew of scary series and films being released. Right now on Netflix, you can catch director Mike Flanagan’s new horror series Midnight Mass, which is emotionally and visually distrubing at times and thought-provoking at others. And every twist and turn will have you dying to watch the next episode — even if it’s 2 AM already and you have work tomorrow.

Emmy-winning supervising sound editor Trevor Gates at Formosa Group in Hollywood, CA, and MPSE Award-winning supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Jonathan Wales have reunited with director Flanagan for Midnight Mass. They were both on last year’s slow-burn horror offering The Haunting of Bly Manor, and on Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House.

Midnight Mass certainly has Flanagan’s signature horror stamp, but it’s very different from his The Haunting of… series. First, the haunting isn’t a place, but a person. And second, religion is a central theme in the show — as is addiction, loss, dying, and social exclusion (human pain that’s often difficult to portray and to discuss). But Flanagan isn’t afraid to swim in these choppy waters. His brand of horror is steeped in human suffering on many levels.

Here, Gates and Wales talk about how they used sound to help communicate these challenging emotional themes, its influence on their sonic choices for Crockett Island where the story unfolds, how they created the beautiful singing sequences that juxtapose the grotesque brutality of humanity, how they designed massive storms and a world on fire, and much more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-XIRcjf3l4

Midnight Mass | Official Trailer | Netflix

 

What were Dir. Mike Flanagan’s initial ideas for sound for Midnight Mass? Overall, how did he want sound to help tell this story?

Jonathan Wales (JW): The number one thing is that it’s a character-driven story so one of the key things was authenticity. In order to make it work, we had to get into this world with the characters and understand and believe them as people who are going through what they’re going through. So much of the approach was just to not get in the way of that — to not get in the way of the acting and not get in the way of telling an authentic story.

Trevor Gates (TG): Flanagan is a classic horror fan, and that genre is all about storytelling; it’s character-driven. There’s some type of underlying theme and Flanagan talks a lot about love and loss and trauma, which are very real ideas and very difficult for us to address as humans.

And just as Jonathan said, the idea was to embrace the humanity and the authenticity. He spoke a lot about this island and how, in the beginning of this series, the island was dying.

And so how would we feel from both an environmental standpoint to a people standpoint? How do we bring that across?

 

How did you use the sound of Crockett Island to establish who these characters are and what they’re going through?

TG: The people were a big piece of it, having authentic-sounding people other than just what was on the production track. We talked a lot about geography and where the birds and the waves were, what you heard when you’re inside of houses. Are you hearing the distant waves? We talked a lot about what boats you would hear and what boats you wouldn’t hear — just making careful choices about what simple sounds you would be hearing in all the different spaces based on the geography.

We talked a lot about geography and where the birds and the waves were, what you heard when you’re inside of houses.

JW: Mike actually gave us a map. Because there were a lot of visual effects done with the island, we actually had this geographic map showing where the church was, where the school was, where Erin’s house was, and Riley’s house, and things like that. We were actually able to look at that and say, you wouldn’t hear the waves or the ocean in these places, and in other places you do.

…we gradually removed what was not necessary in order to get down to this feeling of a dying island.

Honestly, it was tough because like so many things, it becomes an evolution. We built it with a lot of elements in there and then we gradually removed what was not necessary in order to get down to this feeling of a dying island. One of Mike’s points was that nobody wants to move there. It’s a dying community; everybody’s leaving. Nobody’s going there. That was also a little tough because a lot of times we want to make places feel cool and inviting. And we had to stamp out some of those tendencies a little bit.
 

In Ep.1, this massive storm rolls in. How were you able to have some fun with that through sound?

TG: That was a big one. We spent a lot of time on that and it was very important that it felt dangerous. It was very important to Mike that we hit all the beats for revealing whoever was showing up on the beach.

Mike was very specific about what close thunder sounds like versus far thunder. We initially put in some big boomy thunder that was pretty round and made your body shake. But eventually, we moved into using sounds that are more of what you’d expect if the lightning was happening right over you — loud, harsh cracks.

We mixed the storm three different ways in the course of dialing it in…

Jonathan and I spent a considerable amount of time working through the storm to make it land where it was.

JW: We did. We mixed the storm three different ways in the course of dialing it in, which is great to have a director and producer who like to work on it that much and really get into it.

One of the big revelations we started to get into was that it matters what the storm does to the inside of the house. It’s so powerful outside that the things inside are starting to rattle and react. That was a textural element that came in and really helped to sell it.

The other consideration was that it’s a very, very long build and you have to hold onto it enough so that it still has somewhere to go. There’s a giant storm happening, but wait, now we go outside and it has to be even bigger.

TG: Jonathan had to find where we wanted to hear small textures and those dangerous things inside, and then big thunderclaps and scary winds, and some music. There were a lot of different layers to really weave the tapestry and build through that moment.

…it matters what the storm does to the inside of the house. It’s so powerful outside that the things inside are starting to rattle.

JW: You build it and build it and then the characters have a conversation right beside you without really yelling to each other. So it’s also trying to get that sense of making it dangerous, making it huge but, again, still being able to let the acting lead.

And we used specific thunderclaps to also draw attention to the figure on the beach, like ‘Who’s that? We shouldn’t be seeing him. What’s going on?’ as opposed to just, oh, it’s a big storm. So those had to be even more special than the rest of the thunder.
 

I don’t remember hearing any wind chimes. Occasionally, you see dangly wind-catchers on porches, but they never chimed…

JW: We took them all out. And Trevor had cut in all these awesome wind chimes.

TG: It was a creative choice by Flanagan.

JW: The windchimes felt too ‘nice.’

TG: The wind chimes weren’t contributing to the emotion of the scenes. Although we saw them, maybe we did a little thing, in a very quick moment when we were close up, but it was definitely a creative choice for the emotion of the scene to not hear them.

The wind chimes weren’t contributing to the emotion of the scenes.

There was one scene where Erin and Riley’s mother were arguing outside and they’re right next to this wind chime that’s obviously moving in the wind. These were the cinematic choices that we have to make to present an experience that supports the emotion of the scene. And that was one of those things that we felt didn’t contribute.

These were the cinematic choices that we have to make to present an experience that supports the emotion of the scene.

JW: It sounded great, but it was making everything too pretty and comfortable. Once you start removing some of those things, it really does make it more disturbing, more empty, more hollow, and more like it’s dying. It’s something you feel rather than something you necessarily notice.

 

[tweet_box]Trevor Gates and Jonathan Wales on Creating the Mesmerizing Sound of ‘Midnight Mass'[/tweet_box]

In Ep. 3, there’s that scene inside the cave where Father Pruitt encounters the ‘Angel.’ This story was broken up into chunks throughout the episode but it culminates there in the cave. What went into designing that sequence and what were some of the challenges that you had with the mix there too?

TG: There were definitely several parts of it. One part was when Father Pruitt is on his trek towards the cave, and the challenge was to find winds that feel violent and big, and that can be turned down to a very low level and still feel violent because we have some quiet VO during it. So it was finding the right sounds. We went through a few different versions to get it where Mike was happy.

…the challenge was to find winds that feel violent and big, and that can be turned down to a very low level and still feel violent…

Then once we’re in the cave, it was mostly about being quiet. We experimented with different sounds of a distant, moaning, violent storm outside. You feel a little bit of that and a little bit of these classic sand groans that we, as sound people, love to use. We hear a little bit of that, but it was leaning in a lot to the perceived silence or the quietness to feel the tension as the Angel appears to Father Pruitt.

JW: Every single one of those ‘old Father Pruitt’ snippets was a nightmare to mix because the whole thing is based around Father Paul actually telling the story in the confessional, which is all production sound. It was one of the pieces of production we were worried about originally because one of the cameras was making more noise than it should have been. Also, in that booth, every time Father Paul even moved slightly it made a lot of noise.

There is only one line of ADR from a principal character in the entire series…

On any Mike Flanagan project, we simply don’t do ADR. It’s kind of a mantra. There is only one line of ADR from a principal character in the entire series and it actually happens during that sequence, but it wasn’t because of noise or anything. It was simply because we slightly modified a line.

So we have this dialogue that is not optimal, but the performance is just incredible. And there’s singing — with lyrics — in the song the entire way through. And then we’re selling these backgrounds of being in Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall and now we’re in a giant sand storm, which to Trevor’s point, had to feel violent, and still feel violent even when we turned it down, which was ‘Storm 2.0’ by that point.

TG: We had several moments in this series where we exercise the classic rule that loud doesn’t always mean violent…

JW: …or the opposite, that violent doesn’t always mean loud. Both of those were really big things.

…we wanted to make these hymns envelop us. So if you listen to it in Atmos, all the choir voices are actually all around you…

We did an initial mix of this episode right near the beginning, and one of the things I figured out with the composers (The Newton Brothers), was that we wanted to make these hymns envelop us. So if you listen to it in Atmos, all the choir voices are actually all around you; the choir is literally built up with individual voices — thanks COVID — and so we took that as a win. Like, if we’re going to have to mix it with individual people’s voices, then we may as well just place them all around and try to envelop you with it. And I think it turned out really cool, but it just made everything even more difficult.

So that was a super tricky, but very, very rewarding sequence once we cracked it. Then you land in the cave and that’s all Trevor, with the Angel sounds and the music going away for a little while. It’s really cool.

 

What went into creating the sound of the Angel?

TG: It was pretty minimal but with some very articulate choices. The base layer is a performance by the actor who is playing the Angel on set, which was this hissy, growl sort of thing.

The base layer is a performance by the actor who is playing the Angel on set…

We did a series of voice casting for some supplemental sounds. We had 12 or 15 people audition for what an Angel/Demon might sound like. And when it came down to it, we (Flanagan, Trevor Macy, Jonathan, and I) really thought that the performance from the actor on the day was a unique and solid performance. So we used that as the base layer and supplemented it with one woman’s voice, which helped to express a few different emotions with some of the loud moments, like the screaming overhead or the large attack screams. Those came from a voice actor. It was also supplemented with some libraries sounds but very, very minimally. I think I used some of the Mutate Organic from BOOM, just for some clicks and pops and some throat swallowing sounds.

JW: We defined the Angel, though, from that scene. Like, the attack scream in that scene was really the first time we ever got into it. And then we went backwards and forwards with that being what the Angel does when he’s mad or when he’s attacking.

It was really a pivotal moment in the cave where we just discovered how that all went together.

TG: It was an exercise of minimalism for us. We needed to make sure that it didn’t sound like Godzilla or it didn’t sound like a zombie or it didn’t sound too ‘modern horror.’ It needed to be scary, but it needed to be simple; we treated it as such.

We needed to make sure that it didn’t sound like Godzilla or it didn’t sound like a zombie…

Before it went to Mike and Trevor Macy, Jonathan and I went through a few versions of it. We mind-melded and came to the conclusion of ultimately where it landed. It was a fun exploration for Jonathan and me.

JW: Also, especially like in the cave, there are other things that are interacting with it, like reverb for instance. It also has to be distinctly different enough from anything else that’s going on so that you can still understand who’s who — what’s the Angel and what is Monsignor reacting to it.

Often, we’ll start with something and then ask, ‘What can we do to this to tweak it even more?’ It becomes easier when you’ve got the sound sitting in a mix because then it becomes more obvious what you need to do, which is a fun way to evolve.
 

We find out that Father Paul is not wholly human anymore (nor is Riley, and eventually most of the townspeople). How did you want to use sound to help signify this transformation that’s happening inside of them?

JW: We absolutely didn’t want to do anything supernatural to them. There are only two sounds that are non-human: the hunger sound and the vampire vision. That’s it. Everything else, we totally wanted to stay away from. We weren’t trying to be overstated about this person not being human anymore.

Mike really didn’t want us to lean too far into the supernatural elements.

TG: You have to think about the narrative of the story and this is a story about humanity — the loss of humanity, and embracing those pieces that still exist. Mike really didn’t want us to lean too far into the supernatural elements. And we did want to find those moments where something was different, to let the audience know what these people who are transitioning are experiencing. And those two moments are exactly what Jonathan was talking about: the vision where they’re seeing the vibration of life that is different from just being a normal human and then the hunger where they’re craving and needing something that they’re not getting so there’s pain associated with that.

And so these are narratives that could be explained for things in regular life — of loss and addiction. We wanted to make people feel the pain and feel the wonder, but not make it feel too supernatural. And these were moments where the hunger was a balance of finding something that doesn’t sound like a normal biological function (like they’re hungry so their stomach is growling). There needed to be something a little bit different. At one point, Trevor Macy said, ‘what does pain feel like in your head?’

We wanted to make people feel the pain and feel the wonder, but not make it feel too supernatural.

We danced with a couple of sounds that felt like a ringing in your head and maybe something is changing biologically in your body, but it doesn’t sound like you haven’t eaten for eight hours as a human and you got a bubbly stomach. We worked on that very carefully.

JW: We were staying away from sci-fi.; it’s so easy for things like that to become sci-fi because we’ve been conditioned that way.

It was really important for us to not be heavy-handed because otherwise it just takes away from the performance that actor Hamish Linklater has given.

The first scene where this happens with Father Paul, when he’s really suffering in his bedroom, there is so much acting for how he’s feeling that even if there isn’t a sound that whole scene works so well.

It was really important for us to not be heavy-handed because otherwise it just takes away from the performance that the actor Hamish Linklater has given.

TG: We didn’t want to tell people how to feel. We wanted to support the emotions that they were feeling — experiencing — through the scene.

 

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One thing I loved about this show (and this doesn’t often happen in horror) is the balance of beauty and horror. One of the most beautiful elements was all of the singing in this show, especially in Ep. 6 when Bev, Wade, Dolly, and Leeza start singing as they’re walking down the road, and slowly everyone comes out into the street and joins in for the procession that leads to the church. It was such a beautiful moment. How did you handle the singing? Was that production, or studio recordings? How did you build the sequence and what were some of your challenges?

JW: This was done with great difficulty. We knew going into the show that the singing was a big part. Obviously, we knew that the congregation was going to sing in church and we knew that there were going to be hymns as part of the soundtrack as well. So one of the decisions we made fairly early on was that we were going to mix the score as part of the final so I ended up inheriting all the raw music as well. That enabled us to deal with these individual elements as if they’re production. In Ep. 6, their singing is production sound. We may have helped in a couple of minor ways, but it’s mainly the actors on set.

…one of the decisions we made fairly early on was that we were going to mix the score as part of the final…

The problems started, like so many, because of COVID. Originally, when we were planning this out, COVID hadn’t happened yet and we were just going to get some varying-sized choirs and put them in a studio and record them. That would have all been quite easy. But then COVID happened and you couldn’t put any groups of people in anywhere. So literally, we had a group of 20 or 30 individual singers who were recording themselves in their houses and they were sending their recordings into Brett “Snacky” Pierce (the music mixer who was assembling the tracks). I was working directly with him and The Newton Brothers to get it dialed-in to how it needed to work for the show.

…we had a group of 20 or 30 individual singers who were recording themselves in their houses and they were sending their recordings into Brett “Snacky” Pierce…

Also on set, they had a playback track from The Newton Brothers, so we had the tempo maps in Pro Tools from the playbacks in the church. Then we’re literally just building it up a little bit at a time. I think that sequence in Ep. 6 had at least 150 tracks of singing by the time it was done. We also had a really good base from the acutal congregation of actors. We had the congregation singing the entire song in the church together on set. And so, at the end of the sequence when they’re all in the church singing, we layered on top of that — so the underlying singing is also completely real.

It was a big thing for Mike to have it build. Because it’s extremely long, you’ve always got to have somewhere else to go. And that was very difficult to get it paced correctly so it didn’t get too big too soon, but you can still feel the quantity of people and all the rest of it.

It was a huge amount of work, but it’s really rewarding when it comes together. And then when they make it into the church in the end, it just gets huge and triumphant. That was really fun.

 

The organ comes in and the music is just all around you and it’s so beautiful. It was such a great scene before all hell breaks loose shortly thereafter…

JW: That scene in the church was one of the most difficult scenes I’ve mixed and it goes for a very long time.

TG: There were so many layers of sound delicately weaved in and out, from music to production sound to fight sounds from sound effects and from foley as well. There are extra voices from sound effects and voices from loop group and people dying and waking up. It was a very complex thing to build and then a very complex thing to mix as well.

That scene in the church was one of the most difficult scenes I’ve mixed…

JW: Yeah, there is really a lot going on. And another fun sound part — those garments that Father Paul is wearing are unbelievably noisy.

In the earlier episodes, there are a lot more boom angles that are useful because of the way the church was shot. One of the things Mike did in Ep. 6 was to change up the camera angles that he was shooting in the church so that it really has a different feeling. This meant they weren’t able to get a boom mic on Hamish for much of the time and the whole scene is pivotal from Hamish’s performance. He is the one leading the charge. His fervor is whipping everybody up and you really have to feel that dialogue performance in continuity. Except now, all of a sudden, it’s radio mics where it wasn’t before. And every time he even moves a muscle, his garment moves all over the place. So it was very difficult to get his performance (which is just an incredible performance) to gel. For me, the first part was just getting the dialogue working and then trying to build everything else around it so that you could really feel the energy of his emotional appeal to everybody.

…they weren’t able to get a boom mic on Hamish for much of the time and the whole scene is pivotal from Hamish’s performance.

Then it just gets more and more complex with all these things happening and people dying and people drinking this and throwing up that. Trevor came up with great sounds, and we had it done and Mike was like, ‘is there any way we can make this even more horrible?’ And so Trevor came up with this track for the people coughing and throwing up that’s absolutely disgusting.

TG: There was a lot of digging to find things that were going to sell that horror in such a unique way.

JW: Another fun moment was when the Angel shows up because we’ve built it up with this giant sermon and things start going south and then the sheriff is going to leave and all of a sudden the Angel’s there and the whole thing turns dark. That’s really when music comes back in. There is just this magic when the Angel shows up and it’s a real dance between music and sound design. There’s this ambient swirly sound going on that Trevor made plus there’s the music, plus there’s also all this stuff where people are just gasping — these breath intakes, really — that creates this atmosphere. It was really fun to do.

 

Was that the most challenging scene in terms of the mix?

JW: Yeah, that whole sequence, which is literally from the singing in the street through to the end of that episode; it was by far the most challenging thing.

It’s closely followed by the story flashbacks in Ep 3.
 

And what was the most challenging scene in terms of sound design and editing? Or was there a favorite scene that you had to design or edit?

TG: It’s really interesting because there was so much depth that we put in across the board.

The storm was very challenging as it morphed and evolved. The cat story was difficult and that was fun to explore and to find the right pacing. We took a lot of pride in the detail of building the town throughout.

Our foley crew went above and beyond; they created this whole set of tracks that were like the dirty vibes of the town

Our foley crew went above and beyond; they created this whole set of tracks that were like the dirty vibes of the town — things creaking, and little spinning windmills, and just things falling apart. There was a huge depth to the texture of the island that was carefully articulated; so many pieces are intertwined.
With the storms, the Angel, and the people, there were many unique moments that created challenges throughout this series and that really pushed us to our creative limits.

JW: One of the big ones we haven’t mentioned is the Angel’s flying POV sequence when the Angel flies over the island. That was one of the moments where Trevor just knocked it out of the park. Right from the get-go, Trevor came up with the sound for the Angel’s wings, but he also had this other sound for the trailing edge of the wings. That was a fun design.

So you hear a difference between the wings going up and then down and then the edges you kind of feel a little bit of wind and movement as well.

TG: We needed the wings to feel real. It’s easy to put in dragon wings that are just big and base-y but that wasn’t going to be very specific nor very fun.

I used a bunch of textile libraries to find different textures for different edges of the wings.

And then I thought about these wings pushing wind. What is that going to sound like? And I did this music trick, where I took a few tracks of whistling wind and laid them underneath the edited wings that I created and then added side-chain compression to them to unleash this wind sound slightly after the sound of the wings. So you hear a difference between the wings going up and then down and then the edges you kind of feel a little bit of wind and movement as well. I think it really helped with the realism of the wings.

And then we had to cut wings everywhere!

JW: We’d figured this new wing sound out about halfway through — and then dammit! — now we had to go back and print it in everywhere that we’ve already gone over. But, it’s really fun.

TG: We were lucky to have nailed it early so we could just make sure that we continued with it.

JW: Also, we had an episode where every single thing is on fire for the entire episode, which was a crazy amount of fire in terms of perspectives and again, geography. We’re in different places on the island, and do we care whether we hear the fire right now and how much of the island is burning? What’s going up in flames and what kind of explosions are in the background? And you have to hear what people are saying. How do you make it not feel like a war zone because that’s also wrong? And also, the actors are interacting with the fire. There are a lot of dialogue scenes in the middle of things burning. An awful lot of design was needed for the fires.

TG: Now that we’re talking about it, we did do a lot of stuff, didn’t we?

…we had an episode where every single thing is on fire for the entire episode, which was a crazy amount of fire in terms of perspectives…

JW: We really did. And it was one of those projects where schedule-wise we were up against it because there was a release date, but there were a lot of visual effects that kept coming in, like the fire. Some of the fire is practical and a bunch of the fire isn’t. So we were working against green-screen. We knew everything is on fire for a long time and there was a lot of it but when it’s very delicate and Trevor had to modify things right up to the end.

When you watch it as an audience, you don’t look at this and think, wow, there is a huge amount of sound in this show. Honestly, it’s one of the busiest shows and there is just so much going on in every moment of this sonically.

 

Even for the moments that aren’t so big, there’s foley, like you mentioned. You can hear the creaky floors or creaky doors inside the church. I know that’s not production; you put those sounds in and that makes this island feels so rich and real. It feels like a real place. You did an excellent job of that!

TG: Our foley crew hit it out of the park. And they sent me a note at one time and said, ‘There aren’t many people that challenge us like you do, Trevor.’

Whereas we have one line of ADR in the entire series, we also have almost no PFX.

JW: That’s a credit to our foley team. Whereas we have one line of ADR in the entire series, we also have almost no PFX. Pretty much, most of what we’re hearing is not production when it comes to the textural stuff. That’s because it just didn’t always sound that great from set for whatever reason. So this was a huge amount of work by our foley team, and also on Trevor’s side with his team, to give me the ammunition to then make you think that nothing happened.

 

Exactly! It feels very real. A lot of that has to do with perspective; the effects don’t feel like effects. They feel like production because they feel like they’re part of that scene, and that they’re coming from that space…

JW: I’m a big one for reverb. I like to get control of the reflections in a space, in a room. Once you’re in control of that and you’ve defined how that room sounds then you can apply that to the sounds that are happening in the room, which makes it all feel completely present and real.

Once…you’ve defined how that room sounds then you can apply that to the sounds that are happening in the room, which makes it all feel completely present and real.

We spend a fair amount of time defining what the reverb in the church sounds like. I made two different versions of it. There’s a longer version and a shorter version. For the most part, we’re using the shorter one, but none of these reverbs are made up of one particular sound. The church reverb is made up of a combination of Audio Ease’s Altiverb, The Cargo Cult’s Slapper, and iZotope’s Stratus 3D by Exponential Audio.

That’s kind of a theme for everything, that nothing is really ever one thing. The sounds are incredibly complex, even if they’re very simple. I think that’s just part of how it works texturally in order to be authentic because life is complicated. The dialogue in ‘real life’ movies, like this type of show, is much more difficult to handle against sparse, quiet backgrounds than having a lot of noise. A lot of noise in a scene is complicated, but it also helps define everything. And it also gives you a lot to hide behind.

The sounds are incredibly complex, even if they seem very simple. I think that’s just part of how it works texturally in order to be authentic because life is complicated.

In that respect, in Ep. 7 when everything was on fire, that was a lot of work for Trevor to make everything be on fire, but it helps me enormously because now that everything’s on fire I don’t need to worry about whether I can hear a tiny little defect in this piece of dialogue.

Whereas, an episode earlier in the church, you can hear a pin drop and if it doesn’t feel exactly authentic, then it really falls apart.

 

How was creating the sound and mix of Midnight Mass a unique experience for you?

TG: It was very different in a lot of ways. There was this idea of the church and the congregation that was very different from what we’ve done in the past. The idea of this island and its geography was very different from Bly Manor or Hill House.

The singing for Jonathan was very different. We had a creature in this one. We went to some new levels on Midnight Mass. And just like everybody else in this time of COVID, we had to be very fluid and deal with very difficult scheduling conflicts through it.

Creatively, there were a lot of new ideas and new concepts here that we were able to explore and get into.

Creatively, there were a lot of new ideas and new concepts here that we were able to explore and get into.

JW: From my standpoint, it was the music. We start with Neil Diamond and then we have the congregation singing. We have what we like to think of as the Newton Voice choir. We also have this somewhat very experimental score, which is very sparse and creepy, but not in a traditional horror kind of way. That’s a backdrop to a really intensely acted, really intimate story that happens to involve a lot of people.

I think all of those things together make it not just unique, but uniquely challenging to make it feel homogeneous, to make it feel like one singular work of art, as opposed to just a collection of different things. And I think it works incredibly.

 

A big thanks to Trevor Gates and Jonathan Wales for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Midnight Mass and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

 

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