The Emotional Language of Music: A Conversation with ‘Citizen Sleuth’ Documentary Composer P. Andrew Willis

Music is transcendent. Music is subjective. But I think we can all agree music has the power and ability to make you feel – whatever that may be. Film scores can be outright memorable and become iconic just from two repetitive notes that makes you shift uneasily in your seat in anticipation of what’s to emerge on that silver screen.

Now when it comes to scoring a documentary, theme is key, as is in any type of genre narrative, but so are the emotional cues to set up a scene, a pivotal moment, a turn, a feeling. And composer P. Andrew Willis has expertly tapped into all those nuances with his latest work on the documentary Citizen Sleuth which had its world premiere at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival in March. Andrew is a Boston based composer, producer and musician who’s been steadily scoring films, TV, and ads since the early 2000s.

While attending Berklee College of Music, Andrew cut his teeth working with composer John Kusiak who was and is a constant collaborator with the great documentary auteur filmmaker Errol Morris. Andrew’s sensibility for music undertones and overtones is pretty amazing, to say the least. Listening to his work against a moving image, especially in *Citizen Sleuth, is…well…you’ll have to watch and listen. (*Movie release date TBD).

Andrew recently spoke with Script about his creative collaboration with filmmaker Chris Kasick, his personal musical journey, and dives into the four delineated types of music used for the doc, and so much more.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: How did you initially become attached and what attracted you to Citizen Sleuth?

P. Andrew Willis Well, fortunately for me, I'd worked with the director before, and we had a really good experience. That was the main thing. Also, we both had a background working with Errol Morris, the documentary filmmaker, here in Boston. We both started out when he was making his show in the early 2000s called First Person so we sort of had a true crime bond already.

And then it took place in Appalachia. I'm from Louisville, Kentucky, so I felt like a connection there - Parkersburg, West Virginia is where the film takes place. There were a few different reasons that I thought it would be fun to work with Chris [Kasick] again, I knew that was the case. But there was deeper things that I was interested in the show. And definitely, as I watched the cuts and saw how the story unfolded, I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be really good.’ So, I was pretty excited to be part of the team.

Sadie: In terms of watching the cuts, I know that editors will edit to temp music, and then be like, ‘This is the rhythm of this cut.’ So when you come on board as a composer, how do you stay true to the rhythm, the thematic elements but also put your own personal touch to further carry the story along?

Andrew: I've been doing this for a while, so the temp music thing is a real challenge. And in this case, they had been living with some of the temp music for a long time. So, it took me a while to get kind of like a new language going, that could replace the temp music. I got in early enough where they weren't locked to the music tempo-wise; they were using some of my music as temp music, which was helpful because at least I knew where that came from.

But you just go in, and you're like, ‘This is great music, and I see why it works.’ But we want to come up with our own language for this and study why it's working and see if we can evoke the same emotional pull from a new piece of music that doesn't sound like temp music. So, I mean, that's basically it.

And in this case, like I said, they were pretty tied to some of the temp because they’ve been hearing it for a long time. But as I went along, and I started introducing new instrumentation to it, and give my own spin to other cues, it became easier to navigate some of those sounds over to the places where the temp was like really working, and they were kind of into it.

It's different in every show. Some people are just like, ‘It's just here as a placeholder, you're gonna come up with something better.’ Sometimes it's a little more of a challenge. In this case, it was a couple of cues that were a little bit of a challenge. But as we got into the project, we started understanding what made it a challenge and kind of how to attack it a little different way. What about it was working and how I could incorporate that thing into what I was doing that didn't sound like the temp.

Sadie: I feel like the score for this movie and the sound design could’ve gone to a really dark, moody, heavy, broody place, but your score gives this playfulness too, like when she goes to the convention. How do you find that fine line between just bringing that levity to something that is so dark and depressing?

Andrew: I don't think it was very clear at the beginning. There were four delineated types of music in this and there was like, Emily, the main character's conscience cues, which were the real spare ones. And there was the sort of amateur sleuth, which was like the CrimeCon and being at a tattoo parlor. So those were like a little zany, you know, and then there was the investigative cues and those, Jeff [Gilbert], the editor, who was awesome by the way, was just like, ‘Let's work some tropes here, kind of satirically, but we've got to use some tropes.’ Like those investigative cues when she's breaking the glass, and all that, ‘let's go with what everybody expects with true crime, but try and make them funny.’

And then there was like the couple of cues that were some of the harder ones where she's on the Zoom call with Paul and he kind of shreds the evidence that she'd been building to conclude that it was a murder and everything and then the ending when the suspects had their little say at the end of the show, those two cues were pretty hard, because they were long, too. But I think we didn't want to make fun of anybody, but we also wanted to just like point out what a crazy sort of explosion true crime has become. I mean, it's like CrimeCon. I didn't even know there was such a thing as CrimeCon, but it looked insane. [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] Same here but could be fun! Hearing what you did with those cues, it reminds me of old crime drama radio shows, with the fun whimsical music behind it that keeps you engaged.

Andrew: Yeah, well, I'm glad that worked out that way for you because I think that was pretty much the point was to make it lighthearted and sort of kooky like the people that were at the CrimeCon. They did a good job of filming the CrimeCon and finding a few very good subjects to write music for. Like, the lady stabbing the dummy was incredible. [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] It's pretty zany. To be a fly on the wall there. How did you find your way into becoming a film and television composer?

Andrew: I started on guitar, just like a lot of people do when I was a teenager, and then I studied with a jazz musician, in Louisville for maybe three or four years. And then I started playing in a band in the 90s, touring a little bit. The band that I spent the most time with had a reeds player, he played clarinets and bass clarinet, and saxophone. So, I started writing for that a little bit learning about it. And just over the course of that, I was like, ‘Well, I don't think playing in a band is going to work out for me long term.’ But I was good at music. And I was thinking, I always liked film scores anyways. So, I just decided to move somewhere, and just kind of reboot.

I did a little research and thought about just film scoring, and that there were schools that taught it and I had no idea at the time. So, I moved up to Boston to go to Berkeley, and I went to Berkeley for a year. And at the end of the first year, I just started looking around at if there were working composers in town that I can meet. 

I ended up meeting a guy who I became great friends with. He was a mentor for many, many years, this guy, John Kusiak. And I went over to the studio one day, and he was doing the final score mixing for Errol Morris' movie Mr. Death. And he had lived in the Midwest, I was sort of from the Midwest, and we hit it off really well. And he was just like, ‘You can come back tomorrow.’ So I came back the next day and then I was like, I don't want to go back to Berkeley. I'm already however many thousand dollars in debt, and I'm kind of doing school here without having to pay for it. That went on for a long time. I evolved into being his assistant. And then we started collaborating on scores. And we worked on a ton of projects. I just started branching out from there. And I learned a lot from him.

As far as film music, it seemed like something I could do. I just sort of saw music visually anyways, and the music I was writing, it was kind of theme based, always even with the bands in the 90s there was strong melody and dense textures. So, I was like, ‘I think I could do this.’ I didn't even really get that deep into the film-scoring part of Berkeley. Once I got another opportunity I was like, maybe I'll go back, but this is the thing to do for now. And then I just never looked back. I haven't had a day job I don't think since like 2003.

Sadie: That's incredible.

Andrew: It is! It's really good. I've done a lot of doc work, and commercials. There was a long time where with John, I was doing a lot of commercial work scoring mostly Errol Morris commercials. Errol is based here so we were just a good team to work with him for many years. So, just kept things churning. And then you know, here we are full circle. I'm working with Chris on his new film, and his DP is one of Errol's DPs. So, it's just kind of like a family affair, in a way.

Sadie: I love that full circle. What’s your process of telling a story through music?

Andrew: It's esoteric, isn't it? [laughs] No, it just depends, it can happen in any way. In this case, there was an arc to the story. So, the music follows the arc, but also helps build, helps give a foundation to the arc in a way. It really happens in so many different ways. I've done scores where the music just almost always played by itself, it was almost like a music video, the music was driving everything. In this case, the characters are so rich and engaging, the music doesn't have to do a ton of heavy lifting here. I mean, it did in spots like I mentioned earlier, the sort of four categories of music, the categories build out as it goes along. 

So, it starts conscience, very spare as the story of the characters being told, it gets more into this sort of quirky stuff as she's describing her connection to the true crime scene. Then, as things progressed in the film, and different emotional and sort of ethical questions come up, the music has to go dark and support things that obviously, in this case, we are trying not to drive the story too much with the music because the story is so rich and telling. So, the music could be pretty spare in a lot of places.

Sadie: Sometimes less is more. Where do you start instrument-wise when you begin a project? Or does it change from project to project?

Andrew: Yeah, it's different per project. I would say in this case I started on keyboards - actually, the first theme that I remember writing, I used this cheesy little thing. [points to MIDI] But it had an arpeggiator on it, so I just started finding a little riff of arpeggios because I knew Chris was like, pointing to a certain cue in The Thin Blue Line, the Earl Morris movie, there was a lot of roadside scenes in this and like in The Thin Blue Line, it was traffic passing and the lights of cars. So, he had a specific idea in mind.

I found this synth sound and made this arpeggiated sequence. This one started a lot on keyboards, there was no guitar, per se in this show, other than me having to do a little intro for a Willie Nelson song. But this was mostly a synthesizer and percussion score as far as what I was doing; I hired players to play strings and stuff like that.

Sadie: For directors who are working with a composer, what is something that they should expect or be aware of going into that process of working with a composer? Should they have a bunch of reference music, or imagery to show you? What do you prefer in terms of just making it a really meaningful relationship for the project?

Andrew: Yeah, all of those things. I've worked on projects where somebody just gave a vivid description that really had nothing to do with the music, not poetry, but like a description of what the music should sound like, but in non-musical terms. A lot of times I've just had a movie come to me that's totally tempt with other music. That's OK, it's not my favorite. But if somebody can, like at least talk about music a little bit, that's great, because then it just makes the interpretation of what they're looking for a little bit easier. But honestly, I've been in it long enough where I'm pretty good at figuring out what somebody's going for. Just honest conversations about the music is very good and being open to try some new sounds.

Sadie: I attended a BMI panel at Sundance with some phenomenal composers and they were talking about the importance of their relationship with editors because of temp music and how early you can get into that process. Do you have that kind of working relationship with a lot of editors of like, ‘Please keep me in mind, put my music as the temp music.’

Andrew: I have given music to editors. Almost all the work I get is word of mouth. So, I mean, it's almost always somebody I've worked with before or somebody I worked with before told somebody else. I do spread my music around. I have a secondary music library company - we do commercial work and installation pieces and stuff like that, but we do have an online library that I send to people. And Jeff came in early and asked me for some stuff he could try out and spot so that was good. And they had already downloaded or accessed a bunch of my music from Spotify. So, they had kind of an idea of what I had to offer. But I was doing some track pulls for the editor at the beginning, just so he could slot some stuff into place and kind of get my sound in there.

Sadie: Anything that you have coming out soon that you’re excited about?

Andrew: This is a good year for me because I kind of have a little step of projects going right now. I'm working on an animated short about a fashion designer. I won't go too much into it because it's not out yet, but the filmmaker I've worked with before - it's a labor of love and it's really a cool little psychedelic movie. And a personal documentary about a woman I know later in the summer and then I'm supposed to be working on a doc about William F. Buckley. They're scoring it with presumably my music and then Bach, who is his favorite composer. So, I'll be dancing around the edges of old Johann Sebastian.

Find out more about P. Andrew Willis and discover his music by visiting his website here.