Music for film and documentary

A score that moves with the picture

With documentaries, the temptation is to use music as an emotion button. I prefer to work the other way around: the score sets a mood in which the picture can do its own work. That often means fewer notes than you would expect, and more attention to timbre and space.

For the BNNVARA documentary series De Optie Adoptie I composed the complete soundtrack, drawing heavily on world music and non-Western instruments. It suited a series that unfolds across several continents.

Sound as part of the concept

Sometimes the instrument comes from the subject itself. For the podcast series Nationaal Zwerfgoed, about litter, I built percussion instruments from found waste and wrote the entire soundtrack with them. That way of thinking, where sound means something within the story rather than merely accompanying it, comes from my conservatory training. Concept and performance carried as much weight there as the playing itself.

What I am good at

• Atmosphere and tension: analogue synthesizers, long lines and a mood that slowly tilts.
• Rhythmic textures: my background is drums, so percussion is rarely decoration in my work.
• Sound design within the music: as far as I am concerned, the line between score and sound may blur.
• Writing to picture: music that lands on the second, delivered as separate stems.

Which productions

Documentaries, short films, corporate and campaign films, games and visual work in which the music carries weight. I am happy to think along early, even while you are still editing. Music that is part of the process from the start almost always works better than music slipped underneath afterwards.

Send a rough cut or a treatment and I will let you hear the direction I have in mind.