It seems like recently you have done several scores for thriller films. Did you have any new experiences working on “The Independent” or “The Kill Room”? How were they different experiences or did they somehow overlap in tone? Did you run into any challenges? How did you solve them?

Both of these films were incredible to work on and fed into my genuine love of the thriller genre.

I was sent a cut of “The Independent” in early July (2022) as the filmmaker wanted to go a different direction from the composer they were currently working with. I was so blown away by the script, the cast and the performances that I did everything in my power to get attached to the project. That included writing a piece of music for the film that was included in my music reel but never mentioned to anyone (as I wasn’t being asked to demo). I felt that the score needed to live in a more organic/orchestral space while utilizing minimal electronic elements and above all else, it needed themes and melody. I was elated when I was asked to score the film and got cracking on exploring the musical tone, themes and concepts right away, as I only had 5 weeks to score the film which included recording orchestra, mixing and delivering to the dub stage.

Luckily we made it to the finish line, and I recorded orchestra 4 days before I gave birth to my son. It was a whirlwind and one of the best projects I’ve had the pleasure of working on.

“The Kill Room” was directed by one of my favorite humans and collaborators Nicol Paone and asked for something very different tonally than “The Independent” as there was so much comedy infused into the film. It is best described as a caper crime comedy thriller due to Nicol’s painfully funny dialogue and direction. It took a minute to find the sound and style of the score because I had to support both the dark and light elements. So after much exploration we ended up discovering that dirty, grungy guitars in tandem with a dark Swingle Singers vocalese really worked and helped support the story. I was a new mother (my son was 2 months old) so I asked my dear friend Jason Soudah to hop on board with me & he was a lifesaver. The main challenge working on both films came from the fact that I was about to or had just entered a completely new phase of my life: the overwhelming, beautiful, surreal experience known as motherhood.

How did those projects differ from your experience working on, for instance, “American Horror Stories”?

American Horror Stories was not just my entry point into the world of horror, but also the world of television. When I met with the brilliant show runner Alexis Martin Woodall, we spent some time discussing what the episode needed emotionally. The music not only had to support all of the jump scares and the terrifying chaos of death (murder) created by “the thing under the bed” but also the emotional conflict that the protagonist (played by Debby Ryan) was experiencing as a new wife and the pressure from her husband to get pregnant. So my job was to support both of these worlds musically which led to the need for interesting, bespoke, very dark, guttural sounds and textures for the villain as well as more organic instrumentation such as violin, woodwinds, piano and lots of cello for the main characters sonic pallet. It all came down to writing a big theme and interpolating that melody throughout the score which is my favorite type of writing. The eye opener for me on this project was based on the fact that scoring for television just functions so differently than that of film. The timeline is much shorter and you’re just delivering as fast as humanly possible. But I loved the project so much I think I leaned into the pace without fear.

You and your engineering collaborator, Eva Reistad, have worked on multiple projects together. How did you meet and what is that process like?

I met Eva in 2013 when she was working as an engineer and studio manager at Kingsize Soundlabs and I was renting a space there. The moment we met, we just hit it off and had interests in similar areas such as producing and songwriting. Eva then went on to work at Remote Control Productions and studied score mixing under the best in the business, Alan Meyerson. So it was then that I realized that there might be a potential to collaborate in that capacity and I brought her on to mix the score for Sony’s “Cinderella” directed by Kay Cannon and scored by myself and my longtime mentor, Mychael Danna. We recorded orchestra remotely with Vienna and had little time to mix the score but Eva was up for the challenge and really knocked it out of the park. From then on she has mixed nearly all of my scores. She is always my first call because we not only have an incredible amount of respect for each other, but we also have such a shorthand at this point. When I go to her studio to listen down to mixes, she lets me jump on the console and tweak things here and there as she knows I am always interested in experimenting and pushing the score to sound the best it can possibly be. She’s one of my closest friends and I am so lucky to have her in my corner and on my team.

Are there any areas you would like to explore more as a composer? As a producer?

I am certainly interested in traveling more and studying other cultures & their musical identities. I would love to take a field recorder and go off on an adventure at some point to discover my own “Graceland” record or score. As amazing and useful as technology may be, I feel we’ve all become so dependent and reliant on samples that we rarely make the time to discover the origins of many of the instruments we are using.

What professional advice would you wish you had known earlier that you would tell a younger Jessica?

Just to always keep perspective and trust the process. Keep going. Zero ego.

Interview by Valerie Manahan

Check out Jessica’s Directory page here.