The composer behind Saoirse Ronan’s new dark comedy discusses creating a score that becomes its own character, unconventional instrumentation, musical theatre influences and finding the strange beauty in Maria’s descent into chaos.
There is something immediately unsettling about Bad Apples. Directed by Jonatan Etzler and starring Saoirse Ronan, the film follows a teacher whose increasingly desperate attempts to deal with a difficult student spiral into an extraordinary act of desperation. Balancing dark comedy with mounting tension, the film constantly shifts between the absurd and the sinister.
Composer Chris Roe was drawn to the project from the moment he read its premise. But rather than simply accompanying the action, Roe and director Jonatan Etzler wanted the music to become a character in its own right: a menacing presence that initially pushes Maria towards increasingly questionable decisions before eventually drawing us deeper into her perspective.
Here, Roe discusses building the film’s musical world, creating the sound of a school orchestra, drawing inspiration from Bartók, Stravinsky and The White Lotus, and why the score needed to feel like a machine that Maria couldn’t escape.
What initially drew you to Bad Apples?
I got an email in my inbox with the synopsis and the logline: a teacher kidnaps a student and keeps them in her basement. That immediately grabbed me. And it was a Saoirse Ronan film, so those two things made me think, “Yes, I want to do this.”
Jonathan had also written a really interesting description of the kind of music he was interested in. He referenced a lot of classical composers who aren’t normally mentioned in relation to film music, and he has a real musical ear. All of those things combined made me really want to do it.
The film had already been shot when you came on board. How did that affect the way you approached the score?
The script was there and they’d already filmed it, although it wasn’t quite edited. I think they were trying out different composers’ music in the edit and seeing what worked.
There are a few of my tracks from previous projects that worked in certain key scenes. The film has some really big set pieces and montages, so they wanted to find the right kind of sound for those first.
When I came on board to write, I was presented with an almost finished product, which was really great to work on. But we still had a lot of time to experiment. We had about a month of trying out ideas away from the picture. I’d watch the cut, but Yonatan encouraged me to put that to one side initially and explore different concepts with the music.
One of those was the idea of creating a system, almost like a machine, that Maria is trapped inside. We explored those concepts first before tackling the writing directly to picture.
“We had this idea of a high school orchestra, with recorders and flutes and saxophones, with everyone playing slightly out of time and a little bit rough.”
You mentioned the idea of the music becoming a machine. Were you approaching the score through Maria’s character, or did you see the score almost as a character itself?
I’m glad you picked up on that, because we really wanted the score to be its own character in the film.
Right from the beginning it’s bold and brash and grabs your attention. In the first part of the film, the job is to establish the score as this menacing, threatening character, putting pressure on Maria from the outside.
I almost see it as a kind of Greek chorus, egging her on and pushing her towards these crazy decisions. They sound ridiculous, but you can see one by one how these things start slotting into place. Before you know it, she’s kidnapped a student. But you understand how she got there, which is what I loved about the script.
Then, from the middle of the film onwards, I wanted to try to put us inside Maria’s head as the panic rises. When she goes back to school for the first time, she’s in this strange, dreamlike world and the music becomes quite dreamlike too.
When things start to go right, we’re seeing that situation through her eyes. So I think the score starts from the outside and then, as the film goes on, we’re increasingly inside her head and experiencing things from her perspective.
There’s such an interesting juxtaposition between the light and dark elements of the film. How did the comedy influence your approach to the score?
I really loved it. I think a lot of the comedy comes partly from the oddness of the instrumentation. We had this idea of a high school orchestra, with recorders and flutes and saxophones, with everyone playing slightly out of time and a little bit rough.
I think some of the comedy comes from the music being unexpected on the surface, but it’s also about the contrast. Whenever something light is happening in the film, we tried to go darker and more tense with the music, and then the opposite.
The parent-teacher meeting, which is the big climax of the film, is a good example. The music is really over the top and hyping everything up. It’s almost the opposite of what’s happening on screen.
The instrumentation is one of the most distinctive aspects of the score. What were some of the more unconventional instruments you experimented with?
The idea was to take quite traditional orchestral instruments and play them in unusual ways.
The flutes are played in a rougher, breathier, more staccato way. It’s almost like a child picking up an instrument for the first time.
We had a recorder player, Sarah Jeffrey, who brought every type of recorder, not just the one you get at school. She had this giant contrabass recorder and then this tiny one, so exploring all of those was really fun.
With the saxophones, we had this giant saxophone that made this really menacing, ominous sound. It sounded like a machine. We first hear it in the cider factory sequence and it sounds like the inner workings of some kind of machine.
So it was really about taking orchestral instruments but playing them in unusual ways.
“Whenever something light is happening in the film, we tried to go darker and more tense with the music, and then the opposite.”
There are moments where the music almost evokes the sounds of being inside a classroom: chairs scraping, instruments squeaking, that slightly chaotic quality. Was that something you were consciously trying to capture?
Definitely. It was about taking those familiar sounds and making them feel slightly strange or unsettling. The idea of the school orchestra was really useful because it gave us something that felt connected to the world of the film, but we could push it into something much darker and more surreal.
Were there particular composers or pieces that influenced the score?
Jonatan and I spoke a lot about classical composers such as Bartók and Stravinsky, and how 20th-century composers took the baggage of the orchestra and classical music and the tradition that comes with it, and turned it on its head.
That was definitely an influence: playing the strings in a really brutal way and taking these traditional instruments somewhere unexpected.
On the film side, composers such as Bobby Krlic and Jonny Greenwood were references for me, particularly their unconventional approaches to film music.
For the comedy, The White Lotus was a big reference, particularly Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s score. There’s that dark comedy element and the idea of creating this surreal world, which I found really inspiring.
One of the standout moments for me is Pauline taking to the stage at the PTA meeting. Did you have anything to do with the Ashtonbrooke School Anthem?
I wish I could take credit for it! It had already been done on set.
There is a montage towards the end where everything is going right and the kids are singing on stage. I had to work with what they’d recorded on set and create an orchestration around it.
There was also a cue earlier in the film when the Ofsted inspector is in the room and they start singing the school song. The musical cue had already started, so it had to fit around the school song.
It was a fun technical challenge, but no, I didn’t write the anthem itself.
How collaborative was the process between yourself and the other departments?
There was a lot of collaboration, particularly between me and Jonatan.
I went out to Stockholm, where they were editing the film, a few times to bounce ideas around. Jonatan was really good at giving me a certain amount of direction but then letting me run away with things before coming back together.
It was a very collaborative process.
At the end, I also worked with the sound designer, Andreas, in Stockholm. There is some really amazing sound design in the film, so we worked together a lot in the mix to balance those elements and figure out where the score should sometimes give way to the sound design.
Do you have a favourite or standout piece from the soundtrack?
I’ve always been drawn to the “A is for Apple” montage in the middle of the film. It was one of the first pieces I wrote.
It’s quite precise in its timing. Again, it’s almost like musical theatre. It has to start very light and whimsical and then go somewhere very dark by the end.
Because it was one of the first pieces I wrote, I think it sums up both sides of the score: the light, magical whimsy and the darker horror, all in one cue.
How did you first get into composing for film?
I’d always composed when I was little. I learned piano from a young age, but instead of practising the pieces I was supposed to practise, I’d make up my own pieces. I always enjoyed that more.
Another inspiration when I was growing up was seeing behind-the-scenes footage on DVD extras. I remember seeing Gladiator, for instance, and Hans Zimmer working in his studio, as well as Michael Giacchino on The Incredibles.
Seeing how everything was put together fascinated me. I was really interested in the mechanics of it.
I studied composition and how to write for orchestras, and then I got my first real break when I met an editor called David Fairhead. He gave me my first opportunity to write for a film he was working on, a documentary about Test cricket and the scandal surrounding it.
It was a subject I knew absolutely nothing about, but it was a way into writing something that would be played in a cinema.
From there it’s just been one project leading to another through lots of random connections. I did After Love, which then led to the TV series Trigger Point, even though they’re completely different projects.
That’s what I love about being a composer. I can work on really different stories but approach them in the same way.
Do you have a particular process when you’re given a new project?
I always start from a concept as much as I can.
Often it starts with a script, then I’ll think about the script and talk to the writer or director and try to pull out some kind of concept. Not necessarily something about the story, but something about the overall idea of it.
For Bad Apples, it was the idea of a system or some kind of machine that Maria is trapped in.
For Trigger Point, it was the idea of wires being the thing that makes these different life-and-death decisions.
It’s something quite abstract that I can then think about musically. It’s a way of unlocking something.
From there it’s more about instinct and following the characters on screen. But having that way in at the beginning can unlock something you haven’t thought about before.
For Bad Apples, it led to the idea of using an orchestra, but specifically a school orchestra. You find that little nugget and then run with it.
Are there composers who have particularly inspired your work more generally?
There are a lot, and they’re very different.
I really love Olafur Arnalds’ work. I’m drawn to composers who are doing something quite singular and who can make a big impact without using very much.
With Olafur Arnalds, a cue can have such a direct emotional impact with very little: piano and strings, electronics and things like that.
It’s the same with Jonny Greenwood and the way he experiments with strings and those sliding string textures.
I’m drawn to composers who do something quite singular and make a big impact with not that much.
Finally, do you have any upcoming projects you can tell us about?
There are a few things bubbling away. I’m doing an exciting documentary project for Apple TV, which I’m really excited about.
I can’t say too much about it yet, but it’s a kind of true crime story, or really lots of different stories. It’s going to be a really fun musical challenge because I have to establish a palette for the project and then move into completely different settings and stories.
Hopefully that’s going to be coming out next year.
