The score of Aval had to be both cacophonous and epic music

When we met Girishh, the composer of Aval, he was flush with excitement having received words of praise from Mani Ratnam, who had just then seen the film. We spoke to the composer, whose previous works include acclaimed films like Marina and Vidiyum Munn, on what was his approach to the score of Aval, the reason why he hasn’t done many films, his experience scoring for a web series and more.Excerpts:
How did Aval happen?
In 2014, after watching Vidiyum Munn, Siddharth and Milind called me the very next day saying they wanted to meet me and discuss this project with me. Siddharth had initially wanted this to be made under his home production before Jil Jung Juk. We had a post-dinner meeting, at around 11.30pm, and what I thought would be a casual meeting, became a proper discussion of the script and the music that went on until 4am. Milind had written the first draft and for them, music was very important as in a horror film — you need to crack that piece of eerie music that you identify with the film. They were doing something with Chinese themes and since we have been exposed to mainly a happy mood of that music, they wanted to explore if we could do a Chinese piece that would sound happy, but at the same time make audiences feel scared. We made the lullaby — the Chinese song you hear at the beginning — then. But the film needed a bigger budget as it had to be made on a bigger scale to come out exactly as they had envisioned it. So, they began Jil Jung Juk, in which Milind served as an executive producer. Once that was released, we immediately began work on this film. Milind got a Bollywood studio on board and the film became a trilingual, as it makes economic sense.
What was the overall approach to the score?
I knew that they were making a film that was part James Wan and part throwback to the older 70s horror films like Rosemary’s Baby, Omen and The Exorcist. So, the score had to be a combination of cacophonous music that you hear in horror films these days (very screechy and so much that you would not know which is sound design and which is music) and also very epic music, like Ave Satani, to convey there is a bigger evil at work here, and you can’t convey that with sound design.
Since you were involved right from the scripting stage, did you compose the music, too, before they went to shoot?
There is a scene where the psychiatrist, played by Suresh, walks into Jenny’s (Anisha Victor) room and observes it in detail. It was going to be a two-and-a-half-minute single shot. I had made that piece of music first, intending that it should go somewhere in the film, though at the time, we did not know where we would be placing it. But Milind had put that as the cue for this particular scene in the script and shot it exactly to its rhythm. I had gone to the set one day, and they placed this music on this shot with no edits and it was perfect. That remains unchanged even in the final film. It was a back-and-forth experience, much like Vidiyum Munn, where some of the music was composed before they had shot the scene and some after the shoot was done. We did change the music quite a bit during the edit stage, but the Chinese theme and this theme remain unchanged from the script stage.
Why is that you haven’t done many films after Marina and Vidiyum Munn, even though the music in these films got noticed?
More than anything else, in our film industry, we can only start working on a film and finishing it. Getting a good distributor, a good date and releasing a film is a massive challenge now. Our industry has gone through so much flux in the last couple of years that a project you are currently working on might release only after four or five years, but the film that you will be signing on six months later could release in just a few months. In fact, I do not even want to talk about the projects that I’m working on right now because going by the way our industry functions today, you can only announce that you are part of a film only when the film’s promotions kick-start closer to its release. I believe that when someone really likes what I do and understands the calibre and the kind of the music that I can do and come to me, there will be no misunderstanding, they will trust me, and we will be able to work in piece. That’s how I choose my projects.
You also did the music for the web series Livin’. Is there a difference in composing for a web series vis-à-vis a feature film?
Web series is a different format and requires a completely different mindset to do music. The first thing is that the series has to be well directed, which Livin’ was. Vijay Rathnam, the sound designer of Aval, with whom I’ve been working since Marina, asked me to check out this web series. I’d already seen a couple of web series in Hindi and Tamil, but didn’t like them much. I also felt that nobody has done a really cool web series in India, like Bojack Horseman, that uses music in a very interesting way. But he told me this was different and urged me to watch it. I met the team and the director, Prabhuram Vyas. When I saw the first three episodes, I sensed that there was something really interesting going on, more so when I met Vyas separately. They had done a full round of composers, but since nothing worked out, finally, I came in. He was very sure of what he didn’t want. He had a unique taste in music and wanted the end credits music — which is what has become popular — to take off from the loose thread at the end of the episodes and go ballistic. Till then, the music will be very subtle and you will hardly notice it being there. So, when suddenly the music kicks in, you begin to notice and enjoy the moment. They had shot all the episodes beforehand, but the scoring, after the first four episodes, was done later because I was also busy with this trilingual. So, every single week, after we dropped an episode, we’d grab some popcorn and watch all the comments. We saw that there was this audience that was wanting to be satisfied with the end credits music. This feedback-based working was quite interesting for me. We are going to release the soundtrack this week.