Whether we've loved it or loathed it, Saltburn has been everywhere since its release on November 17th. It's been dubbed as having the needle-drop moment of the year, as well as one of the most questionably horny bathroom scenes in cinematic history. The doors of Saltburn might have closed behind us, but the incredible soundtrack and original score live on. FILMHOUNDS sat down with composer Anthony Willis to find out more about the chaos and working with Emerald Fennell.

I have not stopped thinking about Saltburn — I feel like it's like my new Roman Empire. What was it about the film that drew you to it?

Emerald [Fennell] herself drew me to it. She's such an amazing filmmaker, and from a composing point of view is so much fun to work with. She loves music and she really rolls up her sleeves and wants to have some fun with it. She's got such a great musical instinct, she's not afraid of it at all. That's such a that's such a gift to work with. And also, being a part of building a world is such a fun thing. You joke about the Roman Empire it is that it's — you get to help build this world and this feeling and this place and that's so much fun.

I know the two of you have worked together before (on Promising Young Woman). How has your relationship evolved?

With Promising, we went through it all very quickly. I think what Emerald really liked about that score is that it had a thematic integrity to it. It evolved with Cassie's character and brought Nina into the film, thematically. With Nina, there's this terrible loss of what could have been a very sweet friendship. Oliver in Saltburn has a similar journey. He needed some kind of thematic hook to accompany him on that. In this case, it was a bit less obvious how to do it and we ultimately settled on an arpeggio theme that has a particular shape to it — it goes down and then up. It has potential doom inherent within it. That was really useful. I turned that into the romance on the bridge, and I turned it into a really Gothic arrival which melds into a pop piano breakup. Even in the pub montage, they might have been partying too at the time, but there's also more of a kind of Coldplay/Radiohead treatment where the arpeggios are more contemporary. Oliver's trying to inhabit this world the whole time, he wants to be accepted by this quite posh classical language. We also wanted to make sure that the audience experienced the right aspect of Oliver's motivations at any given time — that we were guiding them to the right experience in the film.

I think it's often doing a job in isolation. It's often really exposed and it has to guide you, there's nowhere to hide. The starting point was really creating the world of the house, creating this world with the feeling that something had existed for a long time. That's where the organ and classical strings really came in. I knew [Emerald] better but it was such a different film. Just because you were the director before, doesn't mean you just go ‘Oh, yeah, I know what to do. We'll do what we did last time.' It's a new film, a new world, new performances, a new story, a new tone. And that's what's exciting.

You've got a new time period as well — we're talking around 2006. What did our taste in music say about us? I don't think I've ever seen a film that's gone from classical music to the Cheeky Girls before, and maybe never will again.

Emerald is not shy to say ‘Guys, we've seen these we've seen films before. I'm gonna make my film something you haven't seen before.' I remember her saying to me once ‘What's the point of us giving people something they've had before?' People want a new experience and to be stimulated, to be in this conversation so that it sits in your mind and explores new avenues. Her ability to balance really cool pop music with classical scores is such a fun part of her films. The soundtrack itself is nostalgic in the way of reminding us of the music that a lot of us grew up with, whether we were in England or America. Those artists were spreading around, like Mr. Brightside. The score is really about Oliver's mental state. Is he feeling lonely? Is he longing for feelings?  So that's where there's separation of those two roles. There is obviously some overlap in that since it's such a prevalent part of that kind of noughties music, and I wanted to infuse that.

Emerald loved the idea of having a lustful throb, but there was the question of how to make it Saltburn-y. The organ has some of the big golden chords that you'd hear in a church, but then it's like the party is happening several floors of the house away — you're upstairs and you're lusting after the person that you want. That was I think the bridge between those two worlds, the backward synth organ. It's a nod to the party music basically, but the organ itself has such a lustful, human-breathy quality that as it opens it.

Well like you said we've got Oliver's journey while he's trying to fit into all of these worlds. But then there's this world of characters that are all going through the peaks and pits of emotions. What were your favourite emotions and themes to unwrap amidst it all?

There's a scene that's kind of a next-day situation, and what I really wanted was as soon as that day starts was to have a different feeling — a feeling where you know that something's really gone wrong. That one was really interesting, kind of like a breakup. That psychology was definitely challenging. In the end, we almost did it in a way of the least music we could have, not in terms of where the music is, but how much it's doing initially. It really counts for a lot. I think that's something that I really love from Emerald on this one. When you're reductive — meaning you don't keep adding to achieve something — you kind of go ‘Well if we just start with this and then we add that rather than having these two things living together right away.' Then when you take something out, which is uncommon in film music, generally, (arrangements build) but she was very clever about saying ‘Well let's just have this and then you'll feel that the absence of it.'

With this scene, that was very much how we thought about it, then it does in fact build back up as far as the score goes. It goes from one shadow note to a very large piece of music. So that was something that was really fun to do. It's mixed really presently in the movie with Linus' [Sandgren] cinematography, Victoria's [Boydell] editing Barry's [Keoghan] performance, and the overarching direction of the whole thing. It's really a scene where that all kind of comes together and it's really something I think we're already proud of.

Saltburn is in cinemas now.

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