(Welcome to Notes on a Score, GVN’s interview series highlighting the composers and musicians behind some of the year’s most acclaimed films and television series.)
What’s more explosive than blowing up an oil pipeline? Competitive matches in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Both contributed to the score of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, the second collaboration between composer Gavin Brivik and director Daniel Goldhaber.
“Daniel’s way more competitive than me,” clarifies Brivik, speaking to Geek Vibes Nation from his recording studio in Glendale. “The first time I beat Daniel was literally a week and a half ago, and we’ve been playing together for over a year now.”
Brivik, a self-described Lucas, Ike, and Sora main, worked directly with Goldhaber on scoring the film amidst an August heat wave in Los Angeles. As originally reported by The Pitch, because Brivik’s studio was sealed off for sound purposes, the two could only work for so long before needing to cool off. No better way to unwind than settling it in Smash.
“It was about me and Daniel building a better friendship through playing video games,” Brivik clarified. The two first met working on their previous film, Cam, and have established a strong creative partnership since then. “It breaks down this professional barrier that can sometimes make you feel maybe not as creative or as experimental.”
Of course, Nintendo’s massively successful fighting game was only part of the process, an unconventional means of inspiration for an unconventionally designed heist thriller. How to Blow Up a Pipeline may be inspired by Andreas Malm’s original manifesto, but it remaps Malm’s ideology onto a fictional story centered on environmental activists who conspire to – you guessed it – demolish part of an oil pipeline in West Texas.
In order to reflect the film’s environmental focus, Brivik flew out to set with percussionist Morgan Greenwood and recorded percussive samples of metal pipes, oil drums, and sheet metal. “Right in the first minute [of the movie], there’s this big metal hit with a bunch of echoes and delays,” Brivik explains. “Every moment that Michael [played by Forrest Goodluck] is wiring a bomb, there are gestural metal pipes.” The objects are a part of the film’s musical fabric, adding to its immersive quality.
“I’ve always wanted to work this way,” he continues, “recording found sounds that really relate to the narrative of the story and then using that as massive musical material. It just creates unique sounds that are very specific to the film. It’s fun for the director in a lot of ways. Daniel was super into it.”
Brivik worked extensively with Goldhaber to develop a propulsive electronic score for the film, taking inspiration from Malm’s original text and the early works of Tangerine Dream (Sorcerer, Thief). However, Brivik’s initial drafts proved too “aggressive,” which led him to look at other seminal heist films like Ocean’s Eleven.
“The first draft of the score was way more ‘metal’ and distorted, but then once I saw the movie, it didn’t feel fun. What I underestimated was that this is also a heist film. In Ocean’s Eleven, you’re just having fun. So, we reworked the score. Daniel and I always joke that we wrote three different scores to this movie.”
Eventually, the score became what it is now, a combination of 80s synths, Morricone-inspired guitar chords, and a strong rhythmic pulse that significantly elevates the already heart-pounding story. Pipeline’s editor, Daniel Garber, was already close friends with Brivik before production began, and the two worked closely to make sure they edit and the score were thoroughly in-sync.
“Garber would initially edit something to the suites that I wrote,” Brivik explained. “We would have a back and forth where maybe I wanted it to build to a certain spot and I couldn’t just hit the edit exactly. There were times where I did have to rework the score to match something, but a lot of that really was that Garber was so generous and edited to my tracks.”
The result is one of the year’s best scores in one of the year’s best films. In this extensive interview with Geek Vibes Nation, Brivik breaks down a few tracks from the score, his hilarious experiences on-set, and why the Oscar-winning score for All Quiet on the Western Front gets too much hate.
Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Gavin, we have to talk about Smash Bros.
Let’s do it.
It’s so amazing to hear that was a part of the process. How does Smash Bros. aid the compositional process? Is there something in the sound design of that game that inspires you?
So, there’s a lot to unpack there.
[laughs]
First of all, the sound in that game is amazing. I think the fighting sound design in Smash is by far some of the best. I think Smash is just a great game to bond with your collaborators. If you feel like maybe you need to break out of a rut, like if you’ve been working for two hours and you’re stuck on something, it’s a great way to clear your mind. It keeps it active. It’s not like watching a stupid video where you go braindead for a second. Daniel [Goldhaber] and I used to play chess before Smash. I think there’s a correlation there. Daniel’s way more competitive than me, by the way. The first time I beat Daniel was literally a week and a half ago, and we’ve been playing together for over a year now.
Wow.
He’s good. I mean, good, relatively. I’m not trying to get some crazy tournament players to start challenging me. I heard a rumor that Daniel brought his Switch to the set and was trying to challenge other crew members. He was so good that nobody wanted to play with him. I hope that this story inspires somebody to really challenge Daniel and crush him on a stream. I want to see this rumor get out to some streamer or competitive Smash player who loves Pipeline and just annihilates Danny because that’d be satisfying for all of us.
Daniel Goldhaber, accomplished director, Smash Bros. master. Very interesting.
Please print that.
[laughs]
I think more than anything, [playing Smash together] was about me and Daniel building a better friendship through playing video games. It breaks down this professional barrier that can sometimes make you feel maybe not as creative or as experimental. There is that worry that all film composers have, which is that if I do something super weird, the director will hate it, freak out and go into panic mode. This happens all the time. I could list a billion examples of composers getting fired. It’s not that they’re a bad composer, it could’ve just been that they were off on the wrong track or maybe there was a studio head that got really nervous. But with ours being an indie, we had the grace of really owning the creative on it.
I want to know a little more about your collaborative relationship with Daniel. I know you began working together on Cam, but how did you guys first meet?
You’ll love this, man. I used to work for a director and we would collaborate on a lot of UNICEF short documentaries. I worked on this one about ex-cons in Jamaica that got a Vimeo Staff Pick. This actress from Beverly Hills, 90210 named Gillian Zinser, who was one of the leads in Smile, randomly saw it online, no joke. She loved the score and just cold emailed me and was like, “Hey, I need a score for my short film.” So, I scored her short film and she was close friends with Daniel. How lucky am I? She was like, “Hey, Daniel, I know you’re looking for a composer for Cam.” So, my initial introduction to him was through this crazy happenstance of just somebody seeing my work online. That’s always what I tell people. You have to put yourself out there because you really just never know who’s going to see it.
When Daniel first tells you, “Okay, we’re doing How To Blow Up a Pipeline,” what are the initial discussions in deciding what the musical palette of this movie’s going to be?
Great question, many answers. Initially, Daniel sent me movie inspirations that weren’t necessarily the exact vibe of the score – early Michael Mann and William Friedkin films, the Lethal Weapon movies, even Ocean’s Eleven. The throughline in some of them was Tangerine Dream as the original composer, who both of us were already fans of. The thing we liked about Tangerine Dream was that they had a distinct 80s synth sound, but it wasn’t Stranger Things. There’s this thing now where, as a film composer, if you want to use vintage and retro synths, it’s so hard to break out of being referenced to Stranger Things. I totally get that though because it was a cultural phenomenon.
I started writing music off the script and then Andreas Malm’s actual text, which felt way more like a call to arms. It felt way more like “f**k the system.” I kind of felt this punk rock anarchist vibe, so my initial score was way more aggressive. I wrote music while they were shooting so that right when they began editing they could start dropping in tracks. The first draft of the score was way more “metal” and distorted, but then once I saw the movie, it didn’t feel fun. It felt too dark and you weren’t as invested in their motives. What I underestimated was that this is also a heist film. In Ocean’s Eleven, you’re just having fun. So, we reworked the score. We still kept a lot of those elements, and a lot of stuff still made it in from the original, but we started using more synths. There were synths in the initial drafts but it had more organic elements, including samples we got from set. But the beginning needed more of that Tangerine Dream style mixed with a little bit of David Holmes’ Ocean’s Eleven score.
Daniel and I always joke that we wrote three different scores to this movie. I really want to retroactively release the unused score of Pipeline at some point. I don’t know when I’ll do that but I have all these tracks. It could just be interesting to see where I started and where I got to.
I want the album “How to Score How to Blow Up a Pipeline.”
Dude, that’s a good name! That’s a really good name.
I’ll take my royalty now.
I would give it to you.
So, from the sounds of it, this was a project in which the score and the edit had a very significant relationship with each other.
Oh, yeah.
More commonly, a composer will edit to a locked picture. What is both the simultaneous freedom and also difficulty in being in a situation where you’re not locked and you can get in the weeds of how the score and the picture interact?
Daniel Garber [the film’s editor] and I are also really, really close friends. If anything, he sat there and watched us play Smash and didn’t participate.
[laughs]
It’s really helpful for the composer and the editor to be very close, especially in our process because there is a lot of ebb and flow. Garber would initially edit something to the suites that I wrote. We didn’t use a temp score for this. We just used my previous music and it really helped. Garber would edit stuff, but then we would have a back and forth where maybe I wanted it to build to a certain spot and I couldn’t just hit the edit exactly. I knew that musically it would be better if it was like two seconds later or two seconds earlier. We would do this thing where I just wrote the best version musically and then he would edit to that. I was very fortunate.
People like Christopher Nolan and [Hans] Zimmer, directors who have their composers work ahead of the film, always get the best music where it feels like everything’s aligning perfectly. When you watch some movies, you can tell the composer had to chop up the stuff and retrofit it to the edit, like a melody might be chopped in the middle of it. It works a lot of the time because we’re so distracted by the other stuff, but I do think there’s this subconscious feeling, because we all have such an instinctual reaction to music, that when something flows properly or when something ends on a very specific chord, it feels like there’s a resolution or it feels that the edit and the music are so closely tied. I’ve been asked by friends, “How did you get it so synced?” There were times where I did have to rework the score to match something, but a lot of that really was that Garber was so generous and edited to my tracks.
Let’s dive into the meat and potatoes of this, which is the on-set sound sampling. Was that always something that was going to be part of the score?
That was my initial pitch to Daniel. I’ve always wanted to work this way and there is a part of me that just wants to make this a part of every film process, some element of recording found sounds that really relate to the narrative of the story and then using that as massive musical material. It just creates unique sounds that are very specific to the film. It’s fun for the director in a lot of ways. Daniel was super into it. The film flew me and my really close friend, Morgan Greenwood, to set. He’s a metal rock drummer, but he also studied composition and was a percussionist in orchestras, so he has the super punk rock-y metal noise side to him, but then also the delicate marimba mallets side. He would use a cello bow and bow pieces of sheet metal or even bow the side of an actual piece of pipeline and it would resonate on the inside.
Honestly, it was kind of scary because we didn’t know exactly what we were going to find there. We got some set production pictures, but we really just flew out to set with 30 or 40 mallets and chains. I was like the crazy guy on set walking around with a backpack full of drum sticks coming out of my backpack and making weird sounds. Everybody on set didn’t really know who we were. They were like, “What in the hell is going on? Who are those guys?” We literally got that look sometimes. There was also one time when we were banging on something and we had to time it between takes of the film because the sound person would pick it up. So, they would call cut and then you’d just hear this metal “shkshkshk.” Everyone would be like, “What the f**k?”
The first cast member to approach me was Jake Weary. Jake is also a musician and releases his own music. He instantly clocked what was happening. He was like, “Whoa.” He came up to us out of the blue, maybe between his takes, and he’s like, “How can I help you guys?” He was so nice and generous and just wanted to nerd out about music. He hadn’t heard any of my stuff, I hadn’t heard any of his, but I will always remember he was the first one to be like, “I got to see what these guys are doing.”
Dude, real recognizes real.
It does.
That’s just the truth. I was a percussionist before college, so I have a lot of familiarity with the tools you’re talking about. I can imagine hard tip mallets, soft tip, trying to see what works best.
You remember those mallets with the super bouncy balls on the end of it?
Yes!
People will drag them on bass drums to make whale sounds. We did a lot of that on the score. We found this humongous old rusty…I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it was just empty and resonant. We put mics on various sides of it and then Morgan would drag the super bouncy ball. It had this ominous drone, so we used that sound all over the score. It sounds kind of like a synth at the end of the day because I ran the sound through a guitar pedal. I ran a lot of the sounds through guitar pedals because, kind of in line with the movie’s punk rock vibe, I was thinking a lot about guitar amps and distortion. Those were my initial instincts for the score. It kind of ended up sounding like a distorted low guitar and it’s all over the score.
Is there another example of a really great on-set percussive discovery that you made? Where can we hear it in the score?
Every moment that Michael is wiring a bomb, there are gestural metal pipes. There’s all these close-up shots of him soldering and gluing the little explosive. If you rewatch it, you’ll be like, “Oh, I hear it instantly.” Those are the most clear pipe sounds. But then even in the intro of the movie, right in the first minute, there’s this big metal hit with a bunch of echoes and delays. It’s kind of like the pipe sound. It sounds almost like background noise. I’m sure many people heard it and didn’t know it was a part of the score.
I was going to ask about that very opening track, “Why I Destroyed Your Property.” There’s a percussive sound that starts it and then you have the opening montage, which is this immediately propulsive piece. Was the decision to start off musically right from the jump something that was alluded to in the script or was it something that was found in the editing stage?
I definitely think both in the script and the edit you had this understanding that there was an opening montage of each character’s introduction. We knew that was probably going to be one of the most difficult but important scenes because we need everybody to get locked in and invested right away but also be kind of confused. You’re not exactly sure who they all are, what they are texting about, or what’s really going on. I think, instinctually, there wasn’t even a question about whether or not it would be propulsive. We knew that that just had to be the vibe. I think the propulsive-ness comes from Daniel and our shared love of electronica and EDM and even synth music in general. There is that deep electronic bass coming in. Then we doubled that synth bass with one of the pipe sounds. In the intro, the music changes per character, and that keeps the same propulsive beat going the entire time. It was just about establishing some of the characters’ moods through instrumentation. Obviously, during Dwayne’s scene there’s more acoustic guitars, harking to the Western aspect of the score. Another major influence that I forgot to mention was Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Western music.
Awesome.
There is no doubt that Ennio Morricone is in my top three to four film composers of all time. So, especially with just the Western setting, there’s definitely some times where we paid homage to Ennio with a very Fistful of Dollars chord progression or something. We have some orchestral bell with a timpani hit that is symbolic of those old Sergio Leone movies.
I also would love to talk a little bit about the track “Everything’s Spinning.” There’s a scene in the film where everybody is about to go to sleep for the night and you get these little individual character vignettes. It’s a very different moment tonally within the score. There’s this really great brassy tone synth in there as well. Can you talk to me a little bit about what that is, and then, from there, expand on what went into scoring this particular moment.
So, that brassy sound is a Prophet-6 synth. What we liked about it was that the brassiness goes back to the Ennio Morricone. It’s like a Western trumpet. We associate some of those instrumentations with that genre. That was a sound that was in one of my initial suites, something I wrote before they shot, but that sound was a part of another track. It’s a good example of Daniel listening to my suites and pointing out, “This sound right here? I love it. Let’s definitely incorporate this in the score.” It comes back a few times. It does, like you said, have a very different tone. It’s more ambient and emotional. [That scene you mentioned is] one of the few moments of the film where there is just a breath.
It’s funny because we used those same chords in a few other scenes. There’s another scene where Xochitl and Shawn are having a moment by the van right after syncing up their watches, and then there’s a scene with Alisha and Theo. There are multiple scenes where we use the same chord progression to create a theme of its own, which is kind of the emotional thread of the connection of each character. In the scene you’re talking about, “Everything’s Spinning” is literally a line that Theo says to Alisha. We found that to be almost like Theo and Alisha’s theme. But it’s not so specific to that. It started as that, but we realized that it worked very well for any sort of emotional scene. We needed to understand that these characters are deeply connected even though we don’t get a ton of time to see that side of them.
That actually does bring up another question, which is about leitmotif and character themes. From talking to a lot of composers, it sounds like that’s no longer as prevalent of a method as it used to be in the 90s, when big, Williams-esque themes were really big. This is a score that feels like it’s putting the tone and the pace of the film ahead of more specific themes for individual characters. Were you cognizant of wanting to incorporate more themes in the score, or were you guys more interested in serving the pace of the piece first?
Great question. There’s one theme that basically occurs throughout the entire movie. It starts coming in on the opening scene with Theo. There’s a melody in the background and that’s basically brought back through the entire movie over and over. We really wanted to prioritize that melody. It is the theme of their bond to commit this act together. But as far as creating individual themes for each character, we found that there just wasn’t enough time to really establish that because there are so many characters.
Yeah, true.
You’d almost need a three-part movie like Star Wars. The example I always give of Star Wars is that Darth Vader’s “Imperial March” doesn’t come in until the fifth movie. There’s just not enough time to set all of it up. Another great leitmotif example that everybody knows is [The] Lord of the Rings. I think you need these epic, almost opera-esque movies to truly have individual things, but I think this movie still has a lot of melodic content. It’s still a lyrical score in a lot of places. There’s one melody for the movie that we use a lot, but in the leitmotif style we put it in different instruments for different characters. There is still an aspect of what you’re saying, which is that different instruments might be their own way of harking to a character. Maybe it’s this type of drum beat or this synth sound or every time Michael does this we use that exact pipe sample. There is kind of a version of it, but it’s almost as if we use themes within instrumentation.
Of course, the initial drafts didn’t have that theme, so I agree, we prioritized the pacing, the vibe and the instrumentation. I’m a fan of melodies. I want them to be more prominent in scores. I don’t really like the trend of just drone music. I like all that stuff as a listener, but I just think that’s more to the filmmaker. I don’t think the composer always gets that choice. Sometimes the filmmaker will start off by saying, “I just want this score to be ambient and minimal,” but some filmmakers are like, “I want a great theme.” I do think that’s a very collaborative choice and I hope that we can kind of come back to more melodic film scores because those are the ones that everybody cites as their favorites. Not to say that there aren’t great examples of the other type, but I do think we’ve gone too long with no melodies. I would like more melodic scores, especially in indies. In big studio movies there’s still plenty of space for that.
When you end up doing “How to Blow Up a Refinery,” which is the next movie—
[laughs] I hope so.
…Xochitl will finally get a theme, specifically, and we’ll go from there.
That’d be great.
Let’s take a moment to gush about a score that isn’t your own! Is there another score or musical project you’ve been listening to recently that has inspired you?
Yeah, there’s definitely been a bunch.
Go for it.
I’ll keep it score-oriented. I thought the score to Everything Everywhere was amazing. I know this is a divisive score, but I also really f**king loved Hauschka’s score for All Quiet on the Western Front.
Controversial, really?
Yeah, I know. I thought it was sick as f**k.
Me too. When I saw that movie for the first time, the score struck me. At the time, though I’m in the awards punditry circle, I was not really predicting anything at that point. I was like, unprompted, “Dude, I would love it if that got a nomination for Best Score. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but it totally should.”
I know.
And then it won!
I didn’t think it would win, but the people hating on it, which seems to be a lot, especially on the film score Twitter world, I just think that’s stupid. I met Hauschka at the World Soundtrack Awards in 2017 and he couldn’t have been a nicer guy. I also could tell that he and the editor worked together closely because it was so well-synced. It just felt so sharp and great.
Do you have any projects, no pun intended, in the pipeline right now?
Yes. I’m working with Daniel on Faces of Death.
Alright!
It has a sick cast and we’re doing a very similar process. The movie is obviously based on the Faces of Death VHS cassette, so we’re making so much of the score from VHS cassette samples. It’s going to be a wild sound. That’s what I’m working on literally now, just building out suites. I’m going to be traveling to New Orleans to visit the production in mid-April and record some local New Orleans brass players to get some of that sound in the mix. That’s going to be exciting. I’m on the Daniel Express.
May there be many more Smash Bros. competitions.
Oh, there will. Maybe if this picks up more we’ll stream one of our Smash games.
Dude let’s go. The Faces of Death tournament.
That would be fun if we were able to get a little posse and play.
Barbie Ferreira may be super into Smash Bros. You never know!
What if she was just like a monster player and totally eviscerated us?
Maybe like a Daisy main or something, hardcore. Those Peach/Daisy mains sneak up on you.
I think Daisy’s scary. I think Daisy and Peach are both pretty damn good characters.
They’re top tier.
They are.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is now playing in select theaters courtesy of Neon.
Larry Fried is a filmmaker, writer, and podcaster based in New Jersey. He is the host and creator of the podcast “My Favorite Movie is…,” a podcast dedicated to helping filmmakers make somebody’s next favorite movie. He is also the Visual Content Manager for Special Olympics New Jersey, an organization dedicated to competition and training opportunities for athletes with intellectual disabilities across the Garden State.