Interview with Composers, Gavin Brivik: IFC Films’ FACES OF DEATH Score

How did you first get involved with the film, Faces of Death?

This was my third collaboration with Daniel and Isa. Right after we finished “how to blow up a pipeline”, they immediately went into preproduction for this film. So this was a back to back scoring situation. I got very lucky with the timing of this.

Did you work with the director to figure the score out, or did you see the film first?

The way I work with Daniel and Isa is a little bit unconventional. We usually work before the film shoot. So they send me the script and I start brainstorming ideas from the text. We also love to use found sound samples from the film’s production. For this movie, I went to the set while they were shooting in New Orleans, and recorded a lot of the sounds on the films production. This included smashing vhs tapes with sledge hammers, getting the actors Dacre and Barbie to record things as well. Dacre did a a lot of weird breathing sounds in his characters mask, as well as shooting blanks from a sniper rifle and plucking electrical tape. Barbie typed on a computer keyboard, and we use that as percussive rhythms in the movie.

Who has inspired or influenced you over the years?

Jerry Goldsmith, Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrmann, John Williams and Tangerine Dream are some of my biggest influences. In more recent years, I find Jonny Greenwood, Mica Levi, Haxon Cloak, and Ariel Marx very inspiring.

How did you get started?

I originally started off as a performance major in school. I was studying jazz and classical guitar. Unfortunately I injured my wrist and was unable to play guitar for over three years. During this time I switched my major in school to composition. This was a blessing in disguise. I ended up falling in love with composing and later switched to film scoring. I never expected to go down this path and I think that’s the beautiful part about all of this. I was lucky enough to get into NYU and from there my career really started.

What is something you would want to say to the audiences and fans that watched Faces of Death?

I hope they enjoyed the Music and Sound Design. We worked so hard on this movie and went through endless revisions and rewrites. Ultimately, we’re all just happy It’s out in the world now. If you go to my TikTok page, you’ll see a lot of behind the scenes footage of how we made the score. I hope that fans who engaged with my videos hear those sounds applied in the movie.

What are you working on next?

I am currently, I’m scoring a few movies and I’m working on my first video game with Ubisoft. I’m currently scoring Ubisoft’s rainbow siege X and I’m loving the video game space. It’s very freeing to write away from picture. The game Director has allowed me to explore very experimental and unconventional sounds in our music.