I recently got a chance to speak with Steve Moore, composer for the indie horror film Camera Obscura. Moore has previously scored a number of films from director Adam Wingard, including V/H/S/2 and The Guest. Outside of his film work, Moore tours with his band Zombi and has collaborated with a number of other artists over his 15+ year career.

HorrorBuzz: How did you get involved with Aaron Koontz and Camera Obscura?

Steve Moore: It was quite a while a while ago, about two and a half years ago. Aaron had already started assembling the pieces on Camera Obscura and he emailed me in January or February of 2015. He told me I was one of the first people he got into contact with the movie; he liked the music that I had done and the score for The Guest. He emailed me, sent me the script, which I thought was very interesting, different, and we just made it happen. So, I was on-board with his ideas, I felt like it would be a fun movie.

HB: What was the creative process like? Did Koontz have his own ideas going in as to how he thought the film should sound?

Steve Moore: He had some ideas, not so much thematically as sort of textural ideas. He had a sense of the sort of sound he wanted, something sort of atmospheric, dreamy, but also with a slight edge, something with a bit of a distorted, overblown sound. So, we talked a lot beforehand an established a lot of these ideas and parameters and then within that he gave me a lot of freedom as to how I wanted to express myself and portray the action going on in the scene. It was a really fun process and a really great director to work with.

HB: It’s a serious film in many respects, but there’s also a lot of dark humor. Did that have an impact on your approach?

Steve Moore: It absolutely played a big factor in it. I would say the two most over-the-top grooves in the film also had such a high element of dark humor in them and it took a few passes to express both the horror and the absurd comedy of these scenarios and why we’re in them to begin with. There’s a lot of humor there we both thought it was important to capture. I had actually gone a bit too dark in a few moments and had to pull it back. It was really interesting to get an outside perspective on the music; when you’re creating on your own you kind of get locked into your own ideas of what you want something to sound like, but ultimately, you’re the employee and they want it to have a certain sound.

HB: You have composed a number of number of horror movie scores, what draws you to the genre?

Steve Moore: I feel like it’s why I’m here. I’ve just been obsessed with horror movies and horror movie scores, film scores in general since I was a kid. I think I’ve always wanted to do it, it just took a bit of time to elbow my way into the scene.

HB: I know you do a lot of outside music work with various bands, but you would say it was a conscious decision to start composing films rather than something you sort of fell into?

Steve Moore: I think I’ve wanted to make film scores as long as I’ve been making music. The band I play with the most, Zombi, is very heavily influenced by John Carpenter and other bands that do film scores, so being in that world has gotten me a lot of contacts that are very valuable in the scoring world. We’re the sort of band that a lot of directors like, which is how I got film doing scores. I want to give a lot of credit to Adam Wingard; it was 10-12 years ago that his film, Home Sick, he was working on that when he saw a review of a self-released EP that Zombi put out in 2003 in Rue Morgue magazine and he emailed us and asked us to be in his movie. Once we had done that it opened us up to a lot of other things; I ended up doing The Guest, they used some of our work in V/H/S/2. I feel like the film score and the other stuff is really related.

HB: What was the approach to instrumentation? Do you have certain equipment you tend to go back to, or did you experiment with different options?

Steve Moore: I work, and always have, with vintage analog and digital synths. That’s what I’ve always worked with and done all of my film scores on, but within that and working with the medium so long, I get a lot of flexibility and a lot of different sounds within the arsenal of synths that I have. Aaron had some specific ideas for sounds he liked, so I produced some demos and it was clear we were on the right track and it was working. I like to get a lot of feedback from the director, because I have my ideas, but I want to make sure they’re right for the film.

HB: That’s about all I have, are there any other projects you’re working on that you would like to draw our attention to?

Steve Moore: I have a film that’s playing at festivals called Mayhem, directed by Joe Lynch and starring Steven Yeun from The Walking Dead and Samara Weaving, who was in Ash vs Evil Dead. It’s a very fun movie, I would highly recommend checking it out if it’s coming to a festival near you. There’s a theatrical release lined up for later this year.

Camera Obscura is available now on VOD and Digital HD. If you would like to purchase the soundtrack, it is available now on iTunes.