Exclusive Interview: Sound Designer, Andrew Jones (13 Tracks To Frighten Agatha Black)
Tell us about your participation in 13 Tracks To Frighten Agatha Black?
I was the sound designer and mixer, and I produced and played on the score.
What separates 13 Tracks To Frighten Agatha Blacks from other horror films?
I don’t know of another movie that utilizes sound the way 13 Tracks does. Sound drives the story and sets the scenes beyond the score. The whole thing is in honor of a specific horror and Halloween themed-thing that I haven’t seen referenced in other films too – scary story and sound effects records. You can listen to the movie as deeply as you can watch it because of the attention given to the recorded story elements.
What is your favorite scene?
Trying not to give something away with this answer: Agatha’s flight from the “spooky old house.” There, all the ways this story is told come together for an immersive and tense scene that leads to my favorite scary story from the film, “The Old Vacant House.”
What was your biggest obstacle while making 13 Tracks to Frighten Agatha Black?
The pandemic notwithstanding, figuring out how to edit most of the movie was a challenge. Do we get a cut of the visuals then record the stories to fit the pace of what we end up seeing? Do we record all the stories before we shoot and film to the pace of the stories? Logistically, getting the actors together to complete the stories with either approach was another element to consider. Ultimately we ended up kind of doing all of that. Once we were in post, we had all the stories and let the sound and visuals inform one another. At one point, Bradley and I were editing in the same room for a few days to get the synergy right.
How was it working with the cast and crew?
We got so lucky that everyone was enthusiastic about the movie. We ended up with more people involved in both cast and crew because they read the script and volunteered to make it happen however they could. I knew there was something special happening here when we had people forming a little coalition to make this weird, specific kind of story real. I was on set a lot to capture sound and catch moments that could work for integrating the world of the movie into the sounds on the records, and there was always this sort of summer camp energy, but everyone took it seriously. They all wanted to honor the script and one another’s contributions. Couldn’t ask for more than that.
What was your proudest moment during this production?
Before shooting ever started and maybe when the script was in its first draft, Bradley and I met with Angie Bolling (The Seer from Agatha’s record library) to make some demos and see if we could capture the spirit of our favorite Halloween and scary story records. I’m a recording engineer, so I had an idea of how to recreate the feel of a spoken word record from the early 70s, but a lot needed to happen to make the story good. The performance needed to be engaging, the story needed the right pacing – a lot of pieces had to come together. It was October, so all the Halloween decorations were up and the leaves were falling, and I set up a little hybrid digital/reel-to-reel set up in Bradley’s house. We recorded a few stories and I went home to edit them and add some music and sound effects. The stories came together really easily and when Bradley and I listened back to the final mixes of the demos, we were looking at each other like, “This is the sound. We can make this movie.” The dialogue we recorded that night all made it into the final cut, it was that good.
What is your favorite track from the 13 Tracks to Frighten Agatha Black?
I mentioned I love “The Old Vacant House” but there’s one that you only get a moment of in the film. It’s much longer and came from a promotional digital record Bradley and I released a couple years ago – “The Haunted House.” It’s an assemblage of my favorite sound effects records that leads you on a tour of a haunted house, complete with a ghostly piano playing an alternate take from the opening story of the film that Udo Kier reads.
What inspires your creativity?
My friends. I’m really lucky that my world is full of creative people, and a lot of them are not casual about what they love to make. It’s inspiring to see what they’re all capable of and what they produce. They don’t just inspire me to do my thing, but they push me to never half-ass it. Seeing Bradley take this from an idea he shared with me one day to a shooting script to casting it and securing locations…it makes something like getting the stories to sound period-accurate necessary and like the baseline of what had to happen. Seeing what everyone involved was doing led me to approach the score the way I did. Gather people who know what they’re doing and who have a personal interest in the feel of the thing and let it happen.
What are your favorite horror films?
Demons, The Evil Dead, all the Corman/Price Poe adaptations, Night of the Living Dead, Hellraiser, and The Amityville Horror II. I could go on, but those are on the annual must-watch list.
What’s next in your career?
I recently moved to Portland and am finally getting settled here, so I’m looking forward to engineering and producing more records here. I also started a record label this year called Big Secret Records that I’m using to help get projects I’m involved into a larger audience. We’re planning on getting the 13 Tracks soundtrack out on the label, and I’m releasing two albums from the pianist on the score, Bob Cummins Jr., as well as my own music under the name Berkley.
13 Tracks To Frighten Agatha Black will be released by VIPCO on Blu-ray on 13th December 2022