'Halloween' Soundtrack Featurette Offers Teases of New John Carpenter Music

While it might only utilize a handful of notes, the theme to Halloween is one of the most [...]

By Patrick Cavanaugh

While it might only utilize a handful of notes, the theme to Halloween is one of the most recognizable pieces of music from any movie, which was crafted by the original film's co-writer and director John Carpenter. The filmmaker stopped creating music for the franchise with 1982's Halloween III: Season of the Witch, with his composing of the score to this year's sequel his first direct contributions to the franchise in more than 30 years. Learn more about his process in the featurette below.

As explained by co-writer Danny McBride and co-writer/director David Gordon Green in the above video, Carpenter's music is just as compelling as anything else he contributed to the franchise, with this new film allowing him to return to his original themes and modernize them with the latest technology.

Carpenter himself even teased that this new score might be better than what he originally created for the original 1978 film.

"Well, we started by getting the themes from the original movie and moving them into the computer," Carpenter shared with Revolver of his process of crafting the new music. "Using new technology, we just brought them back to life — we put new life into it, really. The sounds that are available to us today, they're just so much more modern and so much better than the original stuff. I mean, even the audio quality of the sound is improved."

Carpenter typically writes music for the films he writes and directs himself, with this new Halloween forcing him to collaborate with Green to ensure the most successful experience possible.

"The strategy of the soundtrack was I took my cues from the director, David Gordon Green, who in spotting sessions told me, "I want something here, I want something there,'" the filmmaker confirmed. "Cody [Carpenter] and Danny [Davies] and I were there to please him. So it's a combination of the old music, refurbished and reinvented, and new music."

At San Diego Comic-Con, Green detailed the process of finding the balance between honoring the soundtrack of the original film while also finding new sounds.

"It's certainly the foundation of this movie, is John's original theme. He's composing the music with his son, Cody, and Daniel Davies, so the three of them are working together," Green shared with ComicBook.com. "It's fun to be able to say, 'When do you want iconic and when do you want to be fresh and inventive?' So that's kind of the balance we're exploring right now. Hopefully he's doing that today."

Fans can enjoy the new score when Halloween hits theaters on October 19th.

Are you looking forward to hearing the new score? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

[H/T Twitter, halloweenmovie]

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