‘The Boroughs’ Composer John Paesano Used Old Techniques to Create His Show’s Vibrant Score — Watch

“The Boroughs, a sci-fi thriller set in a retirement community, feels like a throwback to the type of mid-budget genre films made in the ’80s and ’90s. And composer John Paesano, while making the series, used old techniques to create a score that not only sounded but functioned like the great scores of those films.

“I grew up on [James] Horner and [James] Newton Howard, kind of the great maestros of the ’80s and ’90s, and we really had this idea that we wanted this show to be in that world,” Paesano said during IndieWire’s Craft Roundtables.

Paesano was joined by a variety of different composers from some of the biggest shows of the past year at the composer roundtable. Also present were “Alien Earth” composer Jeff Russo, “The Madison” composer Brenton Vivian, “Spider-Noir” composer Kris Bowers & Michael Dean Parsons, “Murderbot” composer Amanda Jones, and “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” composer Mac Quayle to discuss their shows and how they created scores that matched the material onscreen.

For “The Boroughs,” Paesano adopted the process of scoring that was used mostly in the ’90s, where composers wrote the score through script notes in order to match the music to beats.

“They had to kind of read a script, look at footage, make a couple of markers on their manuscript where they wanted to hit certain things,” Paesano. “I wanted to adopt that process while writing the score as well. So, we did a lot of sketches, a lot of suites, a lot of big broad ideas.”

Paesano explained the suites helped finalize the music heard in the final project. He also said the process helped capture the vibes of the original films the team were seeking to emulate, which tended toward massive and vibrant musical cues.

“The goal for me with all these suites is I want the directors and producers and people involved to be able to shut their eyes, listen to the music, and kind of see the show or movie,” Paesano said. “And that’s why those scores in the ’80s or ’90s are so colorful and so vibrant. A lot of time they were written from the imagination. They weren’t concerned about dialogue, and visual effects, and all the things you have to be conscious of when you have to take that music and put it against the show.”

IndieWire’s TV Craft Roundtables is now streaming on @PBSSoCal and the PBS App as well as IndieWire.com and our social channels.