It’s been a long, hard road bringing writer Neil Gaiman’s beloved comic series, The Sandman, to the screen. Initially released in 1989, the popular 75-issue original run has had decades to gain both traction and fans. Coupled with Gaiman’s hallmark style of heady, anthropomorphic characters, expansive fantasy realms, and complex mythos, it’s easy to understand why. However, the much-anticipated and long-awaited adaptation has finally found a home on Netflix.
Starring Tom Sturridge (Velvet Buzzsaw) as Dream, The Sandman follows the ancient lord of dreams as he escapes century-long imprisonment and seeks to recover precious and powerful items stolen from him. He is also forced to reckon with the fact that his kingdom has fallen in his absence and becomes forced to rebuild. Too monumental a task to tackle alone, Dream must also reconnect with his powerful family, which includes other Endless entities such as Desire, Despair, and Death. Massive in scope and scale, The Sandman is undeniably a monumental feat of fantasy filmmaking.
Part of what helps sell and support The Sandman’s vast story is the score from British composer David Buckley. A highly versatile talent, Buckley’s credits include big action films like Jason Bourne, tense dramas like The Good Fight, interactive experiences like the Batman: Arkham Knight video game, and multiple collaborations with renowned composer Harry Gregson-Williams. With The Sandman crossing oceans of time and traversing worlds at the drop of Dream’s magical helm, Buckley’s remarkable ability to dexterously navigate diverse tones made him a perfect cinematic partner for the project.
Film Cred: You’ve worked on a diverse range of projects, but nothing quite like The Sandman. How did you first get involved, and what creatively appealed to you about this project?
David Buckley: You know, I don’t know that I’ve ever asked someone, “Why did you hire me? Why me?” But my intuition tells me that, even from the first few episodes, you can see that story-wise, it’s quite varied. We are moving all over the place historically, geographically, and dramatically. It’s a wide range. I think someone described this first season as almost being like a series of pilots. And, what often happens with shows and movies when they’re trying to figure out a tone and a musical palette, they put pieces of music in from existing scores to help with the edit and to help create a world. One hopes that they can leave that alone, and when they get a composer, they can let the composer do their own thing.
But I think they were aware that when they were putting in some orchestral music with the temp, it was by me. And there’s some ambient music that was by me. Oh, and there’s some horror music. That was also by me. Then there was some action music that was by me. So, I think there were probably lots and lots of different things in there from different composers, but the impression I got was that someone sort of tallied it up and thought, “Well, hold on. This Buckley guy seems to be able to do this genre, this genre, this genre, and this genre.”
I think my CV will show that I have maneuvered in quite a few different arenas. So, I think, in some ways, it was a pragmatic choice. You know, I’m not a horror guy. I’m not an action guy. I’m not a whatever guy. I think I have some variety. And I think that probably helped, given the rich tapestry which is The Sandman. That’s my gut instinct as to how I sort of got the gig.
In terms of what it meant to me, I’ll be honest. I didn’t know a lot about The Sandman. I knew the character from working on the video game Batman: Arkham Knight, which is part of the DC universe. That opened my eyes and my mind to the fact that this is a much bigger universe. Certainly bigger than what I thought when I was a child, when I just thought there were, like, three superheroes in existence. Then now, you suddenly realize, “My god. There are all these people coming out of the woodwork.” They’ve always been there, but there’s now a rich, fertile ground for all these stories to be told. So, I was definitely aware, but it was only really when I got the job and started.
The first part of this for me was to get to know the comics, get to know Neil’s world in its pure form. The comic form. Then, discuss it with the showrunner Allan [Heinberg]. We would talk about everything. We wouldn’t even get into music at the very beginning. It was all about who people were, what their backstory was, their identities, all that kind of stuff. So that first part was really learning the culture that was The Sandman. And thank God there was a bit of time for that to be part of the process. It wasn’t just like, “We need music next week.” Which is sometimes how it works in television scoring.
FC: Oh, wow! Did you read all the comics? From what I understand, it’s quite an extensive series.
DB: Yeah, there’s a lot of them. I got them on my iPad, and I was reading through them. And I didn’t read all of them, but I read some of them. I also think that with any adaptation of anything, it’s always the essence. And the essence of those comics has come through to the television adaptation. And, even though I never [met] him directly, I know Neil was there all the time. He was a creative force in the project, but it obviously needs to reinterpret it. I mean, it’s a different medium, isn’t it? You can’t faithfully translate a comic into a television show. It just doesn’t make any sense.
But, yes. I did get acquainted with the source material because I think that’s important. But it was also equally important for me to read the scripts and watch the edits. Ultimately, I’m responding to the television show, not to the comics. But it pays for me to know where this all came from. I won’t say that answered all the questions for me because it didn’t, but it gave some context. Often, it illuminates things. Sometimes you just hold a bit of information in the back of your mind that you don’t even necessarily know is there. But it can somehow weirdly subconsciously help you make decisions. So the fact that the comics were so easily accessible for me on the iPad, it was like, “Yeah. I need to look at these.”
FC: Let’s talk about Dream, The Sandman himself. He’s such an intriguing character with such a rich history and the ability to transform how he presents himself. How did you approach scoring such a character, and how did you work with that depth to develop his sound?
DB: He is a fascinating character, really. I can’t really compare him or really think of another [similar] character I know from anything else. Sure, there are lots of complex characters out there, but he has his own unique set of complexities. And, he’s not a superhero in any sense of that word or what we understand a superhero to be.
Some moments he can be quite callous and almost cruel. You’re almost like, “Does he understand human emotions? How people feel?” And then, of course, he’s been imprisoned, tortured, a victim of fate, and has his own kind of grievances. And then visually, the way he’s portrayed is really unique.
So, I needed something for him musically that would have the ability to move through his emotions and the way he interacts with people, but also the settings in which he finds himself. Whether intentionally or unintentionally. So there is a sort of theme for The Dreaming, which is a slightly weird bell sound that weaves through the realm of The Dreaming. And then he has a melodic theme.
For me, the essence of that theme shouldn’t be upbeat. It shouldn’t be pitiful. It shouldn’t be playful. It shouldn’t be funereal. Ultimately, I hear his main theme as something…I don’t know. I almost just kind of feel it. I wanted to write an emotional theme for him. Something that was highly emotional because, at the heart of the story, as Allan Heinberg was keen to point out when we were talking in the early days, yes. This does come from a comic. Yes. This is DC. Yes, broadly speaking, this is what some people may construe as fantasy. I don’t think it is, in any stricter sense of the word, fantasy, although there are some elements here and there.
[We] thought it was crucial that audience members really connect with the emotional contours of the story, what’s happened to these people, and that we really feel things in a real sense. That’s where I wanted his main identity to land. Then, I could move it in any direction that it needed to go. So I think, for my money, I landed on something for Dream that was able to cover the gamut of emotions and dramatic scenarios in which he found himself.
FC: Along with many incredible characters, there are many beautiful locations with their own unique soundscapes. In particular, Hell is represented quite interestingly here. Talk a little bit about scoring such an iconic place and how you developed your own musical interpretation of it.
DB: Hell is probably some of the more dissonant music in the show. But I didn’t want to just do the [sings “dun-dun-dun” in low bass tones]. One thing about the characters in Hell is that, fairly near the opening of that episode, you see the damned walking, and they’re really slow and plodding. This is a Hell that, to my eyes and mind, felt like something where this shuffling might just go on forever. You can hear the chains rattling on these people in this procession to nowhere, this eternal damnation.
So, the purest form I thought of for the space of Hell was the slow-paced, lumbering metallic chains and mechanical sounds. But then we have Lucifer Morningstar, who is an interesting representation of Satan. She looks like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. She doesn’t require anything that’s dramatically sinister.
So many of the characters in the show are more complex than that. Sometimes we might see Dream as a horrible person. Sometimes we might see The Corinthian where, especially with his moments towards the end of the season, there’s actually some really quite touching moments with [him]. Often, certainly in my experience of superhero stuff, there’s this idea that we pit the good guys against the bad guys. And it gives us a bit of an overly simplified steer on how to look at people. I think here in the world of The Sandman, it’s way more nuanced than that.
There is this game that is played between Dream and Lucifer that does escalate in pace. I also think it’s one of the most fantastic sequences in the show. It gives me chills as to how awesome that was realized. And the music does pick up the pace there, but then it becomes sort of ethereal. I wasn’t afraid, nor was I discouraged from playing something highly emotional inside the hellish landscape. And you know, I think credit to the show for making these kinds of genre-bending tonal decisions.
FC: Your music really does push against expectations a lot, which I enjoyed. But it was never forcing anything. Just supporting that fluidity of mood.
DB: When I started, I mentioned that there were music placeholders placed throughout the episodes. And it was probably a lot more, I think, of the [initial] direction. Broadly, before I’d written a note, we wanted it to be quite ambient, and we didn’t want to point too much to the audience and tell them how to feel. But when I got my hands on it, I did color things in a little bit more. And I think that’s right.
I think a temporary score [should] leave room for the composer to come in and actually say, “Okay, I get why you’ve stayed out of the way there, but actually, I want to push it a little bit here. Yes, I’ll recede here. Yes, I’ll push it here.” That was an interesting part of the process. There weren’t too many answers in the temporary music. So, it was quite daunting. I won’t lie. It was a daunting prospect when I got going on this. Just because of the complexity, the ambiguity, the not wanting to be overt and vulgar and trying to keep things sensible. That does create challenges. There were also lots of voices that needed to be heard and lots of opinions that needed to be satisfied. It was a lot. It was a lot of music, so that inherently takes a lot of work, but also, just finding it took a while.
FC: I want to talk about time and how it functions in this series. Dream and his family operate on a scale much more expansive than humans. Did that timelessness work its way into your score at all?
DB: There was a lot of talk at the beginning actually about things we wouldn’t be using. I wouldn’t say it was like, “Here’s the rule book, you better follow it.” But we knew we didn’t want to be too big with the orchestra. So, one of the things I was keen to introduce in Dream’s theme is this high-Renaissance instrument called the viola da gamba. It’s a very old string instrument and a precursor to the modern-day cello.
It’s got a slightly more edgy sound to it and can quite possibly be played without vibrato. So, it feels a bit ancient and a little bit unfamiliar. But not completely unfamiliar. You don’t think, “Oh my god. What the hell is that?” But you do sort of go, “Oooh. Is that that, or is it not that?” Often, I’d combine that instrument with a synth sound from an analog synth, right from the present tense. And, I found sonically that the two worlds were not entirely dissimilar. The synth sound that I was using and this ancient instrument, even though they’re 500-600 years apart, they just tickled my ear in the same way. I liked it when I combined them together and just mixed them slightly differently to let one peak and the other recede. I just sort of played around with it.
For me, that helped to create a sense of timelessness. You’ve got this very ancient antique sound, and you’ve got this quite modern sound. Whether that’s actually immediately perceptible by anyone, I don’t know. And I almost don’t care because it’s more the sensation. It’s the thing that your brain might kind of understand without actually full-out saying, “Oh, there’s an old instrument. There’s a synth.” That’s a bit obvious. The better thing is if you just feel something that lands you in this timelessness that we were trying to create, especially with Dream.
I think the other thing is that we shied away from anything overtly digital. Yes, there’s a lot of modern production elements in the score, and there is sound design, but if anything suddenly became really kind of synthetic, it always got a note. So, we shunned that.
I think one of the reasons is that it might lose the timelessness element that you’re talking about. We also embraced the orchestra and a choir where needed. We weren’t afraid of it, weren’t shy about it. Obviously, choir and orchestra are timeless. The orchestra has taken form over centuries. Broadly speaking, in television and film music, we think of it as that sort of timeless palette that keeps things feeling like they could have been around for a long, long time.
I did have a huge collection of musical resources available to me. I mean, I’ve worked on shows that, for budgetary or creative reasons, I was limited to perhaps two or three instruments. But here, I could find myself going down to one instrument where necessary, and then an absolutely massive brass section in Abbey Road just letting rip. So dynamically, the range is large. And that’s nice to know that you’ve got that available because it just means that you can put more contours into the music. Having that arsenal of instruments and sounds available helps me get something fitting as snugly as possible with what’s on screen.
FC: Well, I think it’s crucial with a story like this to have that depth and variety of sound. Otherwise, it would just be too much.
DB: Yeah, exactly. I think this show will appeal to lots of people and I always like to think that audiences want to do some work themselves. They want to try and figure stuff out. It’s not just about an assault on the system.
FC: We meet many of Dream’s family members and circle of friends in the show. Was there a character that you found yourself having a lot of fun particularly or enjoyed scoring?
DB: I really like Desire. They are a very cool character, and musically, I thought that was quite a fun theme. I also love the English actor Stephen Fry [who plays Gilbert] in the show. I’m just a big fan of his, and so I wrote something quintessentially English for him. Death I really liked as well.
What I liked about Death is that when she’s there at the end of someone’s life, it’s this intensely beautiful moment. Funny enough, just this morning, I was reading the newspaper, and I saw a picture of a nun who died, and she had this massive smile on her face. Like the most serene smile imaginable. And the quote said that she was now going to be with her husband, Jesus. I have to say, not my cup of tea at all, but it made me think a bit of Death and how she’s basically the most loving experience. It’s the opposite of the Grim Reaper, right? And I love that.
I was really glad that I could write quite an elegant piece of emotional music for what she was doing. Effectively going around with victims, but it was just beautiful. I think, in many ways, that sums up the show. It is so different, it’s not stock. The characters in this are not stock at all. And ultimately, the characters are what matters. The story is what matters. It’s such a rich world, and it gave me a lot of pleasure to try and figure it all out. I feel incredibly lucky, especially as I’m not probably the most obvious guy to have scored this show. But, I’m glad they gave me a shot and we’ll see if people like it.
The Sandman is currently streaming exclusively on Netflix. Additionally, Buckley’s score for the film is now available to stream and will soon be released on vinyl via Waxwork Records. Exact release date is TBA.
