In the new HBO Max miniseries The Tourist, Jamie Dornan (previously starring in Belfast) plays a mysterious man with an even more peculiar past. After being run off the road by a semi-truck in the middle of the Australian outback, he wakes up in the hospital with no recollection of who he is or why he’s there. Seeking to assemble the pieces of his identity, he befriends a local traffic cop named Helen (Danielle Macdonald) and a woman named Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin) who carries a bevy of secrets all her own. Before too long, the unlikely trio finds themselves tangled in a complicated web of danger, identity, and questionable redemption.
Created by writers Harry and Jack Williams, The Tourist is a quirky, darkly humorous examination of personal identity. Set and filmed in the rural Australian outback, the vast landscape, and rugged beauty stand as a perfect counter to the show’s idiosyncratic mix of action, mystery, and humor. Knowing full well they would need a talented composer to bring tonal balance, the Williams’ turned to their trusted collaborator, Dominik Scherrer.
Having previously worked with the Emmy nominated British-Swiss composer on projects like The Missing, Baptiste, and The Widow, the Williams’ placed full musical trust in Scherrer’s talented hands. What resulted is a stunning sonic tapestry of atmospheric ambiance and wonderfully gritty thematic material. In an effort to learn a bit more about Scherrer and The Tourist’s evocative soundscape, I recently sat down (virtually) with him for a chat. Along the way we discuss his path into the world of film composition, his approach to The Tourist’s unique tone, and the various inspirations that fuel his creative process.
Film Cred: There are so many fascinating paths that lead folks into the world of film composing. What is your history with music? How did you get here?
Dominik Scherrer: Sure! So, I grew up in a more classical music family and played classical instruments. But then, I had bands and became more interested in synthesizers and stuff like that. I was always interested in film as well. When I was young, I started to make my own films partly with the objective of scoring them. A lot of them were kind of simple animations or just going into the woods, but then those films started to become more elaborate. We’d do literary adaptations of novels and things like that, with epic soundtracks of course. But this is before I went to study or anything.
So then, I actually went to study film but ended up actually just doing a lot of scoring. And, it just sort of carried on. But for me, I’m still keeping the filmmaking side a bit warm as well. I’ve made some films including an opera called Hell for Leather. It premiered at Sundance and won lots of awards and blah, blah, blah. So, it’s an opera that I wrote and composed, but I also directed the film for it. I’m sort of in-between. I just love music for film and how it works. I also work with a fine artist [named Suki Chan] and we do these large-scale sound and visual installations with big multichannel sound setups. I like that intersection of moving image, music, and sound.
FC: I love your passion for the art of filmmaking as a whole. I also find that interesting as, when it comes to composing, you’ve worked on a ton of incredible television projects. What is it that you enjoy about composing for the TV format?
DS: Well, it’s kind of new that we’ve come to really like those. I also think technically they’re more gratifying than they used to be. TV used to be difficult because the quality wasn’t very good. Sometimes you didn’t even have stereo, or it’s on a small screen with bad speakers. And at that time, I was doing more independent film where you go to the cinema and you have a proper experience, you know? TV was kind of inferior, but it’s changed. The quality is now better. We’ve got HD and surround sound and Atmos. I think for me, the sort of whole aural experience is quite important. So it does sometimes annoy me when people watch stuff on an iPhone or whatever. [Laughs]
But then, this long-form way of telling the story over six or eight or ten episodes is exciting. And it’s maybe almost a more natural way of telling the story. If you are used to reading a book, you don’t read the book in like, one and half hours or two hours. You spread it out over a couple of weeks maybe. Maybe that’s a little bit how we are watching a series now. I think the way we play with themes is more elaborate now that we have a much larger playing field. I also think the audience is more responsive to it as well. They go, “Oh yeah! There’s that theme.” And it comes back and they start to understand it because there is a bit more time to absorb it all.
FC: That’s a great segue into discussing your latest project, The Tourist. For this series, you’ve once again teamed up with writers Harry and Jack Williams. What is it that you like about working with them?
DS: What’s great about them is, they’re not really interested in sort of traditional TV drama. Sometimes, particularly if you are in Britain, there is sometimes a tendency to smother everything with nice strings and make it a bit like Downton Abbey with that sort of classy sound. I’d say half the shows are going a bit in that direction. And I’m certainly guilty of doing that myself as well! But, what’s great about Jack and Harry is that they’re not interested in all that. I think they’re more interested in a more gritty and contemporary sound. And, that’s always what they respond to in the end I think. For me, that’s more interesting. They are never like, “Oh, we need to make this nice and big because it will make our show more prestigious.” They just sort of think about what is exciting for them and exciting for the moment. That’s what I enjoy.
Then also, the way they write, they’re really good at these major plot twists all the time. Particularly towards the end of the episodes. [Laughs] This is quite fun for the music as well. They always think a bit more internationally too. There are always kind of exotic settings. The first show I did with them was The Missing and it was set in this kind of strange place in France. It was all strangely exotic even though it’s not very far away. And then I did The Widow with them which was set in Central Africa. I traveled to South Africa as well when they were shooting, so that was quite exciting. And then obviously, The Tourist is in Australia. I mean, the show isn’t about Australia or anything, but it has this kind of exciting exotic setting.
FC: I’d love to discuss that a little bit more. Like you just said, The Tourist isn’t necessarily about Australia, but the landscape and culture do play a large role in the series. How did the rural Australian setting impact your music?
DS: Well, I wasn’t really trying to capture the Australian culture so much, but I think it was more influenced by the Australian humor. It is quite fun and it has this kind of deadpan thing. So, you play against that by being sort of deadpan with the music as well. And then I think it’s just the topology of that landscape and what it looks like — flat and windy. To be in this quite hostile sort of place in the middle of nowhere. You have other deserts, you know, in Arizona or in California that are actually quite calm and beautiful, but this isn’t really. This is a more gritty desert.
And then it’s almost more about just having this sort of small set of people inside this huge landscape. It’s a sort of enclosed story in a way and there is something a bit cartoonish about that. It’s a bit like going back to the kind of 1950s, 1940s cartoons with Roadrunner. Where you just have a few characters and then see what happens between them, you know?
FC: That’s a great way to put it because the tone in this series is really special and your music plays a big part in establishing that. There’s also an interesting blend of genres and references that never feels too heavy-handed. That does make me curious though, what were the initial conversations like regarding the musical direction for the series, and how did you initially approach it?
DS: On these kinds of projects, you don’t really get a brief in a way, because it’s sort of up to you to come up with some ideas. But, the whole thing was written a little bit with a sort of Coen Brothers feel in mind. And, there were maybe a few references to some of the Spaghetti Westerns and things like that. So, for those references, we did talk about those.
Then initially, I was actually talking to Chris Sweeney whom I hadn’t worked with before. He was the lead director. We were always talking about the humor and the tension, but then we also both had this sort of interesting gut feeling about bringing in a more religious vibe which isn’t really in the script. It’s kind of in the story in terms of the idea of redemption and if you can’t remember the crimes of your past, does that redeem you? Things like that.
So, I found some early 19th century hymns that were English but would’ve been played in Australia. That’s kind of an underlying harmonic influence that is sometimes played out a little bit more overtly. That was one of the early things we figured out. Then I had this reference of a composer called Harry Partch. He was mostly based in California and Arizona and he built all of these custom instruments and a lot of percussion stuff. He was active in the 1930s to the 50s and 60s. It’s kind of avant-garde classical but often with a lot of percussion sounds and custom instruments. It has a sort of sound like it connects with a desert landscape. It’s quite nice and it’s quite nice to listen to it.
Because he was using a lot of mallets and stuff, I got myself a bass xylophone and learned how to play that. You’ll hear that throughout, sometimes processed, sometimes not. It’s a bit less refined than a marimba for example. Which is good because it’s, again, about the sort of roughness of the landscape. How some of the instruments are played, like the cello, you would hardly recognize it as such because it’s played in such an unusual way.
So that’s how we started to talk, but then I very quickly started to do some sketches. Before they were even shooting. I then sent those to Chris in Australia because he was still in his super long lockdown before they could start shooting. I think they had to spend like three weeks in a hotel or something like that. So he had a bit of time and just by me sending a bit of stuff early, we could find like, “Oh, I love that.” Or, “That’s interesting, but maybe that’s less interesting.” So by the time they started shooting and the rushes started to come into the cutting room where they started to assemble it, we already had some material.
FC: At the heart of this series is Jamie Dornan’s character who is known affectionately as The Man. He is suffering from amnesia and is, therefore, a bit of a character enigma. What was it like scoring such an undefined character and how does his sound evolve throughout the show as more is revealed about him?
DS: Yeah, it’s interesting. That definitely wasn’t easy. Early on, one of the first themes I wrote was called “Man Without The Past.” It was quite elaborate and had a big theme. And then once we had the picture, or some of the picture, I found it didn’t really work. It needed to be a much simpler thing because it needed to really reflect his state of mind. So it’s interesting that then I had to strip that theme right back.
For the first three or four episodes, it only appears in very fragmented forms. And then in episodes four and five, you hear it coming up in all sorts of guises; there’s a Greek bouzouki thing, there’s a waltz. So, it starts to pop up in different ways and the development of the theme through the series almost reflects his assembling of knowledge. Which then, leads him to know who he is, what happened in the past, and what he did. All of that. The musical theme goes through a similar journey. But this wasn’t so cleverly planned from the beginning. [Laughs] This was sort of something we just worked out and adapted as we went.
FC: You mentioned the Australian sense of humor earlier and, one of the things this show does really well is utilizing space and silence to emphasize that humor; as well as the more emotional moments. As the composer, did you have any say in how silence was used? Is that something you ever find yourself having to fight for?
DS: It’s very true and we talk about that quite a lot. Sometimes I get a cut back from the cutting room and they always put some temp music there. And then I’ll end up going, “Maybe just start the music…there.” Because I think sometimes they forget that we’ll have sound design coming and that’ll be quite exciting because you’ll want to hear this and that.
Then for me, sometimes with my cues, I almost create some space as well. Sometimes you have a phrase and then you have a few seconds of silence and maybe just some sort of reverb petering out. I think that gives a show like this the sense of space as well. I think the prototype for that was Paris, Texas with Ry Cooder’s music. These ringing-out pedal steel guitars that give you the sense of huge space as well as just essentially creating gaps in the music. And then sometimes I think it’s kind of exciting to just put a sort of brief stop somewhere in the music to just go, “Whoa.” And then it carries on. Rests and silence is an important part of scoring, definitely.
FC: A really fun element to this show is the quirky Western vibe it has to it. So, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about these references to classic film music, but also how you brought it into The Tourist’s unique atmosphere and modernized it a bit.
DS: It almost came later because, particularly with the sort of Morricone, spaghetti Western thing, it’s being ripped off all the time. So, I think one needs to be quite careful. And if you do reference that, you need to do it in an interesting way. It was almost more like I was kind of doing my own thing and then I was drawing some of those sounds and bringing them into it.
Also, don’t forget, we’ve now lived through many years of Tarantino doing kind of very sophisticated stuff with using music from that period and kind of reusing it again, you know? So, I see The Tourist soundtrack kind of living more in its own unique world and just taking a few ideas and classic sounds from other things.
The Tourist is now streaming via HBO Max. You can also learn more about Scherrer and his impressive body of work by checking out his website here.
