In its recounting of the behind-the-scenes drama of To Catch a Predator, the Robert Pattinson-starring film Primetime delves deep into the darkness of the American soul and also revels in the absurdity of the entertainment industry.
Naturally, the score for the film by Ari Balouzian, a frequent collaborator of director Lance Oppenheim, would need to capture those disparate tones. In an exclusive behind-the-scenes featurette, the composer explains how he and Oppenheim crafted the sound of Primetime.
“There’s kind of two elements to the score,” Balouzian says in the clip. “There’s the tense and kind of thriller-y aspect to it, and then there is kind of the more Hollywood sound of the makings of the show, which is kind of the sound of network television. It feels really positive but eerie at the same time. Yeah, there were those two things, and it was kind of like how to put that together, and then it was like blending those things in unexpected ways.”
But once finding each strain of the score, Balouzian needed to find ways to navigate between those two poles, which tied Primetime into his other collaborations with Oppenheim. “It was just moving between different moods and dealing with the emotion of the characters and how people were interacting with each other and making their aspirations and their emotions feel really big,” he says.
For the theme of Skyler Gisondo’s character, Dan Plum, aka Decoy Dan, Oppenheim pulled inspiration for an unexpected source. “I remember Lance was showing me some weird documentary from like the 50s about pinball machines, he was like, ‘Maybe we make something kind of like this,'” Balouzian recalls. “And I have no idea how that was going to kind of fit in the movie, to be honest. That opening sequence when he’s like, ‘I got the role,’ I was like, ‘Oh damn, this makes so much sense!’ That felt like something really fresh.”
