Presence is a haunted house story seen from the eyes of the ghost. As much as that premise could lend itself to a terrifying horror movie, writer David Koepp (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Jurᴀssic Park) and director Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Logan Lucky) have chosen to lean more into the family drama aspect of its story. To bring that to life, the pair brought together a cast that includes Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, and West Mulholland.
Audiences are able to connect with the lives of Presence’s characters even more easily thanks to a sparse but impactful musical score by two-time Soderbergh collaborator Zack Ryan. The composer previously worked with Soderbergh on his miniseries Full Circle, and on Presence crafted a piano-led orchestral score that aimed to complement the story being told without overwhelming it. Ryan’s wide-ranging body of work also includes Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock and Wizards Beyond Waverly Place.
ScreenRant spoke with Zack Ryan about his collaborative relationship with Steven Soderbergh and his time scoring Presence. Ryan discussed how he landed on his ensemble for the film, how this project felt different from his work on Soderbergh’s miniseries Full Circle, and what he wanted to achieve musically. Plus, the composer shared his reaction to Presence’s surprising ghost reveal.
Zack Ryan Discusses Not Following Genre Conventions In Steven Soderbergh’s Presence
When Soderbergh Does Horror, “He’s Not Going To Throw You A Fastball Over The Plate”
ScreenRant: The concept of this movie is so cool—a haunted house movie from the POV of the ghost. How did that idea affect you in terms of writing music?
Zack Ryan: I first saw the film without knowing anything about it. I got a link from Steven, and I think it was smart of him to not give me a heads up about what to expect because I reacted the same way that the premiere audience at Sundance a year ago probably reacted. I don’t think the cat was out of the bag before the premiere at Sundance that it was a POV story. That immediately imprinted my first impression which, I’m sure, subconsciously informed how I was going to approach the score.
The interesting thing is that is a genre film, and [if] you get Steven Soderberg stepping into a genre, he’s not going to throw you a fastball over the plate. He’s going to do something unique and something that you’ve probably not experienced before. Given that, with a genre, I think the audience goes into a theater and they expect certain things. One of those things, I think, is that the score is going to provide a lot of the atmosphere. It’s going to be constantly telling the audience that something’s wrong, that things are afoot, and that there’s some sort of a supernatural thing going on.
In this case, we didn’t really have to do that because Steven provided that visually. You already felt everything you needed to feel about the fact that there was a ghost in this house. That also has a lot to do with David Koepp’s script. It really freed the music up to function in a different way, because we didn’t have to lean into the fear factor as much as you normally would in this genre. We were able to tackle the emotional side of the story and the family strife, the dysfunction, and the drama that’s happening as opposed to leaning into jump scares and spooky ambiance all the time.
Because it’s a POV story, do you feel like your approach was more dictated by the performance of the actors or the performance of the camera?
Zack Ryan: Perspective in film music is a decision. You have to sit down and make a choice. “Is this music the sound of the character’s mind? Is this music reflecting what the audience feels watching this story? Is the music landscape? Is the music basically just the sound of the world the characters are inhabiting?” In this particular case, it wasn’t, “Hey, how do we sound like the ghost?” and it wasn’t, “We are the ghost, as music.” There are a couple of cues, I would say the opening and the closing cue that leads into the end credits, that most closely identify with the ghost’s experience, but by and large, the rest of the score is tracking the emotional progress of the characters through the story.
And one thing that I learned from this, through Steven, really, was that this score almost entirely avoids hitting onscreen actions. We’re not scoring a look. We’re not scoring someone slamming a door. We’re not scaring you with a sudden jump. The music is functioning, in a lot of instances, as chapter breaks between these little chapters. You get a cut to black and then you resume the story hours later, days later, weeks later, months later, we don’t know, but the music can come in and bridge those chapters and give the audience a moment to breathe and take in what they’ve just experienced. As opposed to the music saying, ‘This is what’s happening right now on the screen,” the music can say, “This is just what this story feels like at this point.” It’s kind of a broader overview of the story, musically.
What was your reaction when you first found out who the Presence was and how that fit into the story, and did that change what you did at all?
Zack Ryan: It was a surprise. I wasn’t expecting any degree of a twist, although I don’t know what I was expecting. I was watching something that was unlike anything I’d ever seen, so for 85 minutes, I’m surprised the whole time. So, yes, I was surprised by that final moment.
I don’t know if this comes across to a first-time viewer of the film, but the piece of music that opens the film as you get this tour of the house through the ghost’s point of view, which is solo piano, is the same piece of music that comes back at the very end of the story, but this time it’s been blown up to be performed by a string orchestra. It was Steven’s idea, and it was an interesting lesson in musical context.
Of course, a piece of music can mean something different depending on where it appears in a story and what you’re seeing while you’re listening to it. In this case, it was very eye-opening for me and unexpected to see the difference in emotional effect. At the beginning of the film, [the piece of music is] setting the stage and emotional tone as being one of solitude, slight melancholy, loneliness and peacefulness, almost, and then at the end of the movie, you’ve been through this entire story, and it comes in—of course, it’s being played by a different ensemble at that point—and sounds like an elegy. It’s funny how the emotional effect of music can be different depending on what you just saw happen.
Ryan Details His Presence Writing Process & How Working With Soderbergh Differed From Other Projects
“For The First Time In My Career, I Really Felt Like The Music Was Baked Into The Film”
I was wondering was how much of this was written to picture versus away from picture, but it sounds like it was mostly written to picture and just wasn’t beholden to certain actions.
Zack Ryan: Yeah. I will say in terms of writing to picture with Steven, it’s really a different process than anything I’ve ever been through. He’s different than every director that I’ve ever worked with, and I mean this in a great way. The first thing I worked on that he directed was a miniseries called Full Circle that was on Max. I was hired during I think the first or second week of production, and he had a couple months left to shoot, and it was great. Usually I’m hired at the end—they shoot it, they cut it, they temp it all with music from 10 different movies, and then you’re supposed to come in and put the frosting on the cake as a last step.
[With Steven], the process was, “Hey, you’re being hired. I’m shooting. Here’s the scripts. Here are some scenes I’ve ᴀssembled. This is what I’m going for. Go write some music. And I was able to write music for a couple of months on Full Circle and just send him batches and chunks. And Steven’s his own film editor, cinematographer, and camera operator, so, for the first time in my career, it was a truly one-on-one experience. It was really collaborative, meaning I’d send him music, he’d send me back scenes where he was sort of dropping things in and trying things out, and I would react to that and adjust for length, adjust for orchestration, or send him a different idea. Sometimes he would like those, and sometimes he preferred what his first instinct was. For the first time in my career, I really felt like the music was baked into the film as opposed to being laid on top of it.
You mentioned Full Circle. I listened to both scores back to back, and the ensembles are pretty similar, especially with the featuring of piano. Is that a Steven Soderbergh preference, and was there anything you wanted to do to make sure they didn’t sound too similar in execution?
Zack Ryan: Yeah, the choice of ensemble was really led by Steve. He told me that he wanted—going back to Full Circle, which was the first one chronologically—a traditional orchestral score. He wanted kind of a classic Hollywood approach, and he didn’t want anything modern or trendy, so that led me to using a symphony orchestra as the basis, with some adjustments. Full Circle was primarily a basic symphony orchestra setup with the exception of the woodwinds.
We’re getting a little into the nuts and bolts here, but I used five flutes on Full Circle and a lot of alto flutes and bᴀss flutes because I wanted a low breathy sound to that score. The other score that Steven referenced was Michael Small’s score for Marathon Man. In that one, he used an orchestra but he complimented it with an electric piano—a Rhodes or a Wurlitzer, I’m not sure which. We incorporated that into Full Circle, and we did that as well in Presence. There are one or two cues that use this electric piano. It’s a nice warm color that takes us slightly out of the strictly traditional sound of a symphony orchestra.
The difference between Full Circle and Presence in terms of instrumentation is that Presence is really a piano/string score with a couple of little woodwind moments and a couple of little electric piano moments. Full Circle was a larger ensemble with a full brᴀss section, and you get your harp [and] some stuff we just didn’t utilize in Presence. Presence was scaled down a bit. We really didn’t want to be too big and burst out of the house.
I read an interview with Chris Sullivan and he said at least his contribution on this movie was sH๏τ in 11 days. It seems like it was a very quick process. Did that stretch to your side of things as well?
Zack Ryan: Yeah, it was compressed for sure. It was an 11-day shoot. I think it was scheduled to be a 13-day shoot, and it’s Steven Soderbergh, so of course he’s going to blast through it even faster than that. He sH๏τ the movie during the writers’ and actors’ strikes on SAG waivers, so he had one of a few things that were in production at the time. This was September almost a year and a half ago, [it was] 11 days of shooting, and then it premiered at Sundance like four months later, so it was a really fast schedule to make and complete a movie. That obviously trickled down to my window of time that I had to finish everything, so in that case, you just go on instinct.
“I Hope People Are Liking It”: Ryan Weighs In On Audience Response
“I Wonder If The World’s Going To Enjoy It”, Says The Composer
You probably had a sense of how the movie went over with people at Sundance, and what it was going to be like. What is that like for you, as someone who was a part of this project, waiting a year and having an idea of what people will think, but then having to experience the release all over again?
Zack Ryan: It was interesting. I went to Sundance for the premiere last year, and it was well-received. The audience really seemed to enjoy it. I did not watch the movie [again] until a couple weeks ago, and I went to the New York premiere for the theatrical release of the movie. It was interesting to see it after so much time, and my expectations were… you just don’t know. You think, “Gosh, okay, so the festival audience liked it,” but you don’t know. “Are they just excited? They’re all film enthusiasts and they’re there, and Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp are there, and it’s an exciting time. Will that excitement translate when it comes out in theaters?” You really hope so.
And I think it has been well received. I hope people are liking it. It seems like there’s some positive writing that’s been out there about the film. I will say I spent the last 11 months going, “Gosh, I wonder how this thing’s going to do. I wonder if the world’s going to enjoy it.”
Ryan Teases What’s To Come For Wizards Beyond Waverly Place
The Composer “Literally Just Put The Finishing Touches On The Last Episode”
A lot of people that visit ScreenRant love Wizards Beyond Waverly Place. I know there are more episodes on the way. Can you say anything about what you’re excited to have out there and whether or not people might see Selena Gomez back in action?
Zack Ryan: There is great stuff coming up for the rest of this season. I literally just put the finishing touches on the last episode last week, and it’s great. The showrunners, Jed and Scott, have done a really great job of keeping the magic of the original series, and expanding the story and expanding the world. There are some great story moments that happen in the last couple of episodes, but I’m unfortunately forbidden to say anything more.
About Presence
It’s there before the family even moves in. It witnesses the family’s most intimate, uncomfortable moments. It navigates the family’s new house at supernatural speed. It pays unusual attention to Chloe, the teenage girl who’s neither her mother’s nor her brother’s favorite. It wants — no, it needs — something. And as time goes on, the presence pieces together how it might accomplish its goal. An unusual, unnerving, and emotional thriller from writer David Koepp and director Steven Soderbergh.
Check out our other Presence interviews:
- Lucy Liu & Chris Sullivan
- Eddy Maday, Callina Liang & West Mullholland
- Lucy Liu & More New York City Red Carpet Interviews
Presence is in theaters now.
