ComingSoon’s Jeff Ames was able to sit down with composer George Streicher to discuss his score for the film Corrective Measures, starring Bruce Willis and Michael Rooker.
Corrective Measures is a 2022 American action science fiction thriller film written, produced, and directed by Sean O’Reilly and starring Bruce Willis and Michael Rooker. It is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Grant Chastain. The film is currently available on Tubi.
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George Streicher is a composer of music for film and television. As a composer for film, he’s written original scores for animated features such as Go Fish and Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom. For television, he’s scored the Snapchat / Comedy Bang Bang series Total Badass Wrestling and worked as an additional music composer on Nickelodeon’s The Smurfs. Most recently, he has completed the score for Arcana Studio’s Heroes of the Golden Masks, starring Patton Oswalt, Ron Perlman and Christopher Plummer. Additionally, he has worked as a composer and arranger on video games such as Harry Potter: Magic Awakened and live events such as Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks.
Jeff Ames: What led you to become a composer?
George Streicher: I come from a pretty musical family. My mom was a concert flutist, my dad was an amateur musician, and myself and all my siblings took music lessons of some kind as kids. I grew up absolutely loving to listen to and play film music. However, I really started out as a filmmaker. As a kid, I was scoring my own short films and that continued through high school and college; when I started taking music more seriously. I started scoring the films of classmates and friends and eventually, a producer reached out (Sean Patrick O’Reilly) and asked me to score their feature. That’s really where this whole career got started.
What was it about Corrective Measures that made you want to work on it?
It was a genre I’d never worked in before. Plus it was a live-action movie. I have a lot of experience and credits in animation, so this was a welcome change and a fun challenge. I got to work on a scale I’m not used to musically, and by scale, I mean an energy that was more aggressive and gritty. Writing for live guitars and drums as opposed to an orchestra and getting to play off of some great performances in the film.
What was the most challenging aspect of Corrective Measures and how did you overcome that?
It was challenging trying to nail down the sound I wanted for each character. They turned out to be pretty simple solutions, but I went through a lot of ideas in order to land on that. Luckily, the director and editor had placed several really great folk/country songs throughout several montages in the film. When I saw a cut for the first time I thought those were so perfect and that helped guide me to the style of the score. But I still wanted each character to have their own distinct musical voice, which I think we accomplished.
Do you have any fun, behind-the-scenes stories about the making of Corrective Measures?
There are a couple of fun things that went into the making of the score. For example, since The Lobe listens to a lot of classical music in his cell, I designed a drum kit from sounds of me beating on the body of a Steinway grand piano and the body of a cello. I pulled those into my DAW, processed them, and created a drum kit specific to his character. There are also a few moments where I use a special synth effect I created. I looked into the frequencies that various brain activities resonate in. I dialed a synth patch into 30khz and added a bit of distortion so it became more audible. I use that effect whenever The Lobe is using his power in a scene. It’s subtle but it felt appropriate to have that in there. For the character of “The Conductor” I sampled a lot of sounds of electrical arcs and zaps and created synth leads to use in his cues. There are also quite a bit of prison cell door slams and metallic sounds layered into the percussion to help reflect the prison environment the film takes place in.
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What were some of the things you learned from Corrective Measures that you’re excited to apply to future endeavors?
A lot of what I learned in the making of this score was using sound design in production. It seems like there can never be too much production on scores like this. I had a lot of fun playing with sound design elements to accent cuts or augment moments musically. And just finding those elements that work for the characters and help color the cues in a distinct way is so effective and so much fun. The Conductor and all the electrical arcing samples in his cues come to mind.
Do you have any other projects coming up that you can share with us?
I’m working on a fun personal project that I’m planning to release this October. It’s a live orchestral Halloween album called “Music of the Macabre.” Something I’ve been working on since 2020 and I’m really excited about.
