Interview With Film Composer Mark Orton. Scoring, Career & Latest Work

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Published: April 19, 2025 | Last Updated: June 12, 2025

In this interview, we hear from film composer Mark Orton, whose film scores have consistently enriched the cinematic experience. Known for his unique blend of classical, folk, and often unconventional sounds, Mark has crafted memorable scores for films like Nebraska and The Holdovers.

In this interview, we explore his process as a film composer, including the collaborative nature of the work. We’ll also discuss his latest score for the 2024 film, On Swift Horses, praised for its evocative fusion of lush orchestration and rebellious 1950s surf guitar.

Composing for On Swift Horses (2024)

FilmDaft (FD): On Swift Horses (2024) is set in the American West and explores themes of love and danger. How did these elements influence your approach to composing the score?

Mark Orton (MO): The film is set primarily in the West, although it takes place mainly in urban settings. I think there’s a subtle nod to location in some of the instrumentation choices (for instance, there are both lap and pedal steel guitar woven into some of the cues).

There’s danger inherent in the romance in this film as two of the main characters are having same sex relationships in a time when it was literally illegal. That fact was something I tried to reflect in the music, so that even in a more romantic cue, there would be an undercurrent of risk/unease.

FD: The film explores complex emotional landscapes, including hidden desires and personal turmoil. How did you use music to reflect and enhance these nuanced character dynamics?

MO: This score was very much built around the characters rather than scoring the narrative more broadly. There are themes for each of the main characters, but I do exchange them over time (in variation). Julius and Muriel are living several hundred miles from one another, but are living parallel lives, so having their themes combined gave me a chance to accentuate the similarities in their stories.

FD: Were there any particular instruments or musical motifs you employed to reflect the film’s 1950s setting and its characters’ inner journeys?

MO: When Daniel (Daniel Minahan, director) and I were first discussing the score, he sent me a playlist that included a number of tunes by Link Ray. Some of that sound made it into my score I think. There’s a certain dangerous quality to much of Link Ray’s music, as well as an edginess. It felt like a good jumping off point.

I ended up recording a bunch of spare trio stuff (drums, bass, and guitar) with a couple of old friends: drummer Andy Borger (Norah Jones, Tom Waits, K.D. Lang) and bassist Todd Sickafoose (Bear Proof, Any DiFranco, Hadestown).

We definitely stretched out well beyond anything 1950’s based though– this was important to Daniel as well – that it not get bogged down in something time-period specific but instead focused on what the characters were going through: passion, desire, and swooning romance, all cloaked in the risk and danger inherent in the 1950’s.

Composing for Film: Process and Philosophy

FD: You’ve scored everything from Nebraska to The Good Girl, and now your latest film score is for On Swift Horses. What’s your starting point when you sit down to write a score? And how early in the process do you typically get involved, and how does that affect your approach?

MO: The starting point has varied for me depending on when I get involved in the process, and will also be based on the director’s choice. With around ½ the films I’ve scored more recently, I’ve been brought on a bit earlier and will start work from just the script. I’ll often develop several themes, creating an initial suite based on the story and/or certain characters. This was the case with On Swift Horses – I’d written over a dozen pieces before seeing picture. 

There’s a kind of risk/reward with this approach, as it sometimes happens that things translate differently than I was imagining (from the script to picture) – I’ll then need to calibrate some of what I’ve done. This can mean writing 1.5 or even 2 scores for a film in the worst case. The benefit is that the director and editor can begin working earlier with your score, which can solve potential temp-music problems.

FD: You’ve described your music as “orchestral folk.” How do you decide whether a project needs acoustic intimacy versus a more traditional score?

MO: I think part of my calculus has to do with the characters and the amount of unspoken information that’s being conveyed. If I’m trying to connect with something going on in a character’s head, I think organic instrumentation is the best way to reflect that (I suppose if I get to score a film about the inner workings of a cyborg, I can finally lean on my modular synth rig for this.) Orchestras can, of course, be used to score intimate moments, but I so love exploring spare instrumentation, and I’m a fan of more subtle scoring generally.

That’s, of course, the opposite of something like 12 Mighty Orphans – I’m not going to score a football game with some subtle acoustic intimacy, though even in those cases, I often choose to work some less-likely instrumentation into the orchestral sound. This gives me a chance to be somewhat performative with even an orchestral score (weaving in some eBowed dobro or bowed vibraphone or reed organ) and it helps me maintain somewhat of a sonic signature.

I love working with an orchestra. I grew up hovering around the heels of my conductor father, and the sound is very much built in for me. Still, I’ve also always loved to be hands-on with my music, whether that’s by working my way into the orchestra through some overdubs or whether it’s as an engineer mixing my own scores.

FD: When writing for characters versus writing for story or theme, where do you begin? And do you score emotional beats or narrative beats first?

MO: Speaking more to the process side of this question, I will usually work by finding the emotional, comedic, or dramatic range of the sound first. I’ll go after a handful of cues that feel like good signposts in this regard, and score those scenes first. If it’s a director I’ve not worked with before, I’ll score 2 or 3 versions for each spot as a way to gather intel on their tastes. I’ll have my own opinions and may lobby one direction or another, but I’ve found that having a range of options is the best way to draw people out about scoring, to get them talking. 

It’s a bit of a sideline to your question. Still, I’ll mention that I’m most interested in the types of themes/motifs that can take on meaning or narrative beats – in other words, the kinds of themes that can evolve with a film’s narrative arc and take on different meanings over time. That’s something I’ve always loved about Nino Rota’s scores, and it’s always fascinated me.

FD: You often use live, often vintage instruments. How does the physicality of sound factor into your storytelling?

MO: In terms of my background, I’m a multi-instrumentalist and a pretty serious instrument collector. I play all manner of plucked/hammered string instruments (guitars/dobros/banjos as well as marxophone/ukelin/cimbalom, etc), keyboards (piano/reed-organs/accordion, etc), and percussion (mallets/both orchestral & ethnic percussion/custom-made instruments, etc).

I’m also an engineer – my first job out of college was doing sound at The Knitting Factory in NY (and touring with/mixing Bill Frisell, The Lounge Lizards, and many others). I record and mix my own film scores (though I don’t often record orchestral or remote sessions). I do most of it analog – while I work chiefly in Pro Tools, I mix through an analog console with analog outboard gear and hardware reverbs. I even keep an old 4-track Ampex (Beatles) reel-to-reel machine.

I also come from the more avant-garde side of music-making and am very interested in building out my sonic palette with extended techniques and less common instrumentation rather than from a synth palette or plug-ins. I’ve built my own sound libraries, multitracking a handful of fantastic players who come out of that Downtown (NYC) scene – players that are as comfortable improvising and playing off the page as they are on the page with Ligeti or Xenakis.

All of this is a long way of explaining that the physicality of sound and of performance has always been central to the music that fascinates me and to my method. It’s a long-hand approach – it would much easier to just edit some midi and work purely in the box– but I wouldn’t trade it. I do believe that this approach is an intrinsic part of my film-scoring work, and that this somewhat handmade/hands-on method allows me to connect with the narrative in different, often deeper ways.

Collaboration and Filmmaking

FD: You’re part of Tin Hat, and you’ve done a lot of ensemble work. How does that chamber music background influence the way you score a film?

MO: First off, it was how I got into film scoring. Tin Hat’s music was often licensed into film and my entrance into doing it full-time happened organically through that side door rather than a more traditional path.

I think I get involved a bit more in ensemble dynamics and choose to work with players who maintain a chamber music aesthetic – I would always hire an existing string quartet, for instance, rather than putting out a session call for four string players. I’m looking for that interplay that develops in an ensemble over years of playing with one another and miss it otherwise.

It’s also meant that I’ve favored using a handful of key players on my scores, even if I’m working with an orchestra or other large ensemble. These are players from Tin Hat or from the larger umbrella of guests and special projects folks we worked with over the years. While scattered around the states and in Europe, most have studios of their own that they can record remotely in, and more importantly, they get my aesthetic with very little explanation needed.

FD: How do you communicate musical ideas with directors who aren’t musically trained?

MO: That’s the gig! Job One of film composing.

I often build playlists for them that help demonstrate the things we’ll need to consider (with some notes or metadata). This way I can connect sounds with terminology: this is a motor cue – this cue has a theme – here’s the same cue without a theme – here’s the same cue tipped more emotional – here’s a version that’s neutral. I’ll do the same thing in early submissions while we’re finding our collaborative footing – I’ll deliver three versions of the same cue (maybe one with melody, one without, and one with more energy). At the same time, I try to use less overt musical terms and lean towards language that’s clearer / harder to confuse.

FD: Can you share a moment when a director’s reference or language led you somewhere unexpected?

MO: Well… I can share something related. A director I love working with (we’ve done several films together) kept asking me to make a particular cue bigger. I started adding instrumentation – building it out – adding strings to a chamber sound, then some more percussion. Still needed it bigger. I added bigger bass, winds and more percussion. It still wasn’t big enough.

He then played me a piece of mine written for a trio of trumpet, national guitar, and stroh-violin and said, “you know bigger, like this.” It turned out he was looking for a melody, and that the strong theme was to him “bigger.” That was a pretty big “A-Ha” moment for me.

FD: For Nebraska, your score had to balance restraint with emotion. How did you and Alexander Payne calibrate that tone?

MO: Alexander has such a definitive style and Nebraska in particular had this kind of understated vibe running through it. His taste always leans towards a more austere approach – he doesn’t want the music to ever lead the emotion or comedy. Of course it helps when there are such fantastic performances and such brilliant writing on screen – it’s a film that really doesn’t want music that oversteps. That aesthetic is consistent though in my work with him. Even in The Holdovers with its moments of broader comedy, the music is not leading the comedy.

You might like What is a film score exactly? Read the FilmDaft guide to film scoring.

Tools, Techniques, and Workflow

FD: What tools do you rely on in your workflow? Are you mainly working with DAWs, or do you still write by hand?

MO: I still do the bulk of initial writing away from my DAW. I work mostly in my head – I have my iPhone voice memos chock full of embarrassing “singing” – taking down ideas as they occur often on walks or bike rides or on a drive – be they rhythmic patterns or lyrical themes or even abstract ideas about a cue in some kind of verbal description. I also have a portable recorder I try to remember to keep with me that serves the same purpose.

I then usually move these ideas onto the piano or straight onto manuscript (still a pencil and manuscript person). Depending on the instrumentation, I’ll then build them out any number of ways in my DAW. Once I’m into the process, I’m working fluidly between my various shorthand options and my DAW.

I love writing by hand. I have these old-world fountain pens that draw a staff, and I love creating my own manuscript. I grew up with that – my dad ordering supplies from Patelson’s in NYC or from Judy Green Music.  He also loved showing me the scores of folks like Crumb and Stockhausen (which remain beautiful works of art in their own right). But! – I’m not communicating my scores by semaphore – I have actually embraced high-tech.

FD: How do you approach spotting sessions? Do you prefer temp tracks as reference points, or do they box you in?

MO: I don’t mind temp cues as a starting point, especially with directors whom I’ve not worked with before or who are less experienced – maybe on their first or second film. They can act as a good jumping off point for a music discussion and can also help when there’s a super tight schedule. I do use spotting sessions for some of the same things I’ve talked about earlier – to suss out the taste of a director. These days I feel like I spend ½ the time trying to show them they don’t need music to be wall to wall….

FD: You’ve done live scoring for silent films. Has that changed how you think about scoring modern projects?

MO: Speaking of wall to wall! I think there are certainly similarities between approaching scoring a modern vs a silent film – some of the same rules apply in terms of how much the score is leading the film – but there are key differences. Scoring a modern film can often be like writing a “concerto for dialogue.” Music for silent films will often need to telegraph a bit more in lieu of dialogue, and most of the directors of silent films are themselves, silent. Most living directors are not.

FD: Do you have a go-to palette of instruments, or does each project start with a blank slate?

MO: I try to approach it with a blank slate mentality whenever possible. Exceptions would be possibly a genre piece (maybe a western) where there were likely going to be some instruments that are idiomatic in that style (though I’d still look for ways to subvert it when possible)

Career, Identity, and Industry Advice

FD: Many of our readers are indie filmmakers or student composers. What advice do you wish someone had given you at the start of your scoring career?

MO: It’s the advice I give my students now (I teach a class in film composing at The Hartt School of Music in CT.) – the music needs to serve the narrative, and your job is to help realize the director’s vision for the film. It’s not your solo album. That’s not to say that you can’t have opinions, and you’ll even be able to fight for some of them, but it’s definitely a collaborative process you’re signing up for.

I also encourage directors to please share their thoughts, to not pull punches. I let them know I had a happy childhood, and that I often learn more from things that they truly dislike.

FD: Film composers often have to work invisibly, in service of something else. How do you navigate authorship within that constraint?

MO: I’d answer again that it’s simply part of the job, but that every film is also different in this regard. There are some where you’re really just another texture along with the Foley, but there are others where the music is a key player. I tend to work more on the latter category since I tend to get hired to write thematic, lyrical music – strong melodies – rather than purely textural writing.

FD: Has the industry’s shift toward remote work and digital collaboration changed how you work, or how directors approach you?

MO: For the last 20 years, I’ve lived in Portland, OR., so I have always worked remotely to some extent. Tin Hat was popular in both Europe and South America, and much of my early work came from that, so there are several directors I’ve worked with whom I’ve never been in the same country with, let alone the same zip code.

I’ve figured out ways to make this work, and it’s gotten easier post-pandemic (mostly from a technical perspective). I do love face to face meetings and love to show off my weird instruments in person when I can, but I also love the fact that I can work with directors from all over the world. 

The shift to remote work has certainly meant less trips away from home to NY and LA.

FD: You’ve managed to maintain a distinct musical identity over the decades. How do you keep growing creatively without repeating yourself?

MO: I think I look for outlets outside of film first of all. This includes commissions from classical ensembles, radio dramas, my writing for “This American Life” and other podcasts, and various solo projects. All of these different outlets keep the film composing side fresher I think – they keep it from getting stale/old. 

This is the same reason I like working on documentaries as well as narrative films – and the reason I score silent films and do other performance gigs. There’s a certain creative rejuvenation that comes from stepping away and into other modes.

I won’t pretend that it’s not sometimes a challenge – especially when I come into a picture that’s been temp-scored with my previous scores and they’re in love with it and I’m forced to imitate myself – that comes with a particular incestuous danger, creatively speaking.

I’m happy to have you say I’ve maintained a musical identity over the years. That means a lot. I’ve definitely been trying to…

FD: Thank you 🙂