Sound Design as Score in The Killing of Two Lovers

Besides “we’ll fix it in post,” perhaps the most common joke in film editing suites is, “the music will carry it.” Meaning, a film almost always has the score to help with the emotional impact of any given moment. But what about films without a traditional score? That is the case with “The Killing of Two Lovers,” a tense new indie drama from director Robert Machoian. But interestingly, the director and sound designer —Peter Albrechsten — instead created a unique sonic soundscape to act as a score, but without what we’d normally consider “music.” This week, we sit down with Machoian and Albrechsten to discuss how this experiment went, and why it happened to work so well.

“Funny enough, I don’t think I explained it very well to Peter [beforehand]. I was teasing him the other day when we were doing the sound mix at Juniper, he looked at me — I think it was like day two — and he’s like, ‘I’m kind of the composer!’ And I realized that I hadn’t explained it enough that, ‘yeah, you would be.’” — Robert Machoian, Director of “The Killing of Two Lovers”