Marco Beltrami's Path to Creating the Dread-Inducing Score of Scream

The Savage Content blog is no stranger to discussions of impressive movie scores. Surprisingly, in all those discussions, the score for the 1996 horror classic Scream written by Marco Beltrami has been left out. I wanted to remedy that right away. And what better time to discuss it than spooky season? 

Marco Beltrami, 2020 | Av Ukjent/𝒲.

Marco Beltrami studied at the Yale School of Music before moving west to the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles. During his time there, he studied under Jerry Goldsmith. Goldsmith was a legendary composer responsible for iconic scores for the Rambo franchise, Planet of the Apes, The Omen, Poltergeist, Gremlins, and many more. Beltrami came from a classical background that he described as working to create complexity in music. Working under Goldsmith, he learned a more economical approach to scores. That simple is sometimes better. This inspired him as he began working on his own scores. 

Aside from a few commissions and work on student films, Beltrami didn’t have much experience in scoring until his first feature in 1994. The score that helped put him on the map was the 1994 thriller Death Match, directed by Joe Coppelletta. Some of his other early work includes scoring for the 1995 films The Bicyclist and The Whispering.  

Despite Beltrami’s known knack for creating dread-inducing horror scores, he hadn’t seen a horror movie until he started working on Scream in 1996. Scream was a film created on a lower budget given that Miramax had recently opened the Dimension branch of the company and was trying to build up credibility. 

Anyone who’s listened to the latest podcast episode of Savage Movie Night on Scream will know that Wes Craven’s assistant Julie Plec believed in Kevin Williamson’s script and convinced Craven to give it a chance. She was also instrumental in bringing Beltrami onto the project.  

To create Craven’s vision, Plec was on the hunt for composers who were "new", "fresh", and "wonderful." It was by happenstance that Beltrami came onto her radar. Beltrami had helped work on the score for a student film at USC. Those student filmmakers were interviewed on a radio show called The Silver Screen, where they were asked about the film’s score which was prominent in the movie. Julie Plec just happened to be listening to the radio show and after hearing the score, she realized that Beltrami checked all those boxes that they needed for Scream.  

They asked Beltrami to put together a demo for consideration. Beltrami didn’t have anything that was appropriate for a horror movie, nothing from an orchestral point of view. Instead of trying to create something new orchestrally, he wrote something new leaning into stock sounds to create an eerie vibe. Craven found the demo really refreshing so they met to screen the movie together. In an interview on the Score Podcast, Beltrami said he had “no idea of what a horror movie was supposed to be.”  

When he watched the early screening with Craven on a Friday, Beltrami finally admitted to him that this was his first time watching a horror movie. To see if Beltrami was right for the job, Craven gave him a cut of the first 13-minute opening scene with Drew Barrymore and told him to bring back a score for it on Monday. Hunkering down for the weekend, he came up with what is now the iconic score used for the opening. After the score was received well during test screenings. Craven officially offered Beltrami the job. Since the first Scream, Beltrami has done the score for seven other Craven films, including Scream 2-4.  

Despite Scream being his first horror film, his work on the franchise led to him becoming the horror guy for scores, especially with Dimension Films. Outside of Scream, Beltrami has worked on many other horror film scores over the years including Mimic, The Faculty, Halloween H2O, A Quiet Place Part 1 and 2, and the Fear Street Trilogy. His work also extended beyond horror into spaces such as Snowpiercer, Free Solo, A Good Day to Die Hard, Chaos Walking, and Renfield. In 2019, he won an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special for his work on Free Solo. 

Looking at the score, what makes it so special is the instant eerie vibe it emits. Dread oozes from every track, putting listeners on edge as the characters go through the story, trying to figure out who the killer is. While he captures that dread exceptionally, he captures every scope of emotion needed for a scene. For example, take the opening scene. On the soundtrack, it’s called “The Cue from Hell.” The first couple minutes with Casey speaking with the killer has minimal score used. It uses silence to get you invested and then when the conversation diverts into unsettling territory, the score creeps in, just like Casey’s uncertainty. You don’t get more of the classic screeching violin feeling until the killer threatens to gut her like a fish after being hung up on one too many times. Beltrami put himself in the shoes of Casey when deciding how to score this 14-minute opening scene. It begins with a bit of curiosity before screeching into sinister territory with the booming drum-like dread. 

One of the other tracks that stands out from this film is “Trouble in Woodsboro” which has a haunting, operatic sound with industrial sound effects layered in the background. This one is instantly recognizable by fans. Then you have tracks like “Chasing Sidney” which feel more like the traditional, fearful music one would hear in a horror film with orchestral influences, but it feels bigger somehow, peppered with other existing sounds. Even in softer, more sentimental moments like in “Sidney Wants It” when Sid is finally ready to have sex with Billy, there’s still a haunting air about it, which I love given what it is going on while they’re consummating their relationship.  

While being able to picture what part of a scene a song from a score belongs to is expected for every successful score, it’s still worth acknowledging Beltrami’s ability to do this for the Scream score. You can tell exactly in “The Killer Stabs Billy” for example when the conversation between Sid and Billy is interrupted by the killer breaking into the room.  

We could be here all day picking apart the intricacies of each song that’s a part of the score, because there’s a lot to explore – 25 tracks to be exact! It’s thanks to a number of factors that made this score possible from Beltrami’s study under Jerry Goldsmith to his work on a student film that just happened to come on the radar of Wes Craven’s assistant to the hard work put in by Beltrami himself to put out a finished product that fit the film he was working on despite never having seen a horror film. Today, Beltrami is seen as a legend not only for horror scores, but all movie scores. He continues to craft impactful, unique scores that take an awesome film and elevates it to higher greatness. 

There’s nothing better to set the mood this time of year than a good spooky playlist, and you can’t go wrong with any track from Marco Beltrami’s score for Scream. What score’s history should we dive into next? Let us know in the comments!  

A special thanks to the following resources that helped me put this blog together... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzbrKahGLZY 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfXKEeZNvcA 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy8_9QN2uaI