Much like Battle for Honor, this film was a Aaron's senior year english project, meant to be a "deleted scene" for the classic movie The Birds. For those familiar with the film, it followed the story of the minor character Dan's untimely demise.
The most enjoyable part about scoring Death of Dan was the fact that it was a silent film, which meant the story could be told through the music. This of course also made the film more challenging to write for.
Whereas the visuals were a tribute to Hitchcock, the music I composed paid homage to Danny Elfman, one of my biggest musical influences. If you've heard any of his film scores it's hard to miss.
Oddly enough, Bernard Hermann, the composer of nearly all of Hitchcock's films, is one of Elfman's primary influences, so it sort of came full circle.
“The score Ian composed for Death of Dan was brilliant. It could have mused Mozart.”
— Aaron Johnson, Director
Death of Dan was also the first film in which I had an opportunity to see the footage before creating the score; which really helped the writing process. Out of all of the projects, the film ended up getting the "award" for best music, which was kind of cool.
All in all, I had a great time working on this soundtrack. I never pass up the opportunity to write dark music.
