Raffertie breaks down 'The Substance' score: Electronic chaos meets body horror

Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more perfect? Director Coralie Fargeat turned this idea into one of the most WTF films of 2024 in The Substance, which sees fading celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), take a black-market drug that spawns a younger, better version of herself: Sue (played by Margaret Qualley). The only rule? You have to share: exactly one week in one body, then one week in the other. If the balance is not respected, there will be consequences. It wouldn’t have been any fun if the director hadn’t explored the latter scenario, resulting in an explosive finale so gory and unhinged that it will stay with you longer than it takes to jet-wash an elevator full of blood out of a TV studio.

“I was really taken aback by the film,” nods British composer and producer, Benjamin Stefanski – aka – Raffertie, speaking to Headliner from his home in London just before the Oscars, where the film was up for Best Picture. 

“You could feel the rage coming out of the screen. The ending is such a big moment; it's such an audio and visual assault. It's loud and chaotic, and there's such an audience interaction with what goes on on the screen with the groans and the gasps. 

"I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who's not seen it, but I got to the end of the film and came out the other side like, ‘What have I just seen?’”

Spoiler alert: There will be blood. Lots of blood. And (Oscar and BAFTA-winning) prosthetics. 

Taking the idea that you are your own worst enemy to the absolute extreme (how about a brutal fight to the death with your older / younger self?), The Substance is a be-careful-what-you-wish-for fable that hammers home the objectification of women and the impossible pressures they face to maintain youth and beauty, and themes of body horror, toxic beauty culture, self-worth (and hatred) and ageism, topped off with some good old-fashioned misogyny. Raffertie immediately knew he had to score this film:

“I was completely blown away by the whole thing,” he says. “I absolutely loved it. I'm always looking for things that make me feel something or that move me in some way, and you can't not be moved by The Substance – whether that’s because you're a bit disgusted by some of the things you're seeing, or whether you are brought into the feelings of despair and of being left behind,” he considers.

Joining the project when the film was in a post-production stage meant that Raffertie only had a few months to write a score that aligned with Fargeat’s vision. 

Following conversations with the director, Raffertie came up with an electronic masterpiece that mirrored the complex duality of Elisabeth and Sue. From evocative, nostalgic tones to cutting-edge, contemporary beats, the score became the frenzied backdrop to their intertwined stories.

“One of the first things that Coralie and I spoke about was the violence of the film,” Raffertie shares. “There's the external violence – the things that happen to the character on an external level – but also, really importantly, the internal violence – all the horrible things that we say to ourselves. That is made real in the film: it's a complete personification of this inner voice.”

Indeed, despite the film showing – in gory detail – an adult woman being born from the back of her older self (and then stitching herself up) and a large chicken bone being pulled from a belly button, one of the hardest scenes to watch is perhaps the most relatable. 

Having got dressed up for a date, Sparkle gives herself a quick once-over in the mirror before she leaves and hates what she sees. In an act of self-hatred, she violently smudges her makeup all over her face, and later is called, “Gross, old, fat, disgusting!” by her younger self.

“The music had to underline that feeling,” nods Raffertie. “That was one of the key components of the film, and I think that was one of the things that drew Coralie to my music. And although as a man, this is not my experience, as with all great storytelling, Coralie lets us into that perspective, and you come away understanding a lot more about it and understanding the gravity of those feelings.

“In some of the tracks that I sent her, Coralie said she felt this raw, violent aspect to the music, which she thought could really work with what was going on in the film, but juxtaposed against this more sensitive, emotional aspect,” he adds. 

“She was interested in that crossover point and how we could utilise that in terms of Elisabeth Sparkle's character and Sue's character. So we talked a lot about the violence, the mythology that's created within the film, the references to the Faustian-style pact, and Dorian Gray.”

The Substance portrays the female body as a site of both beauty and horror. Rather than let the body horror genre influence his approach to the music, Raffertie moved away from what might be expected with a mostly electronic score, focusing in on the different themes for Sparkle and Sue.

“For Elisabeth, it was about trying to find a more organic world, something that represented her natural beauty and her inner turmoil,” he says. 

“And then with Sue, it was more about embodying a feeling of what it is to be youthful, but there's this synthetic, unreal element, or rather, a hyper-real version of Sue, because she's supposed to be this idea of perfection.”

As soon as Sparkle’s younger self, Sue comes to life, she is revealed as an eternally perky, AI-crafted fembot. A dynamic revolving camera captures every flawless angle of her newly perfected body, all set to the pulse of a pounding electronic score.

Next, she’s leading a dance class – all over-sexualised moves and gratuitous close-ups of her leotard-clad body, while the relentless electronic score pounds away, creating a dizzying, almost manic energy. All signs point to hurtling towards something you can never keep up with. Was that a nod towards scrambling to keep up with impossible beauty standards?

“Yeah, for sure,” answers Raffertie. “Sue is quite uncompromising as a character as well, so there needed to be this drive and focus to the music. The first time we hear The Substance theme is when we see Sue in a leotard, and there's this panning shot around her where you're taking in her whole body, so you need to feel the seduction of her and of ‘the substance’ itself. 

"We tried to capture that in that pulsating, minimal, techno-leaning part of the score. There are these very distinct sound worlds which become more and more blurred together, more jagged, and more violent as we progress towards Monstro Elisasu [a grotesque clone of Sue, who is a clone of Elisabeth Sparkle – are you following?] and the eventual outcome of the abuse of ‘the substance’, so it becomes ever more angular, more aggressive and more grating until she is effectively torn apart. 

"But that all leads to her self-acceptance at the end, and hopefully, you feel that she's finally found some peace and that she's finally learned to love herself on some level.”

Even if she’s just a face on the pavement?

“Yeah, exactly,” Raffertie laughs.

Same Same, But Different

“You. Are. One. You can't escape from yourself” is repeated throughout The Substance. Raffertie explains how that was reflected in a common sonic bond between themes for Sue and Sparkle:

“We talked a lot about Hollywood nostalgia because Elisabeth is this Oscar-winning actress, so we referenced Bernard Herrmann’s scores from Vertigo and Citizen Kane. 

"We wanted to create this emotional, nostalgic moment, and that ties the characters together in a way, because when Sue takes ‘the substance’ for the final time to try and make a newer, more beautiful version of herself again, we cut to a scene where she’s putting on her makeup, and the music from Vertigo is used.

“That tied the characters together, although you don't necessarily see that until the end of the film. They are supposed to be these quite distinct entities because they can't respect the balance. That's the thing: they are one, but they can’t respect the balance. Well, Elisabeth can't respect the balance, because Sue is still her. It becomes a bit complicated to talk about,” he laughs.

The Substance theme that Rafferie alluded to is heard throughout the film whenever ‘the substance’ is mentioned or is being activated. Reinforcing the fact that they cannot escape from themselves, it's a jarring sound that wails like a warning before hurtling into a thumping electronic score.

“This is a combination of two cues,” Raffertie explains. “Coralie picked this ‘mwhaaa’ sound out of some ideas I sent her and said, ‘This is the sound of ‘the substance’.’ In one of the other ideas I sent her, there was this kick and a bassline, and that bassline gradually opened out to create something more expansive. We put them together, and it just worked. It captured the essence of what we were looking for. It doesn't always happen like that,” he points out.

“Sometimes you're stumbling around for a couple of months before you hit on a sound or an idea, but those two things came together. We put it to picture with Sue, and it just worked. The hit of the snare lined up perfectly with the cut. It was quite fortuitous, and that started to underpin a lot of the rest of the score, and we ran with it.”

The Substance’s distinctly squishy sound design ties in closely with the score; sometimes it’s unclear if it's the score you’re hearing, a clever piece of sound design, or both. If you suffer from Misophonia, you might want to give this film a miss. 

In an early scene, Sparkle’s producer, Harvey (played repulsively by Dennis Quaid), fires her on her birthday for being too old – “Renewal is inevitable. And at 50... well... it stops,” – while shovelling shrimp into his mouth, filmed in revolting close-ups to a backdrop of squelchy sound effects. 

When Sparkle first takes ‘the substance’ and her body rips itself apart, and then later when Sue repeatedly smashes her older counterpart’s face into a mirror, at times the score and sound design – fittingly – seem to become one.

“Dennis Quaid eating all of those shrimps!” Raffertie shudders – “The sound design is incredible there. It plays with your feelings of disgust. It's also quite violent in terms of what he's saying and how he's saying it to Elisabeth. It's powerful. 

"The bit that I never got used to watching was where her knee seizes up, and then she's trying to release it,” he admits. “For me, that was one of the worst points because you know what's going to happen. It’s the anticipation – it's almost like someone snapping a ruler. I know lots of people say the cooking scene is really difficult to watch too,” he says, bringing it back to the merging of the score and sound design:

“The film was fantastically mixed, and I like the fact that there is this crossover between the sound design and the score. There are a couple of moments where people have asked me if it’s the score or the sound design they’re hearing, and I like that it gets muddled up and you're not quite sure. The fight scene is quite operatic,” he uses as an example.

“I mean, the whole end of the film is quite operatic in many ways – you want to feel the culmination of the cost of this Faustian pact that she's embarked on. It looks like a fight between two people, but really it's just someone fighting themselves, so there is emotion that creeps in there, as well as darkness and violence. 

"It came together in a jigsaw kind of way as the editing is quite chaotic to emphasise the violence, which can be quite difficult to pace musically. It became quite disorientating within the film, which I think, particularly for a film like this, really adds to the atmosphere and experience.

“It's so manic, and there's such a raw emotion that is happening on screen,” he furthers. “The actors are giving it their all. In some ways, it was about scoring it in quite a classical, ‘action’ way in the sense of marking out certain beats within that whole sequence. 

"It was very much about knowing where to push and pull because it starts big, and that doesn't leave you anywhere to go, so you have to know where to drop out to silence within that broader cue.

We worked closely with the sound designers in order to understand what they were doing with that scene, and Coralie was instrumental in overseeing all of that and helping to make that work.”

Despite not winning the most coveted prize at the Oscars (although the film did take home the gong for Best Makeup and Hairstyling), The Substance was a real shot in the arm (or perhaps, more aptly, spine) for the horror film genre in the context of a Best Picture nod. 

Horror has notoriously been snubbed. In its history, only a handful of horror films have been nominated for Best Picture. The Substance joined previous nominees The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), The Sixth Sense (1999), Black Swan (2010) and Get Out (2017), with 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs being the only horror film to win.

Despite the film not taking home Best Picture this year, Raffertie couldn’t be prouder of the way The Substance has been received. 

“It is an extraordinary film. I always wonder whether branding the film as a horror film was accurate,” he considers. “I think in some ways it's more of a drama with horror elements. Obviously, it does have very horrific things that happen within it, but I feel like it's more in that drama/thriller zone, which then moves into using horror tropes as a way of telling the story. 

"I hope people can see it for what it is because it's very deserving of awards. It was fantastic to see Demi Moore winning the Best Actress award at the Golden Globes. Her performance was absolutely incredible, as was Margaret’s. Coralie is an extraordinary storyteller, and she's an extraordinary mind. She's a really important voice within cinema, generally. 

"I think we all know what The Substance is, and we don't necessarily need awards to know that it's good. The way it's been received is testament to that."

Headliner was disappointed not to see a Best Score nomination at the Oscars or the BAFTAs. Raffertie weighs in as to whether the big award shows aren’t as accepting of more electronic, experimental scores.

“I don't know,” he considers. “The process leading up to some of these awards has opened my eyes a little bit as to what that actually entails. It does involve a lot of schmoozing, going to certain events, talking to people, people knowing who you are, and I suppose, to a certain extent, liking you. 

"But are they accepting of electronic scores? People like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross [composers of 2024’s Challengers] have shown that electronic scores can win awards. 

"I'm incredibly proud of what we achieved with the film, and I think it's a very good score. I think it's one of my best, and I'm really glad that people have received it so positively.”

In the spirit of being our own worst enemies, we’ve all seen Jurassic Park, but if it opened today, there’s no doubt that it would be booked up until the next ice age. Which begs the question: If ‘the substance’ existed, would people scuttle down to their own designated locker to use it?

“I've heard a few people say that they would take it,” smiles Raffertie. “The Substance, in many ways, is a cautionary tale, but it also examines something true within human nature, or at least true for right now in terms of how we consume things and look at ourselves. I think that despite the film, there probably would still be some people that would take ‘the substance’,” he shrugs.

The technology behind the score

Horror scores often see composers utilise unconventional techniques or sounds. Raffertie breaks down his essential bits of kit for The Substance:

‘The substance’ sound was created using a Make Noise Strega:

It's a semi-modular bit of equipment that’s essentially just a single oscillator, and it runs into an old karaoke delay. As you make the delay longer, it becomes lower quality, so you get this dusty, grainy quality to the sound, but most importantly, you can feed the synth back into itself. 

‘The substance’ sound is essentially the oscillator running through, and then it opens up. When I feed the gain back into itself, it alters the pitch slightly, and that creates a slight bend in the sound, but it also creates that big, distorted ‘mwhaaa’ sound. I discovered it through playing and experimenting, and there are a few variations of it that I recorded within that piece.

Considering how small and relatively simple it is, this little synth has been incredibly useful across lots of different projects. It was very useful in The Substance for various sound design bits and pieces, and the delay creates lots of interesting rhythmic artefacts. There's a lot of mileage in it.

An Elektron Analog Rytm Mk2 was used for most of the drum sounds:

You can hear a lot of the drum sounds in there, and a lot of it is pretty unprocessed. It's an amazing-sounding machine. The thing I liked about it was how you can morph it from a drum machine into a sound design instrument. 

It's got this quick performance knob, which you turn and you can assign to a few different elements, so you can move from something that sounds quite rhythmical into something that sounds quite ambient and sound-scapey. 

For this film, it was really useful when we needed to move between those moments of phoneticism and tension and ambience. There are various moments where the Analog Rytm is doing the heavy lifting within the score. It was a very useful machine. 

I only got it just before I started working on The Substance, so it was relatively new. It's a nice thing to work with and explore.

The Pittsburgh Modular Taiga contributed to the bass and sound design:

It's a mixture of West Coast and East Coast architecture. So for anyone that doesn't know, there's the Bob Moog school of thought, which is subtractive synthesis, and then there's the Don Bucha school of thought, which is additive synthesis – and this combines both approaches. 

It's got a ladder filter, which is very Moog-esque. It's also got wave shapers, which are very Bucha-esque, and it was great at making those very low, subby sounds but then opening up into something more complex and a bit harsher, for want of a better word. 

It felt a bit more processed and a bit more synthetic, which is very useful for Sue's character. Sometimes, I was using it without even any sound coming out of it, just using the oscillators as essentially modulators. It was the centre of a few different things, including the Chase Bliss CXM-1978, which has an expression port on it that you can assign to the various faders.

The modulator was coming out of Taiga, then going into the Chase Bliss. I was using it on the pre-delay, which moves up and down, and you get all these pitch variances. It basically moves the cutoff of the filter so that you get this sense of moving space, so it becomes larger or smaller. 

The combination of those things created quite an interesting sound design palette. The Taiga was used for its sound but also as a modulator to control other things and to expand the sonic capabilities of some of the other things in the studio.

The Chase Bliss CXM-1978 was used for virtually all reverbs on the score and was also useful for sound design:

I bought it as a reverb unit, so from that point of view, naturally, I was expecting it to be good at reverbs, but when I hooked it up to the to the Taiga, I was pleasantly surprised about how it sounded in terms of all the strange little movements it was creating within the score – these were things that I hadn't anticipated or imagined. 

So it was very useful and it worked nicely. It created this very odd, slightly unsettling space in which the score lived. 

There are moments where it was just used as a reverb, and it sounds great, but I found it a bit more exciting when it gave it this lifelike quality, which, considering that someone in the film has hatched out of someone else, I think you want to feel this idea of something being alive, and something being tangible. That movement within the reverb unit helped to create something special.

Korg Plugin Instruments:

These were used for big hits, particularly within the more dramatic scenes between Elizabeth and Sue. There's a cue that comes in when Elisabeth is dragging Sue through the apartment and she's just about to inject her with the termination kit, and you hear this big sound. 

It's a big hit followed by a rhythmic thing, and that came from the Korg, albeit I processed it through some things. But essentially, that main sound came from there. Although I have a lot of analogue synths and various things that I use, I do like using various software synths just because it's quite convenient. 

Particularly, I tend to find those things work their way into projects if I'm ever working on stuff while I'm moving around, and they end up being very useful.

A Neve 1073 Preamp:

Everything goes through it, so it touches everything that I do in one way or another. 

It's great because there's a step between the different gain settings where you get a slightly different quality – everything from a very distorted transformer sound to something a bit cleaner. It's great for everything. 

The Neve 1073 has been fantastic – it’s a real workhorse.

Plugins:

I use FabFilter on virtually everything. In terms of compressors and day-to-day EQs, I pretty much just go between the Pro-Q 4 and the Pro-C 2. 

They’re very flexible in terms of their sound quality. For most projects, I try to keep my plugin count to a minimum just for the purely practical reasons of not wanting to overload my computer. But most channels will feature some form of Pro-Q 4 and Pro-C 2; they're pretty much my go-to.

I've really got into some of the UAD plugins recently since they've gone native. I use those for adding a bit of colour – if you can have such a thing in the digital world. Some of them sound really nice.

I like the Valhalla plugins, too. So, they've got a great chorus plugin, and their reverbs are famous for being very good. I could go on forever. iZotope is another great one for cleaning things up.

The Substance image credits: Courtesy of MUBI