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One of the biggest horror supernatural masterpieces of 2021 is the Netflix limited series Midnight Mass which focuses on an isolated island community that experiences a series of miraculous events stemming from the arrival of a mysterious priest. As the series progresses, we discover how the towns’ faith starts to unravel into chaos to its tragic end. The Newton Brothers in Andy Grush and Taylor Newton Stewart have worked on several projects across film and television including the last two recent Avengers films, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, and The Haunting of Hill House. The duo spoke with Bleeding Cool about their history with series creator Mike Flanagan & capturing the voices of Crockett Island.
Bleeding Cool: How did you get involved with “Midnight Mass”?
Andy Grush: We got involved on ‘Midnight Mass’ through Mike Flanagan and [EP] Trevor Macy. It was an intrepid project and Mike had actually mentioned this project to us many years ago. He had the idea in his head and I think it had been a long time coming. We’ve worked with Mike on several projects prior and developed a great working relationship. In addition, Mike and I were both raised in the Catholic Church way back when, so we both had a good understanding of hymns and all of the things that come with that. So initially when we were working on ‘Doctor Sleep’ and he kind of mentioned it to us, there was some reference to specific hymns that are in ‘Midnight Mass’, and he and I both had those memorized, obviously from singing them thousands of times. So it was a good sort of springboard into the project from there.”
BC: Can you break down ‘Midnight Mass’ from its humble beginning before its descent into chaos?
Taylor Newton Stewart: Originally. we wanted it to be mostly the traditional hymns, and they were going to sort of interweave from the hymns to the score, then we kind of ended up writing a more traditional score that would play with the tension and what was happening with the characters. We didn’t really want to hint too much at what was coming, which made our job pretty much easier. That was the approach, to kind of take it as you’re seeing it, as you’re taking it in, experiencing it as a viewer, rather than trying to hint too much about what’s going to come [laughs].
BC: How do you distinguish this project from your other horror projects?
Grush: I went up to Canada where it was filmed, I was able to see sort of what Mike was looking for in terms of like what the island was and who the people were. That played directly into what the score sort of needed to be. I would come home after shooting during the day or night and sort of download to Taylor like, ‘Hey, here’s what’s happening in the town here.’ Like there was so much detail given to even like when it’s raining, like what kind of umbrellas they would use, right? Like something I wouldn’t even think of as just like, ‘Oh, an umbrella is an umbrella.’ But no, these are people in a fishing village who are used to working in the rain. So like they would have a certain kind of umbrella as opposed to like, me in Los Angeles who would be like, ‘It’s raining. What is that?’ I’d have some huge umbrella, like the rain was going to melt my skin or something. When it came to the score, that same sort of idea applied and we needed to sort of create the town as it would sound instrumentally, which for us kind of meant it should be imperfect as all of life is, and it should be sort of very…not feel calculated, but on our end be calculated in the moves that we made.
So there might be a single sound, but if you just put single sounds everywhere, it starts to just feel like a cacophony of nonsense. So we were very specific to, ‘Hey, we’re going to have we’re going to play a short cello note multiple times with lots of articulations and those 70 notes in the span of like 30 seconds.’ That’s like a piece of music, which sounds real heady and stupid, but also it’s very effective. We’re not looking to try and make concert music. We’re just trying to create the tone of the island. A lot of that ended up being very successful and there were a lot of things we tried that we ended up scrapping. But for the most part, a lot of those initial ideas ended up being in the show.
BC: What would you say would be the biggest challenge in capturing the essence and the score of ‘Midnight Mass?’
Grush: I think probably the most challenging part of it was getting the singing right from the standpoint of performance. I don’t want to say it’s really easy to sound beautiful, it is to produce music. So it sounds polished and something you would like to listen to on your way home from work and that’s one thing. In this show, the hymns needed to sound humble and needed to have. You needed as a listener, not to feel like you’re listening to the greatest singer ever, but more that you’re listening to impassioned people sing about their beliefs and how their spirituality plays into their lives. That was the trickiest part. Once we got it down with the singers, we were in good working order and we would use the word ‘humble’ and we would feel bad because Taylor and I would spec out all the tracks and layer ourselves and say, ‘This is what we’re looking for.’ Then we get the tracks back in that sound amazing. It’d be like, ‘This is insane. This sounds so good,’ but we’d have to go back to them and say, ‘We can’t quite use this like this. We need everyone to sort of dial it back’ and be like, ‘Don’t sing bad, but sing like you’re not concerned about your voice, but you’re concerned about your family and your spirituality’ and humbly.
Stewart: But then you lost your voice.
Grush: At one point, I lost my voice pretty badly, because I was doing a lot of throaty singing, like breathy to sound sort of quiet. That’s really bad for your voice to sing like that, but it all got done, so it was all fine.
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