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‘Adolescence’ Composers Aaron May & David Ridley On Using The Victim’s “Innocent, Vulnerable Voice” As The Base Of The Score

‘Adolescence’ composers Aaron May & David Ridley on using the victim’s innocent, vulnerable voice as the base of the score.

For composers Aaron May and David Ridley, it quickly became apparent that most of their job would involve tracking the emotions of each character and finding the right moments to interject pieces of the score that could support the tension. Though Katie (Emilia Holliday), the victim, only makes an on-screen appearance through CCTV footage and photos, May and Ridley decided to use her voice as a way to keep her present throughout the series. There’s a kind of supporting role that music can play in terms of helping with transitions as we move between scenes and supporting the tension, but there’s also a bit more of an impressionistic role that the score played in the series where if, for example, we wanted to really study a character and their reaction to something and almost get inside their head, the music could come forward a little bit and comment on an emotional level about what was happening on screen and in the heads of individual characters.

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