The Apocalypse, The Doll Chronicles (Original Soundtrack), like the film, is the soundtrack that never was, made manifest. Most of it was originally composed around 2014, during the original development period. A lot of the film footage was lost to dead hard drives after filming in 2015-16, and the music and album ended up in limbo. Some of it was lost and found, other pieces simply sat there. Once a lot of the footage was found and restored, Franco diligently worked on the music that would be included in this new, rebuilt, refocused version of the film. The new version was re-edited as more of a thought, a conceptual, music driven, experimental film more in line with The Doll Chronicles concept.

The story of the film follows Doll, a woman on the edge of reality, as she explores what seems like a desolate, post-apocalyptic landscape, chased by a darkness and a past trauma she must confront to find her future. While creating the original score, as I thought about the transition of this character from the apocalypse in the sky, in her trauma, in her mind, I thought of the inner screams we carry during trying times and how their wail is no different to air raid alarms, which were the perfect metaphor for her apocalypse in every sense. So I used the voice of the strings – cellos, violas, and violins – to create and overlay these wails into a musical landscape that communicated the story, the journey, but also the landscape, both beautiful and desolate. The film’s score is a mix of orchestral and experimental, ambient music to convey the different elements of her journey.

As the reworked version of the short film, restored from the limited, recovered footage, only includes three main musical pieces, I decided to rescue some of those original concepts I composed for the original version of the film and include those conceptual recordings in the album as bonus tracks. From those bonus tracks you can get a bit of an idea as to how I originally envisioned both the film and the music, and I think listeners will really enjoy them both as they are and as what they were originally meant to be, despite the fact that they would have been reworked and redone before being used in that original version of the short film.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, composing music for me is a process of exploration, full of places to visit and explore and express, and The Doll Chronicles short films really opens up that process in an interesting way. I hope everyone enjoys the music and the film, as much as I enjoyed creating it. Enjoy! 🙂