Nissan Zangilevitch is consumed with music. Whether he is composing for a film or just listening in the car, he’ll admit to being obsessed beyond the point of most people. Life is about pursuing one’s passion; being able to share that with another is a welcome bonus so, when Joe Shirley invited Nissan aboard the music department for the film Killer Heat, Nissan immediately accepted. Neither of them knew that it would catapult to the number one spot on Amazon Prime Video immediately upon release, the two were simply creating music as they ‘d always done. To the benefit of the film and viewers, the score to Killer Heat elicited such tension and authenticity that it became known as a character all its own. While the film certainly got an additional bump in interest thanks to Multiple Primetime Emmy Award–Winner Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead role, it earned abundant praise from critics on top of popularity in the aforementioned ranking among Amazon’s top viewed offerings.
The storyline of Killer Heat is classic suspense and detective centered mystery. Nick Bali (Gordon-Levitt) travels to Crete where his employer, the sister-in-law of a recently deceased wealthy shipping magnate named Leo, feels there are enough inconsistencies to warrant an investigation. Leo has a twin brother named Elias and his affluent family has ample secrets to ignite the spark of suspicion in Nick as he experiences the beauty of Crete in a lens of deception. The score of Killer Heat pulls the audience into the beauty of this Greek island but hints at a distorted aura of danger that is never quite overt. It is the looming unseen character in this film.
Joe Shirley travelled to the actual Greek Island where the film is set and recorded a variety of musicians playing traditional Greek instruments. Handing these over to Zangilevitch, Nissan began the task of chopping up these long recording sessions into smaller soundbites and loops that were then used to write the music for the movie. While some of these sounds remained authentic to the original recordings, others were completely morphed into unrecognizable loops. This is heard throughout the movie in various pulses which Nissan made by processing recordings of Greek instruments like the bouzouki, diavlos, laouto, and many others. The sonic version of a skewed perspective that is both familiar and not truly recognizable, these sounds expound on Nick Bali’s experience in his investigation.
Nissan notes that the creative process working alongside Joe Shirley on Killer Heat was immensely gratifying for him. As the two perused the music charts prior to the recording sessions, the emotional impact of the music became more clear. Mr. Zangilevitch comments, “When it came to writing music for this film, Joe would sometimes write core themes and then hand them off to me. It was an awesome creative challenge: my job was to develop them in different ways and figure out how to weave them into various parts of the movie. This wasn’t just about picking instruments; it was really about getting into the emotional arc of each scene. Sometimes, that meant ‘producing them up,’ by taking a simple piano idea and blowing it up into a massive orchestral piece or a buzzing synth-based track for a high-energy moment. Other times, the goal was to make the theme ‘super delicate’, stripping it down to just a few gentle notes or a soft texture to underscore a really tender or vulnerable scene. The trick was always to keep that essential ‘Greek touch’ – whether it was through specific melodies, cool ethnic instruments, or just a certain feeling that made the music perfectly match the film’s unique setting and story. It was a constant balancing act, making sure the themes grew with the story while always sounding like they belonged.”
There are many veiled and covert elements that lead to Killer Heat’s aura of suspense. It’s the slow and gradual reveal, made through the astute discernment of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, that makes this film such a captivating experience. Nissan declares that this mirrors his own feelings stating, “I feel that a really gratifying experience I’ve had during my career is finding different tidbits of sounds that I’ve made during production of a project in the final product. For example- all the samples and loops I processed and transformed for Killer Heat, which ended up sounding completely different to the original recordings of the Greek instruments. Even though no one else would notice while watching the film- I really enjoy noticing all the little musical easter eggs I scattered throughout the movie, knowing how much time and effort I put into creating and experimenting with them.”
Writer : Basil Thomson
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