Heart Eyes’ Jay Wadley Had A Blast Crafting A Slasher Rom-Com Score

Composer Jay Wadley reveals that he had a lot of fun scoring Heart Eyes and had never worked on a Slasher Rom-Com before.

Heart Eyes is a unique film that blends elements of both slasher and romantic comedy genres, something that composer Jay Wadley admits he had never done before. He has a long-standing relationship with director Josh Ruben so he was thrilled to come on board.

In this interview, he discusses the challenges of balancing the two genres, referencing classic films like Friday the 13th and Sleepless in Seattle for inspiration, claiming it was important to commit fully to both genres to make it work.

Composer Jay Wadley Talks Scoring Heart Eyes

Tessa Smith: Heart Eyes is the perfect combination of Slasher and Romantic Comedy, which I did not think would be possible.

Jay Wadley: Totally, totally, yeah. It’s such a delicate balance to strike. It risks not being good at either one of the things. I think the way that Josh [Ruben] was able to handle such an interesting mash up with such a deft hand was was pretty brilliant.

Tessa Smith: How did you get involved in the project?

Jay Wadley: Josh and I have been friends for 13 or 14 years, something like that. It wasn’t long after I moved to New York that I met Josh on the set of a project. We were working on a music project for Allison Williams, and he was producing the shoot, and I was the composer on it, and did some arrangements of fun musical numbers for her and and then we became good friends, and we’ve been friends ever since. We collaborated a lot when he was back at College Humor. This is our first time, though, working on a feature together, which has been super exciting.

Tessa Smith: What was that collaboration like?

Jay Wadley: It’s awesome. Josh is such a student of these genres and the craft and so he had a whole bunch of really great scores to listen to and classic stuff to reference. I got to read the script and dive in with brainstorming on references. He really wanted something that felt like an homage to the classic 80s, 90s slashers and rom-coms. Something that had a sense of that nostalgia, but still was modern, and felt up to date with what’s going on in those genres now.

Tessa Smith: What challenges did you discover when crafting this score?

Jay Wadley: It’s really just about making sure that you’re fully committed to it. If you were pulling punches on those scenes, then people would know they’re making a joke of it. But it is supposed to be very, very seriously committed to both things at all times. I think just the timing and the way that works, and the scenes that are built in and the interactions are what really make it come alive, and the humor of it all. It stops and turns on a dime.

Tessa Smith: Were there any specific films you looked at?

Jay Wadley: Josh really loves Friday the 13th. I went back and watched a number of films just to remind myself. But it was everything from Friday 13th, to Poltergeist, to Halloween, and then thinking about how to bring that into a modern thing. Trying to find a balance where you get that classic thematic nature to an iconic slasher character, and so that there’s something that feels tangible and representative of that character and classic in that orchestral way, but trying to incorporate production that really brings it to the fore, makes it really aggressive as well, and not to just concert hall stuff. I played with a lot of that, and then, for Josh, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail.

Tessa Smith: Mason Gooding is also in Scream, so did you feel that you had to stay away from a Scream-esque score?

Jay Wadley: I think mine might lean a little bit more classic than the Scream stuff specifically, like in the way the stalker themes work. I very much treated the orchestra, like an orchestra, and the orchestral percussion, in a way, although, highly produced, just not groove based, I guess, if you will. I think the writing is a bit different for the strings and things like that. I’d like to think of myself a little bit more to maybe the Benjamin Wallfisch and then the classics, like Herman. But I did a lot of listening back too. What I like to do is listen to a lot of the concert composers, classical composers that a lot of the people that are working in film are also influenced by, because that’s who I was influenced by. I came up in classical music. So, all of the crazy string writing from Krzysztof Penderecki and those techniques are ones that horror composers have adopted these days.

Tessa Smith: Is there one sequence for you that was the hardest to nail down?

Jay Wadley: The one that was the hardest to nail was to make sure that the love theme felt super authentic, and didn’t read as pushing too hard or trying to do too much heavy lifting for the characters, because they’re already charming. They were convincing in their performances. So that’s a delicate balance. It took me a couple tries to make sure I found the the exact right tone for the love theme at the end. So that was that one was a challenge, just to find that delicate balance. And then, honestly, most of the other stuff came pretty quick. I was kind of surprised. Josh and I were just really on the same page from my early demos with the way that I was using strings, and the way that I was dealing with the stalker stuff. Once we identified what Heart Eyes’ little motif was going to be, then we could just take that and seed it everywhere, and play it slow and play it in every instrument, and really have some fun with how we manipulated that little motif.

Heart Eyes is in theaters now.

NEXT: Heart Eyes Review: The Perfect Blend Of Slasher & Rom-Com

About Heart Eyes

For the past several years, the “Heart Eyes Killer” has wreaked havoc on Valentine’s Day by stalking and murdering romantic couples. This Valentine’s Day, no couple is safe…

Heart Eyes is in theaters now.