Composer Paco Periago to score short film Look Inside

Hi, this is Nic Penrake with a short news item about our short film Look Inside. For any of you who have been following our journey making this film you'll know we're still in post production – and inching forward. Back in November we took a big step forward and closer to the finishing line.

October/November (2018) director Shiona Penrake and I decided we'd reached a point in post when we should bring in a composer. I suggested to Shiona that she take a crack at writing the opening cue. She plays the piano, she can write in Logic – even if she couldn’t quite crack it, hopefully the melodies she came up with would give the composer a way in.

Around the same time, we both drew up a wish list of composers whose work we liked. Top of that list was Alexander Desplat. Shiona’s a big fan of Guillermo Del Toro’s films and Desplat’s music – but we knew we’d never get a name like that on our short film, no matter how good it was. Still, as unrealistic as the exercise appeared to be, it did help us define the kind of score we wanted for the film.

Early November I was approached online by a Spanish composer called Paco Periago – I think in answer to an ad I put out on mandy.com. To me it was uncanny timing – he seemed to have a gift for the kinds of melodies Shiona and I had in mind for Look Inside. I got in touch and sent him a private link to the rough cut, along with a copy of the script. He liked the film and expressed great keenness to write the score. So once Shiona had written two versions for the opening, we asked him if he could write a cue that was close to her tracks. Both the tracks he sent back to us were faithful to Shiona’s ‘vision’ and, it has to be said, were more mature and eloquent than Shiona’s compositions. We felt we’d found our guy.

Paco lives in Madrid, Spain. He trained as a pianist and has scored numerous films over the years. Many of the films he’s worked on have been selected for international festivals, which include the International Film Festival in Moscow and the Hollywood International Moving Pictures Film Festival. His music has been nominated for ‘Best Original Soundtrack’ at Calcutta International Cult Film Festival and the Mindfield Film Festival in Los Angeles. He’s also released several studio albums, and his music is available on the mainstream platforms.

With the firs cue pretty much nailed, we’re looking forward to getting a few more to review before Christmas. If you’re curious to check out his website you can find it here.