Watch 'Gone Girl' Composer Trent Reznor Explain How to Score a David Fincher Movie

The Gone Girl score, composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, is dramatically different from the music you’ll hear in most thrillers. In addition to the more conventional elements — haunting string melodies, ominous organ notes — the soundscape of Gone Girl is composed of jarring, atonal noises, some of them electronic, others as low-tech as church bells, footsteps, or a pounding heart.

In a video interview with Yahoo Movies, the Nine Inch Nails front man talks about the unique challenge of scoring a David Fincher film. “Some of it was working with the sound designer, Ren Klyce, to take room tone and the sound of a humming floor polisher and incorporate that, or tune it to be in with the score, and blur the line between music and [sound],” says Reznor, who also composed scores for Fincher’s films The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. As a musician, Reznor sees a huge difference between scoring films and making his own albums.“When I’m writing for Nine Inch Nails, I want your full attention and your ears, and I want you to pay attention to what you’re listening to,” he explains. “My work with David [Fincher] is about becoming the fabric of the film, and it’s not about noticing, necessarily. It’s about… having an emotional reaction from the combination of what you’re seeing and hearing and experiencing.” Watch Reznor’s guide to scoring a David Fincher film above.