Posted in: Max, TV | Tagged: Juan Cortés Arango, The Head

The Head Composer on Maintaining Dark Themes in Season 3 & More

Juan Cortés Arango (Funny Birds) spoke with Bleeding Cool about taking over composing the Max psychological thriller series The Head.

It may seem intimidating at first to take over the series score of The Head in the middle of its run as composer for its third and final season, but Juan Cortés Arango already had a leg up working under Federico Jusid, who was established in the first two seasons. Cortés has been active in Hollywood for over 17 years since his debut in the short Daily Bread. He's since tackled various roles in stock music, music/score programmer, music editor, score mixer, and composer in over 75 projects.

The Head is a Spanish-Japanese and English-language psychological thriller from creators David Troncoso and David and Alex Pastor, and showrunner Jorge Dorado as a joint venture from HBO Asia and Hulu Japan, which follows the mystery surrounding the massacre of the winter research team at the South Pole with some unaccounted for and the summer commander Johan Berg (Alexandre Willaume) and his team to investigate what happened to the winter team led by biologist Arthur Wilde (John Lynch). With the third and final season released on Max, Cortés spoke to Bleeding Cool about taking the mantle of composer from Jusid in season three, the challenges of making the final season distinct from the previous two, and working with Dordaro.

The Head: How Juan Cortés Transitioned to Composer for Season Three & Maintained Themes.

How did you get involved in 'The Head,' and what intrigued you about the show?

I worked with another composer, Federico Jusid, who was the composer for 'The Head' for seasons one and two. It's through him that to get in touch with the show. When season three came, I worked on this show for five to six years, and I was already familiar with the music, and Federico gave me this shot. He's like, "I think it would be natural if you take over from now on and even can put me on board as the composer for this pilot."

How did you want to distinguish season three from the previous seasons, or was it important to maintain consistency?

It's more with consistency, if anything, he was bringing everything all together. The show – it's like an Agatha Christie set up where characters are killing each other. The third season is where things start to tie up. It was important for me first that things make sense, narrative-wise, and people can understand where this was going. Some of that thematic material had, I finished anew, but some of it had to come from reprising what happened in the first season. We finally worked that out because it was important that it felt like it was important even though it was new material. There are new characters, settings, landscapes, and a set of rules per se for these episodes. It was important to also reprise where all this came from honestly. so much. It wasn't so much about it being special, but it was more important that it was clear.

What's it like working with Alex and David [Pastor] as creatives and helping to bring their vision alive?

Honestly, we work mostly with the director or showrunner, Jorge Dorado. He's the captain of our ship per se. At the very beginning, when [Alex and David] came up with the story itself, they communicated a lot with Jorge, who has been the same showrunner for the past three seasons. They have like a bunch of beats behind them, they're great creatively and Jorge was able to narrow down his vision.

He's a unique director to work with. I've worked with him on another show called 'Feria [The Darkest Light]' on Netflix, and he was precise in his language, genre-wise, like horror, and trying to stay consistent with that language. A lot of his notes are very musical. Sometimes working in film, you make decisions that are not very musical. To elaborate on the contrary, you must compromise some of the musicality to respond to a narrative event. Jorge has a good instinct and eye to set things.

How does your work on the show compare to your other work? Has it been consistent, or is it a little derivative? What were some of the biggest challenges when you first started taking on the show?

It's consistent because I've worked on the same show for the two previous seasons. On that end, it was consistent with my composer work, but it's not as consistent with my other projects since they're not in horror. I do mostly drama, and at the same time, I was working on 'The Head,' I was working on another project called 'Funny Birds' (2024), which was executive produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by these two French couple Marco La Via and Hanna Ladoul, which was a completely different universe.

Creative-wise, I had always had to be good at compartmentalizing what I was working on, so 'The Head' was like in a different universe. Maybe what's consistent is my way of working is that I recorded a lot. I recorded my instruments, like my cello and guitars. I like to work a lot with live instruments for 'The Head.' We work with this woodwind player from Vienna, Veronica, who we asked, "How many flutes do you have from duduks, Neys, to other more ethnic instruments." She had this bass flute, which was cool, and it was nice to work with her when we needed a signature sound or something different. Maybe that's what's consistent, the workflows are consistent, and we felt like an open relationship. We've known each other for many years.

All three seasons of The Head, which also stars Katharine O'Donnelly, Richard Sammel, Tomohisa Yamashita, Laura Bach, Álvaro Morte, Olivia Morris, Moe Dunford, Josefin Neldén, Hovik Keuchkerian, and Sota Fukushi is available on Max.

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