August 5, 2022
Sarah Schachner’s Score to PREDATOR prequel PREY Released
Today, Hulu premiered the new film PREY, the origin story of the PREDATOR in the world of the Comanche Nation 300 years ago. This remarkable prequel makes history as Hollywood’s first franchise movie to star an all-Native American cast. Amber Midthunder stars as Naru, a skilled female warrior, fights to protect her tribe against one of the first highly-evolved Predators to land on Earth.
The music for the film has been composed by Sarah Schachner, best known for her video game work creating multiple scores for Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed. PREY is her first major studio feature film score. She came to the attention of Prey director, Dan Trachtenberg (10 CLOVERFIELD LANE), while he was playing videogames during pre-production. For the score, Sarah created and recorded the bulk of the instruments herself, but also worked but also worked with world-renown Taos Pueblo musician, Robert Mirabal, to create authentic Native American sounds to complement the film’s setting in the world of the Comanche Nation 300 years ago.
As PREY is the origin story of the Predator from the 1987-2018 films, a key ingredient to Trachtenberg’s musical vision was to incorporate Native American instruments and sounds into the score. Prey producer, Jhane Myers, who is Comanche, introduced Robert Mirabal (world-renown Taos Pueblo musician best known for his Native America flutes which have been displayed I the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of the American Indian) into the mix. Working remotely, Sarah and Robert recorded a collection of authentic Native American woodwinds, percussion and vocables (special type of Native American vocalization/singing) which were then woven into the score.
“We’re making this underdog story,” Trachtenberg told Yahoo.com in an interview. “Not only was I just like, ‘Oh, it’d be great to see a movie that has a Native American protagonist. We never see that.’ But even more so for this movie we’re making a story about someone who is not really seen. And trying to say, ‘I deserve to be doing what I’m doing.’ And have that also be about people that in media and pop culture are often relegated to playing the sidekick or the villain, never the hero.”
Sarah Schachner’s PREY soundtrack has been released by 20th Century Studios and is now available digitally from these sources.
