Having written music scores in the director-driven world of feature films, Vancouver-based composer Tim McCauley says his collaboration on the cbc series DaVinci’s Inquest is actually much closer to Chris Haddock, the program’s creator/executive producer/head writer than with any of the helmers.

‘Chris has a great and very clear vision about what he wants,’ McCauley says. ‘On certain elements of the show he directs me to what he wants, and in other areas I’m left on my own, and then I will review what I’ve done with [executive producers Haddock and Laszlo Barna] before we mix.’

McCauley explains he gets to view each episode of the coroner drama after the online edit, when picture is locked and conformed and credits are done. He and the sound effects people then have seven business days to turn around the program.

‘The first day we spot the show,’ he recounts. ‘We sit with the producers and the sound, dialogue and effects editors and we screen it and make notes about spotting cues and adr, and then I will go away and work on my part of things. Sometimes we have a discussion prior to spotting if there is some specific style they want to approach, but normally in tv it pretty much comes up as it goes along.’

McCauley describes some of the ‘specific styles’ the program has incorporated as tango, opera, jazz and ‘harder-edged stuff.’ He says the show’s creative minds try to incorporate different elements to help keep the overall product fresh.

‘Chris is very set upon having people be on their toes and at their best all the time,’ he comments. ‘One of the ways he sees doing that is to shake it up. On series that I’ve worked on you can get to a point of complacency. It’s not intentional complacency, but there’s a routine that happens, and when creativity comes out of routine, it can be somewhat less inspired in season five than it was in season one.’

All in the family

McCauley, whose company is called Thousand Roads Productions, is nominated for a Gemini Award this year in the category of best original music score for a program or miniseries for Trial by Fire: A North of 60 Mystery. He cites getting on board the Alliance/Alberta Filmworks North of 60 series, now produced in the tv movie format, as a turning point.

‘It changed my life in more ways than one,’ he says. ‘I moved from Toronto to Vancouver on three days’ notice. It was an amazing process, working for people who had a great vision for what they were doing and who allowed me a lot of latitude and contributed to what I did with their ideas.’

At least part of McCauley’s success can be attributed to genetics. His father, William McCauley, who passed away last year, was the music director at Toronto’s O’Keefe Centre (now the Hummingbird Centre) as well as conductor of the North York Symphony and a film composer who scored more than 300 documentaries and tv shows. Tim’s brother Matthew is a composer currently residing in Los Angeles whose credits include the features Sudden Fury and City on Fire and the tv series The Adventures of Sinbad.

‘[Matthew and I] both had the benefit of growing up in a musical and artistic environment,’ McCauley says. ‘We were afforded a great deal of exposure to people in the industry because we grew up around it. We were in recording studios from the time we were eight.’

McCauley’s first film job was at the tender age of 20 – a movie called Love, which featured nine short stories and had the participation of Liv Ullman, Joni Mitchell and Mai Zetterling. When asked why he was hired on a film that was strategically produced, written and directed exclusively by women, he merely responds, ‘I don’t know – I guess I got lucky.’

McCauley believes in understatement in dramatic scores, pointing out that his favorite composers, such as Thomas Newman (American Beauty, The Horse Whisperer), do as well.

‘The objective for my job is not to have the audience leaving the theatre humming the tune, it’s to have them leaving the theatre touched by the story,’ he says. ‘I see my role as being more about participating in storytelling.’ *