Horror composer Andrew Scott Bell decided to do something that wouldbeea little different when composing the score forWinnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Courtesy ofDread Central,we’ve learned that Bell utilized a violin-turned-bee-hive for the score. According to the composer, his involvement with the film started with a simple Instagram DM.
“Back in late May a day or so before the film went massively viral, I started seeing some online chatter about a Winnie the Pooh horror movie. I remember looking it up on IMDb and finding the director Rhys Frake-Waterfield on Instagram where his story has a screenshot of a person’s comment saying something to the effect of ‘your movie is ruining our childhoods.’ His reaction was, ‘that’s what I’m trying to do, ruin everyone’s childhood,’” Bell said.
After that, Bell contacted Frake-Waterfield and got the gig. Then, as soon as he started, Bell discovered the work of luthier Tyler Thackray, who makes stringed instruments. A project that he had been working on was a be-filled violin. So Bell reached out via Instagram, asking if he could use the instrument and help remove it from the hive. To which Thackray said yes.
“I was fascinated by this person and the way he thinks about music. Specifically, he and I share a passion for destroying long-standing musical traditions and rebuilding wild and fun creations from the rubble. I have this idea about music theory, specifically that we should learn the rules so we can break them with intention. What I saw in Tyler was someone who’s breaking thing with intention. I loved it.”
Getting The Violin
“Okay, so I just had the most amazing, wild, weird, crazy, fun, experimental, interesting, wacky trip I’ve had my whole career.”
Bell documented his journey to retrieve his new bee-filled violin from Thackray in a video that was exclusively for Dread Central. In order to do so, he needed to make a two-day drive to San Francisco, where the beehive was. Bell’s good friend and manager, Mike Rosen, was accompanying him on the journey.
“Is it going to be covered in honey and bees and nasty, or is it just going to be a regular violin because the bees have ignored it and don’t like it. I’m kind of hoping that it’s as messy as possible and that I have to put tarps down in my studio to record ‘case there’s just, like, honey and beehive debris falling off while I record this music.”
Upon reaching the property, Bell and Thackray donned their protective beekeeping gear and went to retrieve the violin. The instrument was part of one of the frames of the deep brood box, the inside filled with bees and honeycomb. After that, it became a matter of adding the other pieces of the violin, the neck, the bridge, and the strings, to the instrument. Both Bell and Rosen were confident that Thackray, as a “Mad scientist genius,” would make it playable.
“The craziest thing about this beehive violin is that there’s still, like, there are still bees hatching inside of the combs and hanging out. This poor guy doesn’t look so go. So, I’m gonna give them some time in the backyard to kinda clear out on this deck here, but we still have some larvae and the bees.”
As Bell explained at the tail end of the video, he would keep releasing bees in the backyard as he did the score forWinnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. He closed the video by saying, “it was an incredible trip. I’m so thankful for Tyler Thackray for having us and letting us into his world and letting us experience that, but also letting us take it home and record music with it.” He was also thankful to Rosen and for anyone who watched the video, who were a part of this too.
