Based on the book series by Richelle Mead and then transformed into a full-fledged series by Julie Plec & Marguerite Macintyre Vampire Academy is an entire universe of characters and rules. It was quite an undertaking to craft all the themes and sonic palette all while learning the rules and backstories of everything.

The major direction was to push forward and modernize the entire approach to shows like this. Luckily we’d done an entire string quartet meets hip-hop project for fun during the pandemic and that gave us some great starting material. A few pieces from the project were the first placeholders in episode 1 and we branched out from there.

We wrote full suites for a few relationships in the show: Lissa & Rose’s friendship, Lissa & Christian, Mia & Meredith, Sonya & Mikhail and of course Dmitri & Rose. It took a few tries before we found the right sound for each but once it clicked we were off to the races. There were also themes created for story elements in the series and many of those develop more and more as the story progresses.