DOSY — The sound of fear

Overview

Fear is rarely loud. It lives in breath, in hesitation, in the moments just before impact.

DOSY film confronts the viewer with the gruesomeness of sexual offenders. Created by Publicis Groupe ME and The Good People, and directed by Tahaab Rais, the film demanded a sonic approach that did not aestheticise sexual violence—but instead made the audience sit inside its emotional weight of it.

Our task was to design a score that disturbs without spectacle, and communicates fear in its most primal form.

The Challenge

Traditional cinematic scoring risks creating emotional distance—allowing the audience to observe rather than feel. This film needed the opposite.

The music had to:

• Build tension without relying on orchestral drama
  
• Avoid melodic comfort or narrative cues
  
• Mirror the animalistic psychology of an eve teaser.
  
• Leave a residue of discomfort that outlasts the film
  

Silence was as important as sound. Every sonic decision had to feel inevitable.

Creative Direction

We treated fear as a biological response, not an emotion.

Instead of music that describes fear, we designed sound that behaves like it—irregular, suffocating, and inescapable. The score is structured around breathing patterns, animal panting/barking escalating in intensity and fragmentation as the film progresses.

Key ideas:

• Breath as rhythm — replacing traditional percussion
  
• Repetition — mirroring panic and loss of control
  
• Minimal harmonic movement & deep souds — to prevent emotional release
  

A recurring motif appears throughout the film, never fully resolving, reinforcing the sense of helplessness.

Sonic Language & Palette

The soundscape was built from deliberately uncomfortable sources:

• Human breaths & panting – vulnerability, proximity, panic
  
• Animal breath textures – primal instinct, loss of civility
  
• Analog synths – low-frequency dread and unease
  
• Haunting female vocal – a fragile human presence within chaos
  

These elements were processed to blur the line between music and sound design—so the audience is never sure where one ends and the other begins.

The motif culminates in a helpless cry—not as a climax, but as an emotional rupture. A sound that refuses resolution and stays with the viewer long after the screen cuts to black.

Execution

• Close integration with the edit to shape tension through pacing
  
• Precise control of dynamics to let silence speak as loudly as sound
  
• Minimalist structure to avoid narrative hand-holding
  
• Final mix designed to feel uncomfortably intimate on headphones and large screens alike
  

Nothing in the score exists to comfort the audience.

Result

The final soundscape breathes, tightens, and collapses—mirroring the lived experience of fear.

Rather than scoring the violence itself, the music amplifies its psychological aftermath. The film leaves viewers unsettled, empathetic, and unable to disengage—long after the final frame.