Vik Sharma is the composer of Fighting With My Family an upcoming movie from Stephen Merchant and Produced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson about a wrestling family and two siblings who dream of becoming professional wrestlers.
Fighting With My Family might be Vik’s first foray into scripted feature film scoring, however, the musician and composer is no stranger to creating soundtracks. Vik’s extensive resume includes The Undateables, Hoff the Record and Hello, Ladies to name a few.
PopAxiom spoke with Vik about his career making music for television and the jump from aliens to wrestling.
Opening Act
Fighting With My Family centers around a close-knit family which isn’t much different from Vik’s own life “My family was very musical. My grandfather in India was a classically trained musician. My father too and my mother works in music and the arts.”
Vik travels a little deeper into his musical DNA “You’re not really taught Indian classical music, you just sort of learned it orally and by being shown. So, I received no formal training.”
As kids will often do “I got into rock and roll … Picked up a guitar and taught myself to play. I’d play along to people like Keith Richards, Jimmy Hendrix, Neil Young, stuff like that.”
Vik joined bands, most notably one called Joi which was signed to Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records for a time. Joi brought the next chapter of Vik’s life “A filmmaker knew the band and asked me if I’d like to score his first documentary. I’ve been plugging away doing TV stuff.”
Out Of This World
One of Vik’s earliest gigs is a fun guilty pleasure — UFO documentaries. Vik worked on four episodes of Britain’s Closest Encounters “I got some recordings from pilots and conversations that took place over the telephone of people reporting UFOs. I incorporated that static and dialogue into the score. It was a lot of fun.”
Vik shares a not-so-serious behind-the-scenes moment “My original pitch was ‘let’s do dub-reggae. You want spacey? Let’s go there, man. But the Producers talked me down off of that cliff.”
Some could argue that David Hasselhoff is out-of-this-world and Vik also scored Hoff the Record. However, he never met the man himself “I would have loved to do a collaboration.”
About Fighting With My Family
Vik’s filmography includes composing for the series An Idiot Abroad. That’s where he met Stephen Merchant (An Idiot Abroad, Hello, Ladies), the director of Fighting With My Family. Vik appeared on Merchant’s podcast as a guest talking music. Then, one day, they were at a pub together watching football, the non-American kind, when Stephen brought up a new project “Stephen sent me the script, and it was laugh-out-loud funny, and it was feel-good, lots of heart, really good dialogue and imaginatively laid out.”
You don’t really think of Stephen Merchant and wrestling, but Vik thinks “… Stephen saw something in the character of Paige that resonated with him. He thought there was a lot of potential there. This sort of rags to riches story.”
What’s the soundtrack to Fighting With My Family going to sound like? “It had to be a kind of rock score. Stephen wanted the guitar to lead. We did a collaborative playlist on Spotify of what we might want in there.”
Expect the film’s score to be absolutely rock since that playlist of inspiration included the likes of Metallica, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, metal, death metal, and so much more “Motley Crew opens the movie.”
Wrapping Up
With so much content out there it means there’s a lot of stuff to love. Who’s composing work does Vik look forward to hearing? “So many. Johnny Greenwood, the guitarist from Radiohead who did You Were Never Really Here. Amazing stuff.”
What’s next for, Vik? “I’m just letting’ the royalties roll in! No, I’m kidding. I’m actually working on a solo album using this 3D recording technology. I’m recording outdoor areas like forests and beaches then writing ambient pieces to go with it. It’s a duet between Vik Sharma and nature.”
Fighting With My Family is in theaters now!
Thanks to Vik Sharma and Impact24 PR for making this interview possible.
