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Cold justice began life nine years ago on TNT, but has been on Oxygen since 2017, where it is about to begin its seventh season and 100th episode.
Even more remarkably, the work done by the show’s team of investigators — now consisting of prosecutor Kelly Sigler and detectives Steve Spingola, Abby Abondandolo and Terry Hook — has resulted in 21 convictions and 55 arrests, according to Oxygen.
So much of true crime is just digging into old cases to pump out an hour of television without caring how it affects the victims, the suspects, or anyone else. No Cold justice.
Cold justiceThe 100th episode will be a two-parter (Oxygen, Saturday at 8), exploring the 2007 murder of a college student — a case Oxygen previously announced had been resolved by the show’s crew.
Minot, North Dakota Police Chief John Klug said The Minute Daily News explained how the show helped lead to an arrest:
“We have tried to actively investigate Anita’s case over the past few years and finally, with the help of Cold Justice, we have been able to move forward and regain focus. Thanks to the resources, logistics, planning and experts they were able to provide, we were able to obtain an arrest warrant.”
These resources are possible because this is a TV show, and TV shows should be entertaining and engaging for viewers.
Cold justice it does this through all elements, from the cast (which has changed over the years) to the soundtrack.
Robert ToTerras is the show’s longtime composer. It has also scored on Netflix Sugar fever and many other reality TV shows, plus writing music for more than 50 commercials and feature film songs. I spoke to him about his career last year and about Cold justice in particular.
ToTeras told me he’s “always been a musician,” taking piano lessons at age three. “I was one of those kids who was in love with music and television at the same time, which for many parents seemed like no future at all,” he said. After college, he worked as a singer/songwriter, selling his own music and touring.
“Then I moved to L.A. and kind of stumbled upon it,” he said. “First I was an assistant, which is kind of the usual route. But I ended up getting fired because there wasn’t enough work for the composer I was working for.”
They were on good terms and kept in touch, and ToTeras was constantly sending music to the composer. One day the composer said to him: “There is a performance that I cannot do. Would you like to do it? And I will give your information to the producer. It was the TeenNick series produced by Marty Noxon in 2010 Gigantic.
The music producer for Gigantic later connected when she was working on Bravo’s cooking competition Around the world in 80 platesproduced by Top boss producers Magical Elves.
“I was really interested and I liked it. I love the process of writing for reality,” ToTeras told me. “You have no idea what the picture is. You write a large library of different kinds of things that can happen. I loved it, it was just great. It was so creative in a different way that I fell in love with doing without a script.”
While some composers struggle with creating music for television shows without knowing how that score will be used, ToTeras welcomes the challenge.
“I don’t find frustration with this process at all,” he said, “because that’s how it’s supposed to happen. They edit like crazy. If you were writing the picture, you would be writing the picture on the same show, every week, while also rating the other shows. That would be crazy. When you’re doing a script, there’s usually one round of notes—unless there’s a real problem—and then you’re on to the next episode. You couldn’t do that in reality because it’s something that’s constantly evolving. It’s a different animal, but it’s a beautiful animal.
“There’s no musical situation I don’t love. I know it sounds weird,” he laughed. “I don’t have a problem switching to another thing that’s fully collaborative or working in this really weird way where you’re just building a library.”
“Because number one at the end, I just make music and I love it. There is nothing I would rather be doing on this earth at any time of the day,” he added.
How the music of Cold Justice was created
“I got this show because I read about it in the trade and called someone I know who worked on this production,” he told me. His contact hadn’t even heard of it yet since it hadn’t been sold to a network, but ToTeras wasn’t deterred.
“I said I know exactly what this show is going to sound like because there was a breakdown of what the show was going to be.” He asked his contact, “Can I just write 10 lines and give them to you?” and they recommended that they be used in presenting a representation in networks.
It worked: “They did that, and so there’s never been another composer associated with that show,” he said. “I’m really proud of that show because it was a really specific sound that I came up with right away when I read [about it]. Most of them don’t happen like that. I call it ‘tension’.”
To create the specific tension, he started by watching footage.
“The first thing they do is go visit the victim’s family and find out about the person they’re going to get justice for, and oh my! When I first saw it I was like, that’s not a moment I’m trying to build. You tell the tragic story of a real person. I just knew it had to be authentic,” he said.
Working on a show that pays attention to the victims’ stories and the effect on their loved ones, and is also not exploitative – as much true crime can be – was important.
“When you’re talking about the real people who have had these things happen to them and you’re talking about them or their families, you want that [music] to introduce as much as possible without knowing them personally,” he said. “I thought about it a lot; I spent a lot of time. I wrote music and threw it in the trash, wrote more music and threw it in the trash, until I really tried to capture that feeling.”
“It was really a pleasure to do it and an honor. Most TV shows don’t really help people – TV is great, I’ve dedicated my life to it,” ToTeras said. “But most TV shows don’t actually help people in the real world, and I happen to work for one that does. This is an amazing thing.
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