HBO Sports and Vox Media Studios have teamed up on Level Playing Field, a four-part sports documentary series featuring a range of stories that put a magnifying glass on how public policies have contributed to inequities in the sports — such as colleges making money off of student athletes while the kids get nothing — and society at large.

Lewis Rapkin

Lewis Rapkin, founder of video and music production company Oscillator Media, composed music (including the title theme) for the Level Playing Field. He was also an editor on the series.

Here, Rapkin walks us through his favorite scenes to score.

Which scene was your favorite to score in Level Playing Field?
In the “Misclassified” episode I really enjoyed the scene where the former director of the NCAA who developed the “student-athlete” classification apologizes later in his career for doing so.

Describe this scene and the significance it has to the rest of the Level Playing Field.
This scene explained how the director of the NCAA back in the 1950s developed the term “student-athlete” to avoid giving benefits or payment to athletes. Later in his career, he has an about-face where he lambasts the system as a disservice to the young athletes. It’s a really powerful moment that illustrates the nefarious nature of how the system was set up, from the person who was responsible for setting it up. It showed how intentional these decisions were and are. It also anchored a theme of the episode about how the powers creating these systems are aware of the inequalities but do it anyway in order to keep the power structure in their favor.

Which instruments, tools, or plugins did you use to create this scene?
This cue is driven by a pretty heavy bass line that I recorded on a Fender Precision bass with a Death By Audio fuzz pedal. Then there’s panning ethereal synth washes that I created with an Arp Odyssey and analog delay. Instead of percussion, I used pizzicato strings with tempo synced delays to give a pulsing rhythmic backbone that keeps the cue propelling forward.

What technical challenges did you encounter while working on this scene?
The bass line was really the melody, and it was pretty heavy, so it could only sustain for so long before it became tedious. The challenge was to make sure that the bassline came and went with the most powerful sections of the scene. It wasn’t one big build, but rather peaks with the bass and valleys with the more sound bed elements like the synth.

What was the dialogue like between you and Level Playing Field‘s director or showrunner regarding this scene?
Director Joe Posner and showrunner Mike Jacobs were both really supportive of the music for the scene once this cue dropped in. We had tried a few things and it wasn’t quite working. Somehow it was either too menacing, too techy or didn’t feel big enough. There was a lot of explainer-type music in the episode for historical breakdowns, but we wanted something with a little more emotion to it and that felt like it had large scale implications. This was the first episode we cut, so we were still experimenting with the vibe for the series as a whole. It was early on in the process, and it was one of those moments that set the tone for the rest of the episode.