Benedict Peterson, the composer who doesn’t exist.

I was at a film premiere for one of Wild Dog’s lasted films and it was a fun time. At most film events there is a chance to mingle as the cast, crew, and fans have gathered to watch and celebrate Michael Fredianelli’s lasted work. When I was chatting, I had this one person come up to me and ask, “Have you ever met Benedict Peterson?”. I polity said no, I have not. “Oh, okay, I was seeing if anyone here had ever heard of him?” they replied. I started to inquire about who this person was. “He’s the Wild Dog’s composer, but I don’t think he actually exists.”

This caught me off guard, as the conversation took a turn I did not expect. A person who does not exist, tell me more. “I’ve been trying to meet Benedict Peterson, but at the last few premieres no one even knows who he is?’ the person mentioned as they walked off.  This got me thinking, who is Benedict Peterson, and just what sort of misunderstanding is this. As a fan of a good mystery, I just had to dive in and investigate.

Benedict Peterson's IMdb page, which are all Wild Dog Production films. 

The first thing that pops up when you google Benedict Peterson’s  is his IMdb page. Unfortunately, there is no bio or picture on the page, but you can see a list of his credits.  He has only composed music for Wild Dog films, and the last 20 of them at that. This is a little bit unusual, a composer who only composes music for one person. Most composers have a variety of credits from different films and directors they have worked on. Now, this could be possible, maybe Benedict Peterson is a close friend of Michael Fredianelli, who only chooses to work on his films.

So my search took me to social media next. On Facebook and Instagram, I could find no profiles with Benedict Peterson which had mutual friends with people I knew. The profiles where of people who had different nationalities. Continuing with the google search, there was no portfolio website of his work. Other people with a name similar to him showed up like Ben Paterson, but nothing that showed any signs of Benedict Peterson. Maybe this guy just chooses to be off of social media. It was time to inquire elsewhere.

Here you can see the music Youtube detects in the movie, Through the Ashes. 

Next, I had to rewatch some of Michael Fredianelli’s films to investigate the mystery further. Benedict Peterson usually does get a credit during the main title credit sequence in the start of the film, but something curious popped up below some of the videos on youtube. You see, on youtube there may be a section in the video’s description called “Music.” This section shows info about the music heard in the video, like song and artist names. This usually happens when videos are claimed by one of YouTube’s copyright management tools or when pulled from the Youtube audio library.

Now at first thought, these might just be musical song which contain lyrics to enhance some scenes in the movie along with the musical score. Such as the use of White Zombie’s Fast Jungle in Through the Ashes. But upon further listen of the tracks, some of the tracks are score pieces themselves, such as Voytek Pavlik’s Desert Rhythms from his Post-Apoclayptic Soundtracks album.

You can see Michael Fredianelli's preference for tracks with the name Murder in them. 

When you put everything together, we can put together the theory that Benedict Peterson is indeed a person who does not exist, but a alias for Michael Fredianelli’s use of stock music. Now using stock music to score your movie is perfectly fine, so I’m not sure why the creation of Benedict Peterson was necessary. Michael Fredianelli did not respond to a comment about Benedict Peterson. But who knows, maybe Benedict Peterson is really out there and I will meet him someday. He could just be a composer who uses stock music.