Justin Melland
Award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist Justin Melland works primarily in the world of film and television, creating refreshingly inventive scores at his studio The Eleventh Laboratory, in Los Angeles, California. Justin is a classically trained composer, conductor and a soloist on Piano, Bass Saxophone, Contrabass Clarinet, and Guitarviol. He is also a pioneering synthesist, creating bespoke electronic textures for his rich and compelling scores. Recent film works include the Sean Penn-directed feature length Ukrainian war documentary, Superpower; The Anthrax Attacks directed by Dan Krauss; Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food (Netflix); Unknown: Killer Robots (Netflix); Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme (Neon); and Joe Berlinger’s 2025 documentary series Conversations With a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes (Netflix).
Justin has enjoyed working with many highly respected, award-winning directors, with projects including the Oscar-nominated HBO Documentary The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club in 2006, and the Academy Award-nominated Netflix short documentary Extremis in 2016. He has also worked alongside Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis as well as longtime collaborator Dan Krauss, scoring their film 5B (World Premiere Cannes, 2019), and Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney scoring his National Geographic series Parched along with its companion feature Water and Power. The Melland-scored film In Football We Trust won an Emmy Award in 2017.
Television works include the Netflix phenomenon Conversations With a Killer from two-time Emmy Award-winning director Joe Berlinger, as well as the four-part Netflix Berlinger-produced series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich the STARZ Original Series Wrong Man, The Innocence Files created by Oscar nominee Liz Garbus (Story Syndicate) and Oscar winner Alex Gibney (Jigsaw), Netflix Original series Sons of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness for Radical Media with Sara Enright and Joshua Zeman, The Murdochs: Empire of Influence, How to Change Your Mind (Netflix – Jigsaw), The Murders Before the Marathon, and The Pike County Murders: A Family Massacre.
The Washington Post called out his score for The Kill Team by Oscar-nominated director Dan Krauss as “a brilliantly spare and evocative soundtrack.” The Hollywood Reporter also wrote of his score for Showtime's Dark Net: “..And the antiseptic visuals, coupled with the droning score by Justin Melland, suggest Laura Poitras' Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour with a slightly pulpier edge.” The UK Film Review writes of Justin's score for Mosquito: “The cherry on top of this intuitive approach to visual storytelling is the transcendent score that blends the diegetic with the fabricated.”