PENDLETON — Composer Chris Thomas collects sounds.

Recently, while visiting friends in Portland, he closed a bathroom window at the home and marveled at the “howling, ungodly, echoey” noise it made.

“It sounded like it came from a cavern miles deep,” Thomas said. “I spent several minutes with my phone opening and closing the window, just collecting the sounds because it was glorious.”

Thomas inserts such sounds into music he creates for movies, television and theme parks. The Pendleton native, who now lives in Bend, recently scored the soundtrack for a 90-minute horror movie called “Don’t Look Back,” which opened in theaters on Oct. 16.

Thomas loves to usher moviegoers from emotion to emotion, from lighthearted humor to edge-of-the-seat anticipation, relief, terror, dread or niggling uncertainty. “Don’t Look Back” follows a young woman who, along with several other people, witnesses a murder. When eyewitnesses start dying mysteriously, she fears for her life, uncertain whether the attacker is human or supernatural.

Thomas, 38, prospected sounds from inside some grand pianos for the movie.

“I really felt like the insides of a piano would be a good common thread for the score,” he said. “I opened up a few grand pianos and just hammered strings and dropped things inside of them. If you listen for pianos, you’ll notice a lot of twangy, stringy sounds.”

He hired a couple of singers about the same age as Kourtney Bell, who plays the main character, to add to his soundtrack.

“One singer recorded the melodic parts,” Thomas said. “The other I turned into an electronic instrument to make noises like howling sighs that float around the background of the score.”

The musical whiz kid has amassed a wide-ranging resume. One of his scores, for a documentary called “Woman Rebel,” was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2010. In 2011, he won Best Film & TV Music at the eWorld Music Awards and won the Gold Medal Prize from the Park City Film Music Festival. In 2019, he composed the five-movement “Malheur Symphony” to celebrate the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after being commissioned by the Central Oregon Symphony Association. He worked as orchestrator and conductor for shows, such as “CSI:NY” and “Lost,” and composed commercial music for Samsung, Coca Cola and Chevron.

Each year, theme parks and events, such as the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride, Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal, Nightmare New York City and Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor, commission Thomas to write music. He also releases an annual album of the previous year’s spooky theme park music. The latest album, “Hush,” contains 34 tracks with names like “Poltergeist in the Parlor,” “Rave Massacre,” “Industrial-Grade Murder Clowns,” “Slaughterhouse Maze” and “Lost in the Swamp.”

He also plays the cello and a variety of other instruments, including the Balinese gamelan, which he uses sometimes for sound effects and mostly in his orchestral music.

Thomas loves all of it, but writing for films is what first drew him to composing as a boy in Pendleton. He’s quick to acknowledge, however, that film scoring isn’t for everyone. Unlike other types of composing, the composer must map out every millisecond of music.

“You go through this process of tempo and meter mapping,” he said. “Downbeats in music will literally hit an exact frame, like the 17th frame in a second that has 24-30 frames in it. It’s largely technical. You spend more time tempo and meter mapping than you do writing the music.”

Thomas regularly communicates with the filmmaker so he or she can see how the music weaves through a scene. He uses an elaborate color-coded spreadsheet to track his progress. Eventually, he turns mockups into actual sheet music. He books a series of recording sessions for soloists, string orchestras and solo instrumentals, such as flutes. Thomas often conducts during the sessions.

These days, the composer works mostly from the Bend home he shares with wife Brigitte. During filming of “Don’t Look Back” in spring of 2019, he spent time on set in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, getting to know director Jeffery Reddick and the actors. He began composing as soon as the movie went into post-production. Often he escaped to a river trail near his home where he does his best thinking.

Currently, Thomas is about to launch his “pandemic project,” a full-year online class on film scoring that he just finished filming. He is also working on another movie soundtrack, which he wouldn’t talk about just yet.

Thomas said he embraces his uber-active existence and work life.

“I’m just so grateful. What’s not to like about doing this?” he said. “All these things have accumulated into one ongoing crazy career of variety. Now that’s what I live for.”