“It’s such a gamble being an artist,” says Kris Bowers on his upbringing as a pianist and composer. Bowers’ tremendously gifted ability as a musician first brought him attention in the world of popular music, recording and performing with artists such as Jay-Z and Alicia Keys by his early 20s. Bowers shifted gears in the 2010s towards film and TV scoring, crafting pitch-perfect music for a wide-ranging group of projects: from Best Picture winner Green Book, to smash hit Bridgerton, to his own co-directed, Oscar-winning short documentary The Last Repair Shop.
One of Bowers’ most recent projects, the subject of our conversation with the composer, is Chris Sanders’ animated triumph The Wild Robot. Critically acclaimed and a frontrunner for Animated Feature this awards season, The Wild Robot centers around Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), a corporate all-purpose robot who crash lands in the wilderness while being delivered across the world. Lost to society, Roz becomes a transformative force for the creatures of the forest, especially Brightbill, a short-winged bird who she fosters, teaches to fly, and ultimately gives a future to.
Bowers’ triumphant score, a symphony of soul that captures Roz’s surrogate motherhood, the beauty of the forest, and the melancholy of separation all in one, has been touted as one of the year’s best and is similarly a hot contender in the Oscars race. “I felt so trusted,” said Bowers on the process of scoring animation and collaborating with Sanders. “In live action they are, in my experience, editing until the very last minute. It can be drastic. Scenes can be cut by 45 seconds, which is a massive difference musically. Even five seconds is a pretty big difference musically.”
“They can’t really edit much once the film goes to animation,” Bowers added, having scored the film from the first storyboards, “but they were so good at getting it dialed in during the storyboard phase, that I was able to write to picture from the very beginning. Some of the cues I was writing at the start are almost the same version as the cue in the final film.” Adding to his experience on The Wild Robot was Bowers’ collaboration with Sanders. “What’s amazing about Chris is his ability to interact with me as a composer like he would an actor,” said Bowers. “He would have a conversation about how each moment is meant to feel, but not tell me what I should do musically to achieve it.”
Our full 40-minute conversation with Kris Bowers can be watched above, where we also talk about his early studying of animation as a child – including a weekend class he took under the tutelage of Butch Hartman – as well as how his experience as a new father, combined with advice from Chris Sanders, informed the honest beauty behind the iconic “Migration” piece the composer scored for The Wild Robot.
The Wild Robot is currently in theaters and available VOD.
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