Ten Songs to Remember

The following are some of the original songs that were featured in animated and live-action/ animation hybrid movies of the past year:

• “Changes” (Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, written by Nitin Sawhney), performed by Kara Marni

• “I’ll Promise You” (Peter Rabbit, written by Ezra Koenig), performed by James Corden

• “Let It Lie” (Smallfoot, written by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick), performed by Common

• “A Place Called Slaughter Race” (Ralph Breaks the Internet, written by Phil Johnston, Tom MacDougall and Alan Menken), performed by Gal Gadot and Sarah Silverman

• “The Place Where Lost Things Go” (Mary Poppins Returns, written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman), performed by Emily Blunt

• “Stronger Than I Ever Was” (Sherlock Gnomes, written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin), performed by Mary J. Blige

• “Sunflower” (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, written by Swae Lee and Post Malone), performed by Swae Lee and Post Malone

• “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” (Mary Poppins Returns, written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman), performed by Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda

• “Wonderful Life” (Smallfoot, written by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick), performed by Zendaya

• “Zero” (Ralph Breaks the Internet, written by Imagine Dragons), performed by Imagine Dragons

Pemberton says that three elements combined to create the hip-hop flavored score: a standard eighty-piece orchestra, electronics and a scratch turntable. “For a lot of this score we did something very complicated and ambitious,” he says.“We recorded a mix of elements — anything from synth to full orchestra — and then did the modern equivalent of outputting them onto vinyl, and re-scratching them into the mix. Then we would edit and remix the track again until we had something I was happy with.” To create a driving percussive beat, Pemberton even scratched the sound of an aerosol can being sprayed.

Magical Sounds of Japan

For the leading indie contender, Fox Searchlight Pictures’ Isle of Dogs, the musical goal was to anchor the sound of the film in the music of Japan, where it is set (a dystopian version of Japan, anyway). “Wes Anderson contacted me a couple years ago and said he had this fantasy of doing a Japanese story where we would use some Japanese instruments,” says Academy Award winner Alexandre Desplat, whose score for Anderson’s first stop-motion animation venture, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2010), was Oscar nominated. “We tried to create a magic imagery of Japan that we fantasize sound-wise.” At the heart of the score were taiko drums. “There’s an energy, a strength to taikos,” he says, “and it’s a real adventure for the little boy [the film’s protagonist Atari], so the music had to be much stronger than Mr. Fox.” Desplat has already been nominated for a 2019 Golden Globe for his Isle of Dogs score.

Desplat adds that he strives to employ mu- sicians playing real instruments, as opposed to digital or synthesized music, at all times. “Even though there are sometimes electronic elements they are used as instruments for sounds that no real instrument can produce, I never use fake instruments,” he says. “I like to conduct because I like to be with the players, to be a musician in front of them and spend time with them.”

Ironically, for this year’s anime contender — Studio Chizu and GKIDS’ Mirai, set in the reality of Japan (albeit with a fanciful story) — composer Masakatsu Takagi initially turned to Latin American music for inspiration! “In the beginning I prepared very different music, a more Brazilian feeling,” Takagi says, “but [director Mamoru Hosoda] preferred the musical style of Wolf Children [2012]. Originally, I approached the project with a botanical atmosphere, with birds singing and animals howling, but Ho- soda-san moved in a new direction that was more family oriented. He wanted to show his own four-year-old son’s imagination and his own family’s daily life with some realism, so he asked me not to make the music too elaborate.”

Ultimately, Takagi keyed music not simply to the on-screen action and presentation of the characters, but also the hidden metaphor of a sequence. “For the scene in which a junior high school girl shows up in a botanical garden, I thought it was expressing the boundless and ripening future hidden inside her, a premonition of growing up, so the score shows that kind of feeling — like being immersed in nature,” he says, adding that the employment of Renaissance instruments such as the lute and harpsichord provided some scenes with “a more noble feeling.”

Songs for Sasquatch

Warner Animation Group and Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Smallfoot is one of this year’s few American animated films not to have a presold franchise pedigree, making it something of a dark horse. That said, its small feet left big footprints at the box office, which never hurts during award season (just ask DreamWorks, which pulled off a surprise nomination last year for The Boss Baby). Composer Heitor Pereira says that in creating the score he “pushed the threshold of harmony [by using] some odd harmonies and dissonances.” He credits director Karey Kirkpatrick, who also wrote songs for the film with his brother Wayne, for allowing him to experiment. “Only later on, when I heard the whole score, I thought, ‘Oh, my god, I can’t believe they allowed me to do that!’” Pereira says.

Given the film’s Himalayan setting, Pereira included such Chinese instruments as the erhu and also used choral passages. Even more striking were moments when the music simply stops to let the elements take over. “The wind and those Himalayan mountains were part of the sonic landscape, and at times I would say, ‘Hey, let’s not forget about the geography.’ In many places we decided the elements would be the orchestra.” Working around the film’s dramatic sound effects, on the other hand, proved more of a task. “The challenge is to make the music be heard within the sound effects,” Pereira notes. “I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a duel between the music and the effects, and be sure that the music didn’t get in the way of the dialogue.”

Interestingly, globalism seems to have taken over animation scoring this year. Pereira is Brazilian, Desplat is French, Jackman and Pemberton are British, and Takagi is Japanese. Only Giacchino was born in the U.S.A. Maybe that, more than anything, proves that, like animation, music is a universal language. ◆

Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced Jan. 22.

“I wanted to take a fresh approach. Brad [Bird] and I knew we were going to use the main theme of course, but I still wanted it to have a different vibe while it stayed in the same vein and character.” Composer Michael Giacchino, Incredibles 2