by Tomasz Ludward
IFMCA member Tomasz Ludward recently interviewed composer Stuart Hancock about his score for the animated feature film Kensuke’s Kingdom.
TL: It’s not your first animation, but I believe the biggest so far. What is it about this kind of film that stands out for you?
SH: Kensuke’s Kingdom is definitely the highest profile animated film I’ve had the pleasure to compose for. My previous credits on animations include the 2016 TV special We’re Going On A Bear Hunt (also for Lupus Films), and the brilliant 2011 short comedy The Last Belle, directed by Kensuke’s Neil Boyle. I’ve also written the music for many animated commercials (for directors including Will Studd at Aardman, Uli Meyer, Hayley Morris, Laurie Rowan, and Kirk and Neil separately alongside Sylvain Chomet), and way back in the early 2000s, I scored 52 episodes of the children’s BBC animation The Lampies.
I think I thrive with composing for animation because it can have all the drama and emotion of a live action film – but it’s MORE! Everything is heightened; skillful animated story-telling, especially when it’s 2D and hand-drawn like Kensuke’s Kingdom, can make you feel more strongly for characters and their situations, and it can effortlessly have a cross-generational and cross-cultural appeal. This and the feel of a traditional adventure suit me very snugly as a composer of thematic scores where I can develop a symphonic soundtrack!
How helpful was Michael Morpurgo’s book in shaping the emotional tone of the score?
I wasn’t familiar with Sir Michael’s book beforehand, but read it around the time directors Neil and Kirk approached me to compose music for a two-minute test animation for the film, back in 2016. The book is beautiful and full of rich detail and, whilst its gentle adventure narrative is very much preserved in the film and in the music, it has to be said that the film is as much the vision of the directors and the adapted screenplay of Frank Cottrell-Boyce as it is the original book.
With Michael Morpurgo’s blessing, Frank artfully streamlined things, influencing Kirk and Neil’s decision to treat much of the movie like a silent one: the main characters Kensuke and the boy Michael cannot speak a word of each other’s language, meaning that there is space for the music and sound design to help do a lot of the heavy lifting of the story-telling and give potency to the drama and emotion. That’s another reason why I loved writing this score – it’s a real gift for any composer to be presented with a stunning animation that has that amount of audio breathing space to coherently develop musical themes into a symphonic whole.
Sir Michael was hugely supportive throughout the production of the film, and I’m delighted to say he loves my music. He’s on record as saying Kensuke’s Kingdom is his favourite adaptation of any of his books to date, and that includes War Horse (from that celebrated director/composer duo, Spielberg and Williams!)
You got involved with the project pretty early, right from the storyboard stage. Seeing how the film came together, how did that impact the score?
I officially came onboard in late 2020, at which point there was a working animatic of the movie: basically, storyboard drawings stitched together into a rough but fully-structured edit with ‘temp’ voices, sound effects and music. It was amazing to be in at such an early stage, and is a testament to how crucial the directors considered the music score to be. The first scene I composed for – at their request – was a music-led one. The young castaway Michael hears mysterious singing and follows its sound through the jungle to find Kensuke summoning the orangutans. This specially-composed vocal chant needed to sound anthemic but also exotic and mystical, and it was the first theme to crack, because we see Kensuke’s (and later Michael’s) animated lips singing it, with the actors required to perform it vocally, and it would recur in several later scenes.
The movie remained structurally pretty faithful to this early animatic, so I was able to compose with a fair bit of confidence knowing that I could create a coherent thematic score to match. I worked on the score on and off for about two years – a luxurious amount of time! – refining and moulding the soundworld, working in close collaboration with the directors and Richard Overall (the editor) as each new version was sent to me. New bits of line animation would be added into subsequent cuts, and eventually colour too – it was such a joy to witness these talented animators bring this story beautifully to life.
When you were writing themes for Kensuke’s Kingdom, what caught your attention the most? Was it the island, the characters, or the relationships?
All of the above! The story presents its audience with hugely powerful emotions and well- defined characters, played out in landscapes (and seascapes) that are exquisite to look at – it was a really generous feast for me to get my composing teeth into.
The vocal chant theme (mentioned above) worked very nicely for its intended purpose, but I used it in various guises across the score and it became synonymous with the island itself: for example, it is heard subliminally in the strings and choir when Michael is first washed up on the beach: Track 8 – Tide Coming In. It captures that threat and utter isolation that Michael feels during his first days in this alien world. In contrast, variations of this motif later in the score (often with its augmented ‘blue’ note straightened out) capture wonder and resolution and more positive emotions.
Similarly, the ‘Peggy-Sue’ theme aimed to deliver an immediate sense of family and adventure to the opening of the movie, with its noble fanfare-like horn theme over a nautical-feeling 6-8 accompaniment. But once Michael’s life is turned on its head, the theme recurs only in very simple incarnations, sometimes just delicate solo piano, to impart a sense of nostalgia for the family he has lost, such as in Track 10 – Michael Defeated and the opening of Track 23 – The Hunt.
Kensuke’s Kingdom explores many themes – survival, resilience, the beauty of nature, the impact of war – but with the central relationship of the movie, the directors are telling a love story: both Michael and Kensuke have lost their families and it’s about the bond, companionship, and trust that grows between these two strangers in their forced isolation. And so it needed a love theme in the music. We initially tried a weaving together of melodies already written for the two characters, but it felt contrived. What really hit home was a simple new theme, again played on the solo piano. It’s first heard when Michael and Kensuke finally learn and speak each other’s name. This is a springboard for them to begin shaping their future together – Track 21 – Kensuke and Michael – and it’s a theme that’s often at the forefront throughout the remainder of the music score.
Did you ever think about going down a different path, or was a lush orchestral score always what you had in mind?
It was 100% always going to be a lush orchestral score. I had no complaints on that front – it suited me and my style to a tee! The directors, myself, and most of the heads-of-department on the film are of an age to have grown up immersed in the fabulous adventure movies of the 1980s – the Indiana Jones and Star Wars trilogies and E.T., for example – all of which have that type of score (more often than not penned by the maestro John Williams.)
Kensuke’s Kingdom is itself an adventure movie in that traditional mould (the story’s even set in the late 1980s), using elegant hand-drawn 2D animation that harks back to the pre-CGI age, and the temp score on the animatic was comprised of clips from 1980s John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri, along with a smattering of newer composers (like Desplat’s score for the penultimate Harry Potter movie, and a couple of cues from my own music for We’re Going On A Bear Hunt and the fantasy drama series Atlantis.) Some of the temp cues were challenging for me to match and better at the midi demo stage, as they were so perfectly chosen by Neil, Kirk and editor Richard, but I’m very pleased to have managed it (a good example of which is the rip-roaring Travelogue montage which quickly became one of my personal favourite cues!)
Tell us about bringing that choral arrangement of Japanese traditional music to life, with the 8-year-old Japanese girl singer and choir.
This is definitely a stand-out sequence from the film: it’s Kensuke’s tragic back-story and the animation transforms into a delicate brush-and-ink Japanese style. We needed to go to a new place with the music for it. After trying a number of things, I suggested we seek out a folk-song and make it a showpiece for the choir (the brilliant Holst Singers, who, up to this point in the score, had performed mostly wordless textures.) Finding the traditional Japanese song ‘Sakura Sakura’ was crucial – it’s very simple with a haunting, melancholic melody, and the lyrics refer to cherry blossoms (a happy coincidence with the visuals there.)
And finding 8-year-old Kotoko Wertheim in London, the daughter of a friend of one of the choir members, was the icing on the cake. She was able to deliver a beautiful solo innocence to the song, accompanied at the start by choir harmonies. The Holst Singers engaged the services of a Japanese dialect coach to assist with an authentic pronunciation of the lyrics, and their voices take over as the war-time scenes build up. I developed the Sakura melody with jagged rhythms and atonal techniques into a fully-charged choral arrangement which, I think, really captures the drama and horror of what we’re seeing. Kotoko’s solo voice rejoins at the end, vocalising the ‘island’ chant theme as we see the depiction of Kensuke’s own arrival on the island. Here’s the whole sequence: Track 20 – Nagasaki.
And while we’re on the subject, how does having such well-known voices like Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy and Sally Hawkins affect the music? Does it at all?
Cillian and Sally inject real warmth into their roles as Michael’s parents and, undoubtedly, add star quality to the cast – but they don’t particularly have a bearing on the music (their parts are more or less completed in the first 15 minutes of the film.)
On the other hand, Ken Watanabe (Kensuke) and Aaron MacGregor (Michael) were pivotal, as they perform the chant theme. Before finalising the composition of it, I listened to Ken’s singing in previously released albums (including the 2015 Broadway production of The King and I) – which allowed me to establish the pitch and range of his voice and set the tune in a suitable key. Similarly, I phoned into one of Aaron’s dialogue recording sessions (in early 2021 when we were still under some Covid restrictions) and was able to get him singing back to me so that I could get a sense of his range and pitch too. He’s an excellent singer, and had already played the part of Gavroche in the touring part of Les Misérables; he’s definitely an acting/singing talent to look out for in the future. And also – he’s a Scot with a distinct Edinburgh accent, which you wouldn’t realise from his very natural “RP” performance in Kensuke’s Kingdom!
It was a huge pleasure to vocally direct and record with both Aaron and Ken in the summer of 2022 – Aaron, just in time before his voice broke! And Ken remotely from Tokyo. Ken was hugely complementary about my music score, and a true gent to work with. The final poignant vocal iteration of the chant theme is a transformative duet between the two characters – Track 28 – Healing.
Handling every part of the music production – composition, orchestration, music editing, mixing, budget – must’ve been a lot to juggle at once. Can you tell us about this experience?
To be honest, I was pretty comfortable handling all the creative aspects of the music production of Kensuke’s Kingdom. I tend to view orchestration on an equal footing with composition: it’s obviously crucial on a score like this, and it’s something I really enjoy anyway and am reluctant to delegate. And music editing – again, I enjoy the craft of sizing up the best takes and making seamless edits and building up the music sequences prior to mixing. All of this was possible as I had the luxury of a good long working period on the movie (about two years, on and off.) And when you get to work on a movie you love as much as this one, you’re more than happy to pour your all into it! As for mixing, I worked with Adam Smyth at audio company String and Tins for the 5.1 mix, and he brought a new pair of ears and a vast new set of technical skills to the process to help finish it off.
Budget…well, that’s an entirely different matter! I had to work with a package deal equivalent to less than 1% of the overall budget to produce the music from start to finish, and personally earn whatever was left over – on what was essentially already a low budget movie. The goal (which I think I achieved) was to make this score sound far more expensive than it actually was! It was extremely challenging, and meant taking some tough decisions – the most significant of which was accepting the obligation to take the orchestra recording out of the UK. We had two huge recording days in Bratislava which were very demanding, but the recorded material was good, and I’m delighted with the overall result, both within the film and with Mikael Carlsson’s mastering and release of the soundtrack album on MovieScore Media – thank you Mikael! In an ideal world, I would have conducted the orchestra myself and kept things in the UK. My ambition is to one day conduct the whole score in concert live-to-picture, and I am in early talks about doing so.
By far the biggest challenge for Kensuke’s Kingdom, however, is right now. It’s a gentle, beguiling film that does not have a lavish promotional budget to shout loudly like the big studio animated films do. It’s won considerable recognition with a number of awards, including a triple whammy at the British Animation Awards in March (Best Music, Best Writing, Best Feature Film), the Grand Prize at the New York International Children’s Film Festival, and a number of other awards for the music score (including Best Feature Film Composition at the recent Music+Sound Awards), but lacking the budget for promotional campaigning means that sadly Kensuke’s Kingdom is unlikely to gain traction at the biggest end-of-season awards on merit alone.
But then again, awards aren’t everything! It’s a movie we’re all deeply proud to have made, and it’s had a lot of love from audiences of all ages who have managed to catch it at the cinema. And now that it’s being picked up on the streaming services (including Amazon Prime Video in the UK), if it continues to have a life for years to come and continues to be enjoyed by a wide audience, then we know we’ll have done a good job!
Any upcoming projects that we can look forward to?
Yes, I’m attached to a couple of feature films which will hopefully be green-lit in the new year. One is an adaptation of a Stephen Fry novel and is a sort of espionage comedy-thriller, and the other is set in war-time Wales with a lovely script based on a true story. I also recently completed the music for a really beautiful, poignant short film called Largo. It’s about a Syrian refugee boy who is making a new life with a widowed British woman (played brilliantly by Tamsin Greig). My score is by turns gentle and dramatic, and I was lucky enough to record material for it with the virtuoso Syrian oud-player, Rihab Azar. Largo is produced by Oscar- winning Slick Films, and it will premiere at festivals in 2025.
Stuart Hancock’s soundtrack for Kensuke’s Kingdom is available on CD and digitally from MovieScore Media.
For more info on Stuart Hancock and his work: http://www.stuarthancock.com
For more info on Kensuke’s Kingdom: https://www.kensukeskingdom.com
