“Nothing beats hearing live musicians, especially here in this city, which is just remarkable when it comes to the level of musicianship,” says Kris Bowers, the composer for DreamWorks Animation’s new production The Wild Robot. It’s June, and Bowers is at a converted north London church turned sound studio, recording choral tracks for the film’s soundtrack. Scenes are still being worked up in California while Chris Sanders, the director, Jeff Hermann, the producer, and Mary Blee, the editor, accompany Bowers on his London recording stop en route to the Annecy animation festival, where they’ll screen a handful of scenes to industry watchers.
On screen, a gosling is learning to fly. The odds are against him not only because he’s the runt of its nest, but because he’s an orphan – raised by a robot, Roz, who is now trying to help him into the sky to join his migrating flock. There’s a lot of improvisation involved (Roz has not been programmed for goose-flight coaching) but as take-off is achieved, the choir sing rising harmonies and the flock soar up into an indigo and violet sky and away from the robot left standing alone on her wild island, her gosling charge now successfully raised and gone. “Chris [Sanders] had wanted the feeling here of a train leaving a station: from the first note, you feel ‘this is going, we can’t stop it’,” says Bowers…