There have been some strange Oscar nurses around the music categories over the years, beginning with Erich Wolfgang Korngold not officially winning Oscar despite his point for “Anthony’s side effect” won in 1936, back when the statue did not go to the composer but to Warner Bros. Studio Music Department that hired him. Then Charlie Chaplin won for his point to “Limelight” in 1973, although the film was released in 1952 but never played in Los Angeles, which made it eligible for Oscars when it finally played LA 20 years later.
(Chaplin’s two colleague composers were both dead when they won, and Chaplin himself was a no-show.)
And now Kris Bowers can add his own wrinkle to the list of imprints in the best original score category. Bowers lives his composer but directs short films in his spare time with the productive short documents Ben Proudfoot, with the two land nominations in 2021 for “A Concerto is a Conversation” and won last year for “The Last Repair Shop.” This year’s nomination to write the score to ” The Wild Robot “gives Bowers one of the strangest one-two-bangers in the Oscar story: to win for a short one year and nominated for one point next.
Points and DOC cards? “It’s a very small niche,” Bowers said, laughing.
And by the way, that’s all Kobe Bryant’s fault, which goes back to when Bowers collaborated with the late basketball star on the 2015 documentary “Kobe Bryant’s Muse.” “We worked very close together until he went,” Bowers said. “He was such an eager, gluffy studies of filmmaking, and I observed it very close. That’s when I started getting into the idea of stories. ”
But composing was still his “day job” – and although he had gone through a distance as a child when he wanted to become a caricature cartoonist, “point films were always the goal.”
Still, the childhood fascination for animation made it sweet when he got the chance to do “The Wild Robot”, a gigantically animated epic from four times nominated Chris Sanders. “It was pretty wild,” Bowers said. “Much of the animation I used to watch when I was little had no dialogue – it was like” Tom and Jerry “and Looney songs and” stupid symphonies. “That’s when I began to realize the power of music to help tell a story.”
“And Chris believed in the opportunity to have long sequences without dialogue. There were times where he would remove dialogue when he heard the signal because he felt like much of what needed to be said emotionally said in the music, ”he added. “It definitely made me feel that the childhood version of myself was super excited and proud.”
However, the adult version of itself had to work hard, as animation can be an exhausting medium for composers. “There had to be a level of commitment to the music,” he said. “Every visual detail is so intentional and so important, and the music must work in a style where you comment on many things that happen. Every two seconds something new pops up. It was much more work, much more attention to details and definitely much more music. “
The most difficult clue to write, he noted, was the huge migration sequence when Robot Roz has to say goodbye to the young goose she has raised. Bowers tried to channel how he thought he would feel when his daughter went to the college-but because his little girl was newborn at that time, it took the right emotional tone more imagination and self-seeking than he could originally do.
“The process was difficult, but the piece of music that came out flowed quite easily based on the feeling I got,” he shared.
Now he is part of the film that landed more Oscar nominations, three, than any other animated function, and the one who swept the Annie Awards with nine victories, including one for Bowers. And now he has been recognized by the academy for his main job, not his side job. Given that, Bowers still want to return to that side play as his career is moving forward?
“One hundred percent,” he said. “For me, music will always be the clearest way to express myself. As I almost learned to play piano at the same rate as I learned to speak, and in some ways I spoke more through piano than I did verbally. So I always want things to be musical, whether it is filmmaking or creation of music. “
“But Ben and I work with other things together. We hope to make a feature film by ‘The Last Repact Shop.’ And there are other ideas that I have – but at the moment just see what is coming. “
This story first appeared to Wire Issue by Thewrap’s Awards Magazine. Read more from the question here.
