A Calling to Film Music: The Journey of Amelia Warner
CineConcerts was very fortunate to speak with Amelia Warner about her score to the new film Wild Mountain Thyme! During our interview we discussed Warner’s journey from being in front of the camera to composition and how previous works have informed this new, classic score.
Composer Amelia Warner
CineConcerts (CC): Your perspective has shaped how you see everything creatively, so where did you come from, in the creative space? You started off learning piano at a very young age and were also acting at the same time. I’d like to talk a little bit about how you got to this place that you’re in now from when you were younger as a musician, but also balancing doing the separate creative process of acting.
Amelia Warner (AW): The musical side had always been there since I was very young. I had always been incredibly interested in music and it was probably the thing I was most passionate about and was drawn to. I struggled with formal lessons and training because I kind of taught myself and played by ear and then I found all of that very limiting and very difficult.
So, then I walked away slightly from classical music, but I always carried on playing and I always composed my own things. And then I had an opportunity when I was about 16 to do a TV show and then I got an agent and started acting. It was great and it wasn't. I was quite shy and I found it quite difficult, if I'm totally honest, but it was such an amazing opportunity and I was completely film-mad and so it was just the most amazing experience to get to be part of films and to kind of see how they’re made. I was really captivated by it and I loved it, but I really struggled with being in front of the camera. It became obvious quite quickly that that just wasn’t the right place for me.
And so, I did it for a few years and then it took me a good 10 years, I'd say, to kind of get to this point where I wrote some songs for a while. I started scoring a couple of things. I did a few commercials and I remember the first time that I wrote something to picture and I remember how that felt and it really was like this key unlocking. I just felt this, suddenly everything just fell into place. All of the things I loved were happening. And you know, I was getting to be part of telling a story and the narrative. I was also getting to express myself with music and I was collaborating with people and it just felt like this incredible, you know, just the right fit for me. The first time that I wrote music, I wrote an arrangement and I remember when the string section played this arrangement, that feeling, it was just the most incredible joyous thing. So, I just kind of kept trying to find a way to write music to picture and I did some commercials and I did some short films. A couple of friends of mine had directed short films and couldn’t afford music so I would just write them something on the piano and that's how it started.
Then during that time, I had a record deal and I was meant to do an album, but song writing, again, it wasn't the right fit for me. I loved the arrangements, I loved melody but I struggled with lyrics and I couldn't perform because I was too shy. And I went back to the record label, I just said, “Look, this isn’t right. But I do write piano music, if you have any interest, here are like 20 pieces of my music. This is the music that I love and that I write.” And actually, they were incredibly supportive and, there was one person particularly at Universal, who just said, “Okay. Great, that’s really an EP. We’ll pick like 6 or 7 tracks and we’ll release it for you.” And that’s how I’d done my first EP and I’ve subsequently done three now, kind of one every year. I guess that was the main thing that got me to where I am now and it was from doing that EP that I got my first film score, because someone wanted to license one of the pieces and then I ended up writing the score. So, that's how it happened but it certainly was a wiggly road.
CC: Was there a piano at your house when you were younger? Did you sit in front of it and play around, is that how it developed?
AW: Yeah, it was exactly that, it was just in the house and I just always used it as something to play with, like a toy and I’d just tell stories. And I remember, my mum said when I was three or four, I used to sit and say, “Okay, these notes are the baddies. And these notes are the goodies and this is etc.” You know, kind of creating stories on the piano. I mean, it sounded awful and I feel so sorry for our neighbors.
That was really early on and so I taught myself and then I started proper lessons at school and that just took all the fun away. I was like, “Hang on a minute. But I do it like this, and I play it like that.” And it was just kind of unpicking all of my mistakes, but I found it really confidence knocking and it just took away my enjoyment in music and so after a few years my mum kind of agreed and said, “Yeah, you don’t need to do lessons anymore.” And then I picked it up again and really loved it and when I was a teenager, I taught myself chords and taught myself and that was how, essentially, I played what I needed to play.
CC: So, it was mostly done by ear?
AW: Yeah, and actually that’s how I still play. Sometimes I’m in ridiculous situations where the only way I can play my own music is from memory. I wouldn’t recommend it as an effective way of playing music!
CC: You mentioned that your first EP led to your foray into film composing. Can you talk a bit about your solo music and where that started and why you continue to do it? You recently had one about how difficult 2020 has been, right?
AW: The one that came out this year was funny because I actually recorded it last year, but the weirdest thing was I did it all at home. I had everybody come to me and we set up a studio in our lounge because I’d just had a baby and I couldn't get to London. We were trying to book in dates in a studio and it was getting really complicated and eventually my sound engineer was just like, “We’ll just come to you.” So, we ended up doing a lockdown EP but that was actually before we even needed to. And then we were all put into a lockdown and in a quarantine and it felt like the perfect time to release it because it’s called Haven and it’s all about home. It all really came together sort of strangely this year.
But the starting point with the EPs was just to have my music out there. Up to that point I'd always written it privately and for myself and it was just to have that out in the world in some way.
Then once I’d released one, the second EP was Visitors and that was much more of a kind of conceptual piece. I had this idea of a house. I saw this house one day on a drive and it was this very beautiful Gothic, spooky house and I looked it up and someone said it was a hospital and had all these rooms. And anyway, it just got me thinking about the idea of the spirits of this place and there being a piano in the top room, and all of the generations of women playing that piano. So, that was the idea and each track is a woman’s name and each track was a different character that I was imagining. I really enjoyed it; it was a really lovely thing. And we recorded it almost to sound like it was coming from another room, for there to be all of this space around the music.
And then the third one I just started writing it and when it came to doing the arrangements, I’d just finished Mary Shelley and that was the first time I’d ever written for brass. I’d never had that experience and I just loved it so much, so I wrote the pieces in Haven and I just wanted it to be piano and brass and not use any strings. That was the idea behind it. I wanted it to have this real warmth and also it was really personal because it was about moving house and we’d just had a baby so it was all these little pieces coming together. And so, Haven, to me, was like this warm, safe place of peace and happiness.
CC: Your first feature film was Mum's List. Prior to that you’d said that you had done a commercial and done some stuff for people, but obviously a big feature film is different. Was it a huge, like jumping off a cliff and sort of figuring stuff out, this first time you have to write with a bunch of musicians? What was that process like?
AW: Yeah, it was like jumping off a cliff for sure. Luckily the director was so kind and really lovely. It was a really strange job because I came on to it and the timing was already weird.
I was like eight months pregnant when I came onto the job, they hadn’t just finished shooting yet. So basically, I started writing before they were even in the edit and the way that we worked it out, is the director, because he had this one piece from my EP that he really loved and he put to picture and he was listening to on set and he was like, “I really love this piece and I want the score to be written around it this.” And then so I just kept writing and then he was like, “If you can almost write like a suite of music, then we can use it, we can end it with the music.” So, I wasn’t writing specific cues. That's kind of how I wrote a big piece of the score was just beforehand and then they were in edit and they actually used my music as temp music.
So, I went in and I'd watch it and I’d go away and I'd write lone pieces. I’d write like a three-or four-minute piece and I'd send it to them and they would do another pass and then I’d come in. It was a really different process than anything I've done since and then as it got closer to—I was getting bigger and bigger and we knew that I probably only had like a few more weeks where I could write music and then I was going to have to go because I was going to have my baby.
In some ways it was brilliant not having temp music and it was such a treat, being part of it from the beginning, there was never any other music to that film. But in some ways, it was so much more work because you’re going in and you’re writing all of this music and then you go in next week and that scene’s gone. It was constantly changing. I think even by the time we had recorded the music they still hadn’t even locked the picture. It was a very long process.
So, I had the baby and then about two weeks-I had a great orchestrator who was really amazing and supportive and thank goodness for her. Because she could take over for those two weeks, prepare everything for the sessions, get everything ready to go and then we recorded all of the music, and we just gave it, to be honest, most of it was pretty locked by that point and they were specific cues, but there were a couple of things that we’d just be like, “Look we've done an extra few minutes of this and we've done it, if you need it.” And then it did change a lot, to be honest, the film from when I last saw it and the cues that I’d written to the film I saw like a year later. It was different, cues were in different places, things had moved. So, it was a weird experience.
CC: Was it the same on Mary Shelley after that?
AW: No, no, Mary Shelly was much more straightforward. The picture was locked, they had a really strong temp on there that in some ways was terrifying because it was brilliant and so much of it was working really well. In a way I preferred it because I knew exactly what I needed and I knew what I needed to do. The jigsaw puzzle was all there and it was just putting the pieces in. And it didn’t change, not a frame of it changed, when we started to when I recorded the music.
CC: As a composer what’s your preference for having or not having temp music? You mentioned that it’s sort of good because it helps you hone in on what you want to do, but if you have a different creative idea, that they haven’t seen yet, do you go with that and try it even though there’s temp music?
AW: Yeah, I haven’t had a really negative experience with temp music yet so I’m lucky because I know people who have and it’s heartbreaking. I definitely find it overwhelming sometimes when you’re watching something and it’s got the most stunning Max Richter piece on it or Beethoven or something. And you're just like, “Okay. Well, you know, this is fun.”
I find it really informative because you can really see what's working and you can really see what's not. And often the producers will say, “We know this one doesn't work, this cue does not work, this temp is wrong. We couldn't get the right thing. You have to find something else. We don't have any ideas for this.” I think as much as stuff works, there's a lot of stuff that doesn’t so in some ways it's kind of great because you can come in and make it work in a way that the temp just wasn't, because you can hit certain beats.
You can, you’re doing it to picture, whereas, the temp, no matter how great it is, it’s not written to the picture so it’s not going to totally hit where it needs to hit. But I do find it helpful for the discussions and just to have something there to say do you like this tempo? Do you like the instrumentation? What's working for you about it?
And then I can kind of glean, ok well, really it needs to keep this tempo because that's where I can, but I think I can change this or you know–and there have been times where I did something just completely different. And they were open to it and I think often are kind of fatigued by the temp. So, you can come in and do something different and they’ll see a scene in a completely new way which, I think, they find really exciting. I don't mind temp music being there as a kind of starting point and like I said as I did Mum’s List, as lovely as it was, it was such a kind of treat not having it.
CC: Let’s talk about Wild Mountain Thyme! It’s a really fun movie, it’s a beautiful score. How did you get on this project?
AW: It was really just simple, my agent called and said, “So I just want to talk to you about Wild Mountain Thyme.” Then I was like, “…Okay” and I knew of it because my husband was in it. I knew that he’d had this amazing experience on the job and he just he loved it.
So, I read the script and I just, I loved it so much and was completely bewitched by it and instantly just got it. I was like, “Oh my God, I love this.” It really got under my skin and I think that I wrote a couple of pieces just off the script and I wrote one or two of the main themes kind of straight away. It was really strange.
It was “Oh my god, I know exactly how this film should sound.” Then it was months and months before they were even at the point of considering composers and then it went through that whole process and it was it was a long time. But I knew that they had heard those pieces and that they really, really liked them and had been really positive and but it was like a long time. Then, I think, once they were just finishing the edit, I came on and they basically said, “We love this theme,” there was one theme particularly and, “can you do more?”
CC: How often does it happen that you read something and immediately know what it sounds like? I feel like that’s kind of rare for a composer, right?
AW: Yeah, I think so. When I read Mary Shelley, I definitely had a sense of its sound, I could hear it, but not as clearly. With Wild Mountain Thyme I had a theme in my head straight away, it was really strange and I’d never had that before.
CC: Was it something specific like an instrument or did you really just have the theme?
AW: I really just had the theme straightaway, the opening the theme that’s on the very first track, “Welcome to Ireland,” that was in my head. And then I had just a sense of the pallet and the tone and I could just hear the music but yeah, not super specific with instrumentation and everything. I just had the total feel of what the music should be.
And then once I came on board, that changed and there were elements of the score that I didn't anticipate and I think because the film has such a strong musical voice anyway, because it has Swan Lake and then you've got the song “Wild Mountain Thyme.” So, it has this amazing music identity already. It was just finding that third piece, you know, and I felt I could foresee what that should be.
CC: Did you have to research those older tunes, like “Wild Mountain Thyme,” and how to incorporate them or did you know what you wanted to do with them musically?
AW: The “Wild Mountain Thyme” song, when that features, there was already set places where you hear that song so I didn't decide that, that was already in place. There are obviously the points where they sing it then, there’s a scene with Christopher Walken’s character where the theme comes in because it's kind of his theme.
Then with Swan Lake that was a completely separate thing, in the script it said exactly where Swan Lake was going to be, so it was all very clear.
Then in terms of the other side of it, I knew that there needed to be just an incredibly romantic, sweeping, beautiful classic movie theme that I felt needed to come in early and just build and build so that by the end you’ve got pay off of that big romantic theme.
But then also there’s the Irish side and a quirkiness and an oddness and a strangeness and trying to make it feel authentic and trying to bring that kind of slightly wild, slightly frenetic, slightly raucous energy to the folk cues and that was really fun. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Ireland so I do have a sense of that music and I've seen lots of live music when I go there and it's everywhere, music, when you’re in Ireland. It’s absolutely everywhere.
CC: There’s a sense of magic in it too, in the themes.
AW: Totally and it was trying to tap into that as well because it’s a fairy tale. It was trying to tap into that otherworldly magic. It’s heightened reality, isn't it? It’s not the normal world that they’re living in.
CC: Composers are always pushing themselves creatively to try new things. Was there something that you did in this film specifically that you hadn't done in previous ones?
AW: I think the one that pushed me out of my comfort zone, but was the most rewarding, was “The Phone Call” and “Open the Shutters”. He has a phone call and then he's kind of having a fight, then he goes off with the metal detector. It’s mini tragedy opera.
And actually, that would be an example for where the temp was kind of great because it was this challenge, it was like what can you offer. Because what was on their temp was Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, which is incredible and I knew that the director was in love with it and I feel like they were probably trying to license it and all of that was happening already and it was kind of decided that's what's going to be there.
“But if you want to try something, then try something.” So, I just went for it and I just kind of threw everything at it and I just thought, we know that it can take this because of what was on there for the temp and I don't need to be subtle, this just needs to be drama and it needs to be big and it needs to be so big that it kind of makes everything that’s happening funny and ridiculous. That’s what Shanley was saying he was like, it's melodrama. It's so, so ridiculous, the way that it’s funny, I’ve not written a cue like that before but I have to say I really enjoyed it.
CC: Besides that one, is there any scene in the movie or any cue you to watch out for specifically? Is there something that took you by surprise or didn't come off the way that you anticipated?
AW: Yeah, there was a really surprising one where—There’s that beautiful sequence, like a montage and it begins with Rosemary’s mother being taken away in the ambulance, then they go to the hospital, then you go to the church and you have Rosemary crying at the grave. Then it's that beautiful moment where you see back in time, “I was there for her wedding day, there was never a more beautiful bride.”
It's incredible, the cycling of the generations and I just loved it. So, I wrote the piece which starts with the piano and I remember saying to the orchestrator that I was working with “I just want this to be the only time you hear this piece. It's just a standalone moment. It's like a short film, like a vignette and it's just this one beautiful piece.”
And then of course the director was like “This is the theme!” He wanted to try it on like three other cues that I was like, “What? I mean, no! You’re crazy! What do you mean you want it on that one when—" you know? and I was like, “Okay. Okay, I guess I'll try.” Thinking he was crazy and then it was the weirdest thing because everywhere I tried it, it just worked.
It was just like the film took it, it was the weirdest thing and it ended up being the main theme and the first time you hear it is when she sees him in the boat and then when he loses the ring and then at the end when they kiss. But it was really surprising because I’d written it as a sorrowful, sad, mourning nostalgic moment and actually it worked as a really hopeful kind of joyful theme as well when you restructured it, so that was really interesting.
CC: Is there a moment in the film that was difficult for you to compose or that you really spent a ton of time on?
AW: There’s always a couple in every film where you’re like, Version 22. And you’re like, “We’re just never ever going to get this one” With this film it was the one where he was on the boat. It goes from these beautiful shots of the morning in Ireland and then she sees him and she’s lovingly staring at him and it’s a gorgeous moment and then it's him being ridiculous on the boat and falling off.
I tried so many different things and all of the notes were “it’s funny, it’s a comedy moment” and then I was like, oh no, no, comedy doesn’t work. It was like trying everything and again, the key was that theme. By the time we came to that theme we put that at the beginning of that scene. It was like, “Ah, there we go.” It wasn’t right, what was on there so, that was a really sticky one for some reason.
On Mary Shelley, it was this scene, getting into a coach, I just don’t know why but I must have written like 40 passes on this tiny 30 second moment of them get into a coach. It’s really frustrating. It’s really strange because the things that you dread as a composer, like a big opening you get really nervous but actually those tend to be okay, it’s the other pivotal, weird cues that you end up spending most of your time doing but they’re not, like, significant. It's a weird one.
CC: It’s such a cool job to be a film composer because you really get to experience not only all of the characters in the movie, but you get to work with great people, great directors and the music take on a life of its own. The score comes from you, obviously, but when it's put into the movie, like what you're saying, it sort of becomes its own thing.
AW: Yeah, totally and I think that's one of the big challenges. I think some people struggle with that the music isn't yours and it doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the film. And so, I think you really have to let go of any ego or any idea of what you think is right or what you think because it’s actually totally irrelevant what you think. The movie, decides for you, whether that's the director or just the actual film itself. I genuinely believe it tells you what's working and what's not and you can’t fight it.
It’s plain to see what doesn't work and it should do because it's a really lovely piece of music and it's doing all the things it's meant to do, but it's not working and it's kind of knowing that and being okay with throwing it away and it's not personal. That’s why I think I really enjoy it because I love that collaboration and I'm not precious about the music in that way because I feel like it's not for me, it's not for me to decide whether it's good, it just has to be right for what you’re seeing and it has to be seamless with the picture. You have to not even be thinking about the music. It should just be part of the film.
It has its own life. It lives and breathes outside of you and there are all these brilliant people that can kind of help guide you as well, but it belongs to everybody on the film.
CC: There a few with vocal soloists, two are “Wild Mountain Thyme,” and then there’s a third one with Sinead O'Connor. How did that collaboration come together?
AW: It was a really lovely cherry on top of the whole thing. It happened really organically.
When I came on there was never any talk of a song being involved and then towards the end of writing the score, it was funny because that theme that I was talking about, the one that John really loved. I remember he kept saying, “This sounds like a song,” he was like, “That sounds like the introduction of a song” and he kept saying it.
Then he sang me this lyric, “Will you come to my window, Laddie?” to that theme. And I was like “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean” and then he sent me all of these lyrics and the producers were like, “Look, John’s written these lyrics and we want to do a song for the credits. Do you want to have a go?” and I was like, “Yeah!”
So, I basically wrote the song based on the theme and then Sinead came on board to sing it, it was so cool. And I'm just such a fan and she's just such an icon and I've always just admired her so much and I love her voice and the minute she came on, the first word that she sings, when I heard that it was just like a punch in the stomach. She's just got this distinctive power and this emotion in her voice that is so uniquely hers. As soon as I heard her singing it, it was such a special moment. It really was, it was lovely and I love that me and John got to co-write a song together such a lovely bonus that I didn't see coming.
CC: It’s an amazing track! Was that session just done in a day, did you record in a day’s time?
AW: We recorded it when we recorded all of the score and then she recorded her vocal in Dublin. And we just had this amazing violin player who came and did most of the folk stuff on the movie and he played on that track.
CC: Any advice you have for younger people that might be at a creative crossroads? You know, they want to do one thing and they sort of feel like they want to do something else and don't really know which path to take.
AW: Yeah, for me what happened was I was at this point where there were several directions that I could go and, in some ways, I was really lucky because I had these opportunities and it was trying to make things work, but they weren’t really necessary the right fit. I was trying to make them fit and it just came down to somebody sitting me down and saying, “If you could do anything, what would you do?” And I was like, “I want to write music for films!” I knew that, but they were just like “That's what you need to do then.”
It was just committing to something and just be honest with yourself about what it is you want to do. And then just focus on that because that’s what I had to do. I was trying too hard to kind of go “Well, I have this great opportunity so maybe I'm going to sing.” But actually, I knew all along what I wanted to do, but I didn’t feel confident enough to say, “No. Actually I want to be a film composer.”
It felt ridiculous at the time for me, it really did. I think that's changing now and I would hope for people coming up now that there’s more visibility, there’s more female composers it's not necessarily always that kind of classical Maestro thing that, in my head, that's what you have to be to be a film composer. I think that's changing and so I think it's just being really clear about what it is that you want to do and just believing that that’s it, trying to have tunnel vision that’s it. And don’t let your head be turned by people going “Yeah, but this could be really good. You could be good at this. This is good enough.”
Say, “No, this is what I want to do.”
CC: What's next for you? What are you looking forward to in the next year or so?
AW: I’m not sure. I’m going to write another album, next year. I'm excited about doing that and trying out some new things and I think what's nice about when I'm doing my own music is, I can be a bit more experimental and I can try out things that I’m not ruining someone's film, so I can just play around with some ideas and I don't have all of that responsibility.
And then I’m not sure, I’m really keen to do another film at some stage. I'd love to do TV. I love the idea of being on a show and having that kind of scope and having those themes that you can just keep developing and keep developing and having that kind of breadth. I think that could be really exciting rather than being limited to that small period of time you have to develop.
I'd be really up for doing something like that, but it's finding the thing that clicks and that gets you excited. I feel like I have to be really selective about what I do because I've got three really young kids so if I’m going to be away from them, and it is a really intense job, when you’re on a project you’re working a lot. I feel like I can temper that when I have proper down time and I'm just with them and so I'm in a bit of that at the moment which is really nice.