DreamWorks’ "The Wild Robot" became a widely acclaimed success, thanks in large part to its emotional storytelling and a powerful score that left a lasting impression on audiences. "I Could Use a Boost" underscores one of the film’s most poignant moments, capturing the profound emotions of love, loss, and growth. Reflecting on his initial approach to the film’s sound, Bowers shared how personal the project became for him
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00:00There's this really big orchestral run.
00:03So it's taking that same melodic idea, that four-note melody, and creating this whole
00:14build out of it.
00:15I'm Chris Bowers, I'm the composer for The Wild Robot, and I'm going to take you behind
00:18the song for a cue I wrote called, I Could Use a Boost.
00:30Mike Knobloch and Natalie Hayden from Universal reached out.
00:33They asked if I'd be interested, but they sent me the book first.
00:36And so I read the book, and it came at a pretty pivotal time for me, because I just had my
00:41daughter.
00:42My daughter was like six months old when I got the call, and so I was reading the book
00:45in a weekend, mostly to her, and then I went in and had a meeting with Chris Sanders and
00:49Jeff Herman, where Chris talked me through his vision for the movie, showed me some of
00:54their concept art, and talked about the role that music would play.
00:58Whenever I start my process, I watch a movie a number of times, and I'm looking for a moment
01:04that just viscerally makes me feel something, and that's kind of my way in.
01:07This sequence is the one that just spoke to me emotionally very clearly right away.
01:12I know I can go to the piano and try to make myself feel that way again, because I know
01:16what that feeling is I'm trying to get after.
01:18My daughter was about a year old when I started this cue.
01:22This sequence feels like sending your kid off to college in a lot of ways.
01:26I played it for Chris, and Chris reminded me of the fact that this is kind of like the
01:31most emotionally complex moment in the movie.
01:34They're not saying the words, I love you, they're not saying goodbye, but they may not
01:38see each other ever again, and Roz has been kind of preparing Bright Bill and giving him
01:44all the tools to leave her.
01:47I remember coming back home and talking to my wife about it, and looking at my daughter,
01:53and thinking about this moment in a different way emotionally, and thinking about how I'm
01:58going to fail her, and how there's going to be moments where she feels like even though
02:03I tried my best, I fell short of what she needs.
02:06It's something I realized I didn't really want to think about, but it was really helpful
02:09to then feel all those emotions, and then I go to the piano and just try to improvise,
02:14like find something.
02:15So the discovery of this theme came from meditating on and thinking about these ideas of being
02:21like an imperfect parent, and at this time I was just working to black and white pencil
02:26sketches of the sequence, but I was still trying to write to picture, and Chris actually
02:30suggested that I write away from picture, because he was like, I can feel the music
02:35is trying to bend itself to fit this version of the movie that's not even complete yet.
02:39He was like, why don't you just write the music, and just have the music be something
02:43that develops on its own, and then we will edit and animate to match the music, and that's
02:49something that doesn't happen really ever, and felt very freeing for me to then focus
02:54on like, now that I have this emotion clear for Chris, I can just focus on that and try
02:59to build something off of that.
03:01I am honored to have met you.
03:03You are a credit to whatever species it is you belong to.
03:08A bit worse for wear, I'm afraid.
03:11I remember I played this sequence for my wife.
03:13It was the first thing I played for her, and kind of the only thing I played for her for
03:16most of the time I worked on the movie.
03:17I just played her this moment with my daughter, and my wife started crying watching it, and
03:23then my daughter was like, why are you crying?
03:25Is it because the baby bird left the mama?
03:29She was like, trying to understand that complexity storytelling-wise, it's why it's something
03:34I reacted to, and then I was just trying to capture that in the music.
03:40I'm glad you're going where you belong.
03:43Roz, I, I, um...
03:47Right now!
03:49We ended up with mostly live instrumentation here, I mean the orchestra is like, I think
03:54it's over 100 pieces in total, like when you add choir and everybody else, and then there's
03:58some synths on it.
03:59You know, when I watched this sequence and I told Chris I wanted to tackle it, the thing
04:03that became very clear is like, not only is this going to be so challenging because it's
04:08arguably the most important scene in the movie, it's also, when I was working on it, you already
04:13have no actors, no dialogue pretty much, it was trying to feel all of these things,
04:19and like I said, I started with piano, because that's kind of my main instrument, and just
04:24kind of improvising, and came across a chord progression I felt like really matched that
04:29feeling.
04:45Just aspects of like the harmony that feels emotional, but also even adding dissonances
04:49in there intentionally, to me created this feeling of longing, and something else that
04:54Chris talked about was wanting to have this sense of momentum from the very first note.
05:00He described it as when you see those old movies where somebody's on a train, and somebody's
05:07on the platform, and the train starts moving, and like once that happens, you're like, this
05:11is it, like there's no stopping this train, and they're saying goodbye.
05:13And so that idea of momentum, once I had the progression, I started with a piano figure.
05:31And that piano motor starts the cue off, and kind of sets this pace of movement, so once
05:38I had that idea, it starts.
05:48The next thing I wanted to do to start creating that sense of momentum is start adding these
05:53strings that are playing these ostinatos, that are these rhythmic ideas that build,
05:59so first it's this layer of strings.
06:06It also became about layering it, too, so first it's, and then another layer comes in.
06:23I'd gotten this far, and Chris really loved everything, and then shortly after that I
06:27introduced another melody, and we worked on this cue for almost like two months, and I
06:33got to that point, and Chris was like, this is really great, but he was like, what is
06:36this melody happening, and I was like trying to explain to him how I saw it developing
06:40and all this, and then he went back to that string pattern, and he was like, what is that
06:46that's just happening there, and I was like, oh, that's just an ostinato, just.
06:50And he was like, I think that's actually the melody, so he was the one that pointed out
06:54that moment as being so melodically, for him, captivating that he wanted me to kind of build
07:00the whole sequence off of that.
07:04Part of the ostinato was the part that he felt drawn to.
07:07I think for him it felt like this sense of striving, and then there was also this forward
07:11motion to it that he felt like really captured this moment for him.
07:14Again, when I worked on this, it was these kind of sketches that I was reacting to, but
07:20there was a moment between Roz and Bright Bill, where Bright Bill says, I could use
07:26a boost, and it cuts to her in this close-up, and for me it felt like such a moment of recognition,
07:32even though it's just a black-and-white pencil sketch, and she doesn't have a face, really.
07:35And I was talking to Chris about this much later, because he pointed out that I added
07:39this percussion moment there.
07:45Just that percussion hit there was something that Chris noticed and responded to, and he
07:49was like, the way it captured that moment felt so right.
07:52And I had mentioned to him that it was actually something about those black-and-white storyboards
07:56that made me feel like, obviously, we need a moment, a big hit there, and he told me
08:01that it was actually this old animation technique where he drew that frame with her head slightly
08:06stretched so, even though it was a still image, we could tell that she was lifting her head
08:10up.
08:11And it was that motion that made it clear for me that we needed to have a hit there.
08:16I could use a boost.
08:25This really soft moment orchestrationally where we really just have soft piano and strings
08:33playing, and then this is the first time that something that's very powerful kind of comes
08:37in.
08:38And from then on, as you can see here, that's when percussion starts to enter and then become
08:43this thing that builds throughout the course of it.
08:46It's also a moment where the synths really kick in.
08:48Them leaning back to this traditional style of animation also made me feel like the score
08:53needed to operate in a similar way where those old animation scores are intricately
08:59orchestrated and hyper-detailed, and they're referencing sometimes the greatest classical
09:03music and all of that.
09:04But then with the synths, wanting to have the synths have something that felt like it
09:08had a similar level of intricacy and intimate relationship with the orchestration.
09:14And so her synths come in here.
09:26Just those elements by themselves give a lot of the drive in this.
09:40This is this really big, huge, sweeping moment.
09:43It's like you see this really amazing wide of thousands of geese and all of that.
09:48It's the first time the melody is really heard in the strings coming out.
10:01So the strings are kind of split up into the longs that are playing all these chords and
10:05melodies.
10:06To me, this is the moment where she, almost for the first time, demonstrates a human kind
10:16of instinct where something in her makes her feel like she needs to run and see him one
10:24more time.
10:25And I think the realization of that could have been their final time seeing each other,
10:28that could have been their goodbye, needing to have a little bit more.
10:31And so there's this really big, huge orchestral run that happens here.
10:45There's the strings.
10:52So it's taking that same melodic idea, that four note melody, and creating this whole
10:57build out of it.
10:58And then with the brass here.
11:09The percussion and everybody else having this huge build.
11:24This is one of the first times we really hear choir come in as an element.
11:28I really wanted to try to be as intentional as possible with when we use the voice.
11:34If we're making commentary on this robot becoming more human-like, then that being a texture
11:40that we hear should be something that's used very sparingly and intentionally.
11:44So it's actually only present through the score in moments where she's demonstrating
11:48these human intentions.
11:50And I also wanted it to be pretty much wordless the entire time for a couple of reasons.
11:55One because she's a robot and there's something about that that to me I wanted to have it
11:59be more of a texture than like there being lyrics.
12:02Something else I really loved about this movie is how much we don't really know where we
12:05are geographically.
12:07Because of that, just using the voice and not using lyrics to me would help continue
12:12that suspension of clarity in that way where we're not assuming that we're in America because
12:17they're speaking English or some other place because they're speaking another language.
12:25Yeah, it's more of like a textural thing and they're kind of singing a counter melody that's
12:30happening there.
12:31This final section to me is like setting the bar for again like the scope of everything
12:35and also trying to bring all of these other elements together.
12:39Like you have the main ostinato that's been happening, you have like the piano thing that's
12:43happening, you have the main melody that's happening.
12:45And then towards the end it feels like it's the time is slipping away in this way because
12:50the melody starts to double up.
12:52So it first starts off with...
13:03When it first starts, the melody is happening at the first tempo essentially.
13:16And then it doubles up.
13:25Then the very last time when they're looking at each other, then we have the...
13:32Just kind of this sense of like time running out and kind of a race to the end.
13:35And then the final moment, like again watching this sequence, even in the black and white
13:41pencil sketch version of it, this moment of seeing her at the top of this cliff by
13:46herself is like such a heartbreaking moment after what's happened.
13:49It's just a moment of like isolation and solitude and loneliness.
13:54And so it also felt like musically we needed to go back to just having a piano.