The last time we saw Feathers McGraw he was behind bars having committed a brazen diamond heist using The Wrong Trousers. But the slippery character (a penguin, not a chicken don't forget) is out and back for revenge on the pair who saw him locked up, over 30 years ago: Wallace & Gromit. Their latest adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl, premieres on BBC One on Christmas Day (dropping on Netflix on 3 January) and is set to be one of the highlights of the festive television schedule.
There’s nothing ‘small screen’ about this brilliant little epic, though, as Aardman (the studio behind all of the duo’s prior adventures, including 2005’s feature film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit) have thrown their heart and soul in to making Vengeance Most Fowl as cinematic as possible. That goes for the music, too, which is composed by Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible composer Lorne Balfe and Wallace & Gromit’s original maestro, Julian Nott.
I caught up with the pair for a chat about Wallace & Gromit’s long-awaited return, working with one of the most iconic themes written for the screen and just what it takes to deliver music for a painstaking, detail-filled production like Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Lorne, this is not quite the Hollywood epic canvas you’ve been used to lately; what was the draw of this project for you?
Well, I have been part of the world of Wallace and Gromit once before, having written some additional music for The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but as a fan and as an audience member it has been part of my world. It’s so quintessentially British, it has been part of my life and so has the theme (by Julian); it lives outside of what you’re watching. So, it has now become part of folklore now.
Working on something slightly shorter form, after the likes of Top Gun: Maverick, is no less stimulating for a composer I imagine?
No, not at all. I mean feature films are getting longer and longer now; if they don’t last four hours, the audience feels they’ve been cheated or something.
Julian: And it’s not a short film like the original Wallace & Gromit films, it’s a good hour isn’t it?
Lorne: Yeah, I think we’re on 78 minutes or something like that.
Julian: It’s definitely more like a feature; it’s big and bold, and it’s long.
What was the process like between the two of you working on the score?
Julian: I think Lorne is the detail man, he’s the expert at making these exciting, vast musical soundscapes. I’ve done more of the thematic work on it.
Lorne: This world on animation is so different to any of the other form, because it’s a far more complicated process. You’re working to sketch drawings that aren’t finished, and it has been a long process. I think that the way movies are now, to do something by yourself is just next to impossible. If somebody says they do, I think they’re telling porkies! It’s just impossible; you’re having to work as a team, and we were very lucky that we’d had an experience before on Were-Rabbit, so we knew each other. There’s a trend in sequels to not be loyal to the past, and no matter what there’s a trend to drop themes and not use them, and I said to Julian from the beginning that their music is part of their characters, so we have to be connecting to the past and we had to use the themes, because it’s part of their legacy. It has been very much about keeping it in the past but making it for a newer audience.
What is returning, musically, other than the classic Wallace & Gromit theme?
Lorne: The Feathers McGraw theme is very much there, and yes Wallace’s theme is back. I think what’s back is that style that Julian created; it’s very much that feeling of, when required, film noir, quintessential British sound and classical style. There are new themes, too, but they’re all very much still connected to the past.
Are you allowed to tell us what some of the new themes are, and what they’re connected to?
Lorne: Well, there’s the gnome theme for one of the new main characters! That doesn’t give anything away…
Julian: It’s very much in the Wallace & Gromit style of music and it does, to me, feel like it’s Wallace & Gromit. It’s a bit more fast paced; it’s got Lorne’s Hollywood slant to it, so it’s big, it’s fast and its exciting, but it still feels like you’re in the Wallace & Gromit world I would say.
Julian, do you recall what Nick Park asked of you, musically, back when you were first talking about 1989’s A Grand Day Out?
Well there’s quite a history there, because what Nick intended to do with Wallace & Gromit was quite different from what it ended up being. He wrote a very long script, but he had to animate it in the evenings; and he discovered that he’d only got to about page ten of the script after five or six years! So what was originally intended never quite materialised and it became a sort of compromise. Nick is from up above Manchester and he came down to us in the south, and I think he thought that none of us knew that there was such a thing as ‘the North of England’, and that we were all very ‘home counties’ down here at film school. The main thing he wanted was for me to give it a ‘Northern flavour’, that was his big thing, so he wanted a brass band. If you remember the advert for Hovis (bread) with the brass band and the colliery in the town, he just wanted it to remind the audience of that kind of thing. When we got to The Wrong Trousers (1993) he wanted a brass band to score it, and it turned out that a brass band was the most expensive option. So, we couldn’t afford it and just had a few brass instruments.
Photo: Photo: Wallace & Gromit composers Lorne Balfe and Julian Nott (Getty Images)
Lorne, you’ve worked with a fair few iconic themes by other composers of late – Harold Faltermeyer, Lalo Schifrin, Mark Mancina…
I sure did! I should be at the top of many composer’s Christmas lists, because I bring them royalties regularly.
And what is that process like, when you first approach existing material? Do you ever speak to the original composer?
Very rarely do I have a conversation with the composers, because there’s an argument of ‘why weren’t they brought on to do it?’ Also, there’s normally a lot of problems with ownership; just because you work on a franchise it doesn’t mean you can use the theme, so there’s always an issue with restrictive use which we obviously don’t have here as it’s all part of the Aardman family. But I always just try to think about what it’s like to be the audience; if I’m playing a Harry Potter videogame and I don’t hear the theme, I’m thinking, ‘why haven’t you used the theme?’ It’s hand I hand. We saw it with things like the Terminator franchise, some of them would just never use the theme and you’d wonder why. There are egos, and also the feeling that it’s a different story and needs different themes, but I never understand that. It’s about what the audience want to hear and want to feel, because that’s what the themes are there for; it’s for us to connect automatically to the character, even if it’s a different story.
I imagine with a theme as iconic as this one by Julian, you know it instinctively in order to work with it?
Yeah, thankfully you know it. But it’s then about how do you use it in a different way, so that the audience doesn’t necessarily feel that it’s there, but the essence of it is. I’ve been hearing that Wallace & Gromit theme since 1989, and as a composer you’re always humming things and you’re always trying to think of other ways to do it. It’s the same as when I started on Mission: Impossible, I had a step ahead, because I’ve known of it for over forty years. It’s part of our heritage in some way.
Julian: Of course, what often happens is that producers want to modernise things and want to make it relevant for the day. We don’t really have that problem with Wallace & Gromit because they’re always in the same world and the same place in time that they always were. I don’t have the same need to bring it up to date, that you might have with some older themes.
Part of the job must be working out where you can use those themes… and whether they’re versatile enough to be used in whatever way the story requires?
Lorne: If you’ve got a good theme you can make it sad, or you can make it happy. I think that’s what it comes down to. I mean look at Star Wars for goodness sake; there’s fine examples of Luke Skywalker’s theme being manipulated to do both things. So I think a good theme makes it easier for you to be able to do these mood changes.
Julian: There’s a theme in this film which Lorne has one moment it’s a happy comedy theme and the next it’s used as if it’s horror music!
Lorne: It’s about arranging and orchestration, and that’s been part of film underscoring since the beginning; to take lines or melodies or hooks and change the emotion but still feel connected.
I imagine, given the length of time a film like this takes to make, you’ll be working on it alongside other things. How do you pivot or re-focus between projects like that?
Lorne: I’m the last person to ask regarding re-focusing! I think it’s fair to say that I work on multiple emotions constantly. But we have to these days; the way of film, TV and game-making, composers have to be able to multitask. Especially with games; sometimes people will be on it for two years and there’s not necessarily things to do. As much as some people like to go, ‘artistically I can’t do this…’ it is a job and you have to be able to… it’s not like being a character actor where even leaving the set you have to be in the zone. I think a composer has got to multitask more and more; it’s a long process.
So is it more about scheduling and time management then?
Lorne: Yes! Because as composers there will be nothing to do for spells of time, and you just have to… I think the hardest thing is cracking the nut of style and approach, and we had that from Julian. We knew what the approach and style was going to be; it wasn’t a different headspace; you could start by already knowing it.
Julian: It’s good to be working on different jobs at the same time, because it’s boring to be doing the same thing. Far from it being a problem I think it’s a benefit; one day you can be doing some dark music, the next comedy. That keeps you happy.
Lorne: We both know composers who just stick in one genre, like horror or something. The tricky thing with that is how do you reinvent yourself, if you’re always emotionally telling the same musical story? How do you discover something else? It’s no different to a songwriter; if they just only wrote the same tempo and mood of song, they’d run out. The difference is you have lyrics, so there’s different expression there, but I think if you do a horror film, there’s things you learn from that and then you go in and do a romantic comedy, you still use those things you’ve learned. Our job is to help be part of the storytelling; it’s not necessarily about the style of the music, it’s about how to write something to help tell a story. I think being able to go between genres, as Julian said, is essential because it makes us progress.
Your filmography is really varied, Lorne. You really have honed the ability to jump from one genre to another…
It has always been part of my education. When Julian and I first met I was working for Hans Zimmer and that’s how we worked and so it has always been the case. But we’re freelancers, and that’s another thing that sometimes people forget; it’s difficult in the arts to be a freelancer and say, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ I think in the beginning of your career you have to say yes to opportunities, because those doors can open and you find where you are. Then with age you can start saying no.
What have been the biggest joys for you both, working on this film?
Lorne: The recording session! Seeing Julian, Nick and Merlin (Crossingham, co-director) when the big theme was being played; they all had their phones and were filming it. That to me was the great thing; it is not every day that you get a 70-piece orchestra playing music. There’s less sessions happening, there’s less live recording happening, so to see that. The team from Aardman all came, brought their families and I think it was a very emotionally enjoyable thing for everybody. Seeing all of them happy, in one of the most iconic studios in the world, that was it for me. What was yours, Julian, apart from getting to hang with me?
Julian: I would say that this is a film that just works, and it’s such a pleasure to work on a film that you know is just working and is brilliant. To be honest, that doesn’t happen very often! Normally everybody, including you, is struggling to make a film that doesn’t quite work, work, or make it slightly better. This just movie flowed so easily and that was the great pleasure. Also, Lorne had to work harder than me! But it was just a pleasure to work on something that is so good.
Lorne: You know what, it is good, but also there’s nothing else being made like this in the world. The attention to detail by these filmmakers doesn’t exist, so if we’re being allowed to be part of it, it is an honour. Aardman are at the forefront and they’re the best in the world. That’s why we’ve waited, what, over 15 years for this one? I might be a grandfather when the next one comes along. Julian will be working on it with my son, probably!
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is on BBC One on Christmas Day at 18:10 (6.10pm) and on iPlayer in the UK and drops on Netflix around the world on 3 January. The Original Soundtrack is out now on Sony Classical, available wherever you enjoy your music.
