TV & Film Work

I was just 17 when my amazing time with Herman's Hermits began — and since then, I've been lucky enough to build a second career composing for TV and film that's now spanned over 40 years. Looking back, the changes have been staggering, not just in how the films themselves are made, but in how the music behind them gets written, played and delivered. Back in the day, scoring a piece meant picking up the phone half a dozen times, booking musicians, and getting them into a room to bring whatever masterpiece I was working on to life, these days so much time is saved with the amazing technology that we have access to – however I still call upon the same incredibly talented team I’ve been using since the late seventies.

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Compostion for media – and for animation in particular - demands a kind of musical shape-shifting, and that's exactly what has kept it endlessly interesting to me over the decades. One week calls for a jaunty circus theme, the next a full orchestral cue, the next something that leans on jazz or folk or strange synth textures. You have to be something of a chameleon, jumping between styles at a moment's notice — a quick dive into how that particular Rachmaninoff passage was voiced before snapping back to the main theme you're actually meant to be finishing.

The working relationships have changed too. So many meetings are through Zoom instead of a sit down with producers face to face once a show is up and running. The footage and the notes arrive from the cloud with the deadlines attached. The upside to this, and of working alone means you can shape your hours however suits you, provided the work lands on time and it's a trade-off I've long since made peace with.

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There are a few projects I've been lucky enough to be involved with that seem to have really captured an audience. Those are The BFG, Wind in the Willows, Pingu and Bob the Builder - I often get asked about these, so I have written some thoughts about the making of each. Simply click on each of the pictures below, and I hope you enjoy.