My Composing Process: The Goldfish Club (2020)
Dear Readers,
In 2020, while I was getting my master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh, I had the pleasure of meeting and collaborating with animator and artist Isobel Wilson. For her thesis animation, she crafted an incredible film based on a true story about her grandfather. Isobel describes the story as follows:
“‘The Goldfish Club’ follows the journey my grandfather, John Wilson, took with his crew during World War 2. In the early hours of the 20th January 1945 somewhere over the Adriatic Sea, the Wellington Bomber that 21 year old John was piloting, caught on fire. John made the difficult decision to ditch the plane and have his crew try and escape to a rescue dinghy. They are tested to their emotional and physical limits during the next 71 hours as they try and survive injures, the brutal winter cold and the loss of their dear friend in the crash.”
Initial Meeting
In late February 2020, I met with Isobel in her studio and we discussed the film. She showed me some storyboards, and we talked about her grandfather and his harrowing experience. In that first meeting, I took notes about my immediate ideas. I wrote about how I could use breathing in the score to communicate stress and worry. I also wrote down that I could use erratic brass, building out from a single note. Finally, I wrote down that it is an intimate and personal story, and the music should reflect that.
I really love the first meetings with people I work with, because I can dive right into the project, ask them questions about the characters and plot, and also see the work in progress product.
First Sketches
My first demos for this film sound quite different from the final product, but do contain a similar feel and atmospheric style.
In both demos I experimented with adding improvised flute parts and mixing them with synthesizers and strings. In Demo #2 specifically, I worked in “human sounds” like coughing and breathing. All these elements, except for the flute, ended up appearing in some way in the finalized score. Listening back to these demos again, after almost a year, I notice that even in the first moments of visualizing this score, I was aware of what the end result could sound like.
Sitting Down at the Piano
As you already might know, I am a pianist at heart. I’ve played it since I was 7, and I feel very at home sitting in front of a piano. While studying in Edinburgh, I frequently went down to the music practice rooms and would improvise on the piano. It is in improvisation sessions like these that I discover and compose melodies. One day in late February 2020., I improvised a melody and then sent it to Isobel to get her thoughts.
The demo is quite rough and unedited, but it is a sonic representation of me composing and improvising in real time. It blends two different melodic ideas: The first melody is a harsh, dissonant sound that I imagined being played by brass instruments. The second melody is a soaring theme that ended up becoming the main theme for the film.
In the email to her, I wrote about how the melody could have a larger-than-life feel with a large orchestral sound, but also a very intimate feel with just solo piano. I also pointed out that it has a mixture of major and minor chords (and sometimes uses both at one time), and as a result carries a bittersweet air.
An example of this major/minor blending can be seen in the first chord. You can see that it it is an Ab major chord with an added 6 (i.e. F). This added F, which lies in the melody, mades the Ab chord simultaneously feel like an inversion of a Fm7 chord. The same thing happens in the fourth measure, when we hear a Bb6 chord, which could also be a G minor 7 inversion.
Music theory aside, the main theme contains a mixture of major and minor sounds which causes it to have a distinct bittersweet feel.
Composing to Picture
Once I got a finalized version of the film, I began to score to picture. I crafted an ensemble of brass (horns, tubas, trumpets), e-pianos and synths, human breathing, high harmonic strings, solo cello, solo piano and drum kit. The overall result is a layered and immersive sound that is unique to this film and story.
I used the Spifire Studio Brass library for this film and created a larger-than-life brass ensemble that sounds massive and violent. You can hear, especially in track 2, a staccato motif being played by the brass. This is actually a musical version of SOS in morse code (3 short, 3 long, 3 short) and specifically references the main characters’ dire need of help.
The main theme is sprinkled throughout the the film but is played in full at the end when the main characters are rescued. When it’s played early on (at one point by a piccolo trumpet), only the first three notes (G, C, F) are used.
From my first discussion with Isobel, we decided that we wanted the music at some points to reflect her grandfather’s memory of the crash. So during the first and second cue, we hear tumultuous sounds, and dissonance and staccato brass to show his distress at the memory. His stress is reflected by Isobel visually by his shaking hand.
For the final cue of the film I wanted to create a sense of calm and relief. The orchestration is changed during this cue. The solo cello is front and center as the main theme’s chord progression is finally played in full. When the piano enters, a wave of calm orchestral textures envelope the listener. The brass is no longer playing sharp staccato notes, and instead plays long drawn out chords. The harsh drum kit sounds are now absent. Through drastically adjusting the orchestration for this last cue, I was able to reflect the relief and calm that the characters had not experienced up until this point.
The credits are especially touching, because Isobel includes photos of her grandfather and his crew, along with archival material about the Goldfish Club. My music carries a nostalgic, and emotional air to accompany these images.
Final Thoughts
This was a fantastic project to work on. Isobel’s animation style is unique and beautiful, and the film’s depiction of her grandfather’s experience is stark and affecting. From a musical perspective, I was able to experiment with crafting hectic and chaotic sonic environments using synths, human breathing and brass textures.
If you have any questions about my composing process for this score, feel free to email me at nicholasescobarcomposer@gmail.com. Also be sure to check out Isobel’s website at this link: https://www.isobelwilson.co.uk/.
Your’s Musically,
Nicholas Escobar
