Amelia Warner sat down with Awards Focus in mid-November to discuss the score for Disney’s Young Woman and the Sea starring Daisy Ridley.
Before joining Young Woman and the Sea, Amelia Warner had never heard of Trudy Ederle (Daisy Ridley) and her inspirational life story. Warner tells Awards Focus about her initial meeting on the film and how “outrageous it was that that nobody knew her and nobody had heard of her.” The engrossing details of the story became the inspiration for Warner’s score.
Trudy Ederle became the first woman to successfully swim across the English Channel in 1926. Born to immigrant parents, the swimmer overcame adversity in a society that frowned upon female swimmers. Two years before swimming across the Channel, Ederle competed for Team USA during the 1924 Paris Olympics. If the film is any indication, the female swimmers didn’t have the same training as their male counterparts. Ederle came home with a pair of bronze medals in both the 100m and 400m freestyle races. Sometime thereafter, Ederle comes across Bill Burgess (Stephen Graham) and becomes inspired to swim the 21 miles between France and England.
Joachim Rønning directed Young Woman and the Sea from a screenplay by Jeff Nathanson. The film stars Daisy Ridley, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Stephen Graham, Kim Bodnia, Jeanette Hain, Glenn Fleshler, Sian Clifford, and Christopher Eccleston.
Young Woman and the Sea is currently streaming on Disney+.
Awards Focus: How did you first become attached to Young Woman and the Sea?
Amelia Warner: I was sent the script and was told that they were looking for a female composer. I think I was on a list, luckily, and had a meeting with the writer, director, and the producers. We just kind of talked about my ideas and my vision for it and then they gave me the job.
AF: Did you know anything about Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle before getting involved with the film?
Amelia Warner: No, I didn’t know anything, and I’d never heard her name. I wasn’t aware of her at all. Actually, that’s one of the things that we all talked about in that initial meeting was just how kind of outrageous it was that that nobody knew her and nobody had heard of her. When you watch the footage of the parade, you just think how has this woman been kind of forgotten from time and from history. It’s certainly not a name that was ever mentioned to me in school or that I’ve ever seen. I mean, I have three daughters. I have a million kind of inspirational woman books for them, and she’s not mentioned in them. It’s a really weird, sad thing. That’s why I think the film felt really meaningful when we were making it.
AF: Yeah. I don’t even think I heard of her until I saw either the first trailer or got the first email about the film coming out.
Amelia Warner: Yeah, it’s really just crazy and also, it’s all fairly recent. This isn’t thousands of years ago. It’s just over a hundred years ago so you just think, how did this happen? I mean, yeah, it’s really strange.
AF: I know every composer has their own process when it comes to scoring. Are you the type that starts as soon as you read a script or do you wait until you are able to watch footage?
Amelia Warner: I usually will write something from the script. Even if I don’t share it with anybody, I think it’s often a really furtive time where you tend to be inspired and have some kind of idea. They rarely may end up in the film, if I’m honest, but I usually always write a theme or a couple of themes from the script. It depends so much on the director and the people involved, because some people really want to hear stuff early and like to hear it while they’re editing, and other people prefer to wait. This one, I became fully kind of engaged with the project—I’d say around the director’s cut is when I actually started writing to picture, and before that, I sent some some ideas. It started properly, I’d say, with the director’s cut.
AF: When it comes to watching the director’s cut, do you prefer the footage that comes with or without a temp score?
Amelia Warner: I’m trying to think if I’ve ever received a film without a temp score. I think maybe only once. It’s such a mixed bag. I’m not totally down on temp. I actually think it can be really, really helpful, and especially with a film like this, I think it would have been impossible for Úna to edit it without some kind of music. There’s a rhythm to the film. There’s a propulsion, the swimming. There’s a musicality to it so I think it would have been just impossible, really, without something.
Some of the temp was great and sometimes, the temp can just be really useful in what’s not working. Actually, there was a great deal of temp that wasn’t working, and everyone agreed that it wasn’t working. So then it’s kind of going, well, what is it that’s not working? Is it the tempo? Is it the instrumentation? It gives you just a little bit of guidance of where to start.
Also, as we went on with the film, the temp music changed and it became bigger and it became more epic. I think that the temp laid the path for me in a way that allowed me to then go bigger with the score than we’d maybe previously imagined, because the temp was kind of proving that it was working. I think it can be difficult and it’s hard when people really are attached to a certain piece and that’s always really hard. It also can be a really helpful starting point and even, like I say, just to start a discussion on, okay, what is it that you like about this. Often, it’s one thing. It can be intimidating for sure but I think it’s a necessary part of it.
AF: What sort of direction did you get as far as what director Joachim Rønning was looking for in the score?
Amelia Warner: I think that everyone was in agreement that this had to feel classic. We wanted it to have the feeling of the kind of old school Disney movies that I grew up watching and that kind of family feeling, and something that felt with real breadth, scope, and real emotion.
Everybody was really clear that they wanted it to be really thematic. They wanted strong melodies. That was the kind of jumping off point. Joachim’s really loves music and he had lots of notes and ideas, it wa pleasure to work with him.
AF: Is there a cue in the film that evolved the most from the time you first started working on the score?
Amelia Warner: Oh, yes. There’s a few. I’m trying to think which would be—I’ll tell you that the hardest cue to write weirdly—it’s never the one you think, it’s always a weird one. The hardest one—the thing that I wrote the most versions of, should I say was, was when Trudy grows up. When she gets into the water and she’s a child, and then she pops up and she’s an adult. That was really hard. It was just really difficult to get that tone right and to find, I think, because we had this emotional music, and then we had the more bombastic, bold, powerful, swimming sports kind of music.
But there was this missing piece, that for a while the film just didn’t have, and it was this more playful fun. We called it the free spirit theme because it’s about Trudy’s rebellion and fun, and also, at the beginning, swimming is so fun for her. It’s such an escape, it’s such a joy, and it’s so rebellious for her to be doing it at that time as a woman. That was a really important piece, but it was really hard to get to, but once we did it, it helps in lots of places in the film.
The thing that evolved the most would probably be the end. I mean, I’d say that final swim into the beach to the end of the film. I think that evolved, got bigger, and just kept kind of growing as as time went on.
AF: Do you have a preferred studio that you like to record at because of how the music sounds?
Amelia Warner: Yeah. I was really lucky to record at the Hall at AIR, which was my first choice, and I really, really wanted to do it there. Luckily, the dates worked out because it’s the most amazing space. You have the hall and you have the size, but you also have the roof that you can move up and down.
I think because this score–it is orchestral, but we also really wanted it to feel contemporary. I didn’t want it to feel restricted by the period that it was set, so actually, with the recording, I wanted that control to be able to kind of lower the roof, to have a slightly more produced sound. I wanted the orchestra to feel really punchy and tight and I actually didn’t want too much of a reverb hall sound. I wanted something that felt really clean so AIR is amazing because you have both. We were moving the roof up and down all the time.
AF: How long did it take to record the score?
Amelia Warner: We had eight days there, which was just felt incredible to actually have that much time. We had time to do everything. Normally, those sessions, they just feel so stressful and so pressured for time. This actually felt like we had time. We could try things. It was a really wonderful recording session.
AF: Did you always have an interest in scoring music or was it something that just something that happened along the way?
Amelia Warner: I always wanted to do it. I even remember when I was about fourteen thinking about it and thinking, Oh, my G-d, that would just be the most amazing thing in the world. I just didn’t really imagine that I could do it, to be honest, because I’m kind of self-taught. I play pretty much everything just by ear. I don’t read music very well. I didn’t have that classical music background, but I suppose the industry, even from then, even from me being a teenager to now, it’s really changed a lot. I feel like there’s there’s a lot more inclusivity, and it’s not such a small club. I’m really grateful that it has changed in that way, but it’s definitely something I always dreamt about doing but maybe just didn’t quite see the path.
I actually started as an actress and that was what got me into film and into the industry. When I was about fifteen, I started. I loved the film industry and I loved the collaboration. I always just felt like I was on the wrong side of it. I was like, No, no, I want to be with you guys over there. You guys are having these amazing discussions, and you’re shaping everything. I just I had this real yearning to be with them and not where I was.
AF: Yeah. Interestingly enough, I was talking to Úna earlier today about how it’s been three years since speaking to her about Belfast.
Amelia Warner: Oh, yes. Didn’t he sing? Didn’t he sing at that?
AF: He sang and I pulled out my camera immediately to start recording.
Amelia Warner: Yeah, I remember his publicist sent me the video, and I kind of woke up to it the next day and was like, Oh, my G-d! It was so amazing! I was just so proud of him that he got up and did that. It was so cool. I love that film. Úna’s amazing. She’s just incredible. I’ve loved, loved working with her.