‘The Wild Robot’s Chris Sanders Paints Picture Of Film’s “Completely New Direction” In Score & Sound Design – Contenders Film: The Nominees

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There’s something special about DreamWorks Animation‘s The Wild Robot, which earned three Oscar nominations for Animated Feature, Sound and Original Score. “I knew from the moment I read the book that we had to move in a completely new direction in order to faithfully get this narrative up on the screen,” writer-director Chris Sanders says during a panel for Deadline’s Contenders Film: The Nominees.

One of the more unique aspects of the film is the lack of dialogue, which allowed for more reliance on sound design and score.

Even in the beginning of the film, only the main character Roz, voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, has dialogue. “One of my big nitpicks about American animation is that it tends to rely too much on dialogue, and this movie has quite a bit less dialogue [than] typical,” says supervising sound designer Randy Thom. “The great thing about that is that it allows the movie to be more cinematic than it would otherwise, and it allows space for Kris Bowers and for sound design, to really shine and to help tell the story.” RELATED: Contenders Film: The Nominees — Deadline’s Complete Coverage “The beginning was a bit scary in terms of how much responsibility would be on the music, but it also felt very exciting because it let me know that the score could have a lot of melodies,” adds Bowers, the film’s composer.

As oftentimes melodies can get in the way of a character’s dialogue, The Wild Robot presented an opportunity for Bowers to create melodic themes that grow with the characters over the film.