Joy

Joy is a 2024 British biographical drama film starring Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie and James Norton.  For me, it marked another collaboration with writer Jack Thorne following The Aeronauts, and The Swimmers, with this one being directed by Ben Taylor.  It tells the story of the world’s first in vitro fertilisation baby, Louise Brown, and as such is based on real events in the 1960s and 1970s.

The opportunity to write for such a moving true drama story was something that appealed to me hugely, and it was wonderful to work with Ben at a great level of detail for the cues in the film.  We went for a more intimate sound, trying to capture the sense of scientific progress that the film shows, whilst supporting the emotional journeys being undertaken by the key protagonists,  In one of those weirdly circumstantial coincidences that seem to so often happen with instruments, the week before I got the call to do the film I had been in LA and had ended up in a guitar shop that specialised in modified guitars with bridges made of rubber, giving a short, percussive but somehow soulful sound.  The instrument proved perfect for Joy, giving a sense of organic momentum to the music when combined with the piano and chamber strings.

The film premiered at the London Film Festival in 2024.