When you taught me how to dance miss potter

Miss Potter: Katie Melua - When You Taught Me How to Dance (Music Video 2006)

Music Video
20062006
3m

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Stars
- David Bamber(archive footage)
- Judith Barker(archive footage)
- Lucy Boynton(archive footage)

Stars
- David Bamber(archive footage)
- Judith Barker(archive footage)
- Lucy Boynton(archive footage)

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David Bamber

Fruing Warne
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Judith Barker

Hilda
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Lucy Boynton

Young Beatrix
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Jennifer Castle

Jane
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Barbara Flynn

Helen Potter
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Matyelok Gibbs

Miss Wiggin
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Patricia Kerrigan

Fiona
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Anton Lesser

Harold Warne
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Ewan McGregor

Norman Warne
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Katie Melua

Katie Melua
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Lloyd Owen

William Heelis
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Bill Paterson

Rupert Potter
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Emily Watson

Millie Warne
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

Renée Zellweger

Beatrix Potter
(archive footage)
(uncredited)

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Release date
- 2006 (United Kingdom)
Country of origin
- United Kingdom
Language
- English
Filming locations
- England, UK
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Nigel Westlake - Composer Interview with focus on Miss Potter

This interview was conducted by telephone on 4th January 2007, with Jim Paterson speaking to Nigel Westlake about his musical background and the (soon to be released) film Miss Potter which covers a key period in the life of Beatrix Potter.

An audio version of this interview is also available for download as an mp3 podcast (23Mb).

Musical Background

JP: The Miss Potter film and soundtrack is going to be released shortly in the UK. I've a number of questions about the music, but first I'd like to understand a little bit more about your musical background and how you came to work in film music.

NW: I began my musical career playing the clarinet. My father was the principal clarinettist in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and he taught me to play from about the age of 10, and for many years I aspired to become an orchestral clarinettist and follow in his footsteps. In my mid-teens I started experimenting with composition, and became quite interested in the process of composing and its impact on my interpretation of existing classical music, namely the music I was studying at the time, that being the clarinet repertoire of great concertos and so on. I began to write little pieces for my friends to play, a very diverse collection of instrumentalists from jazz, classical and rock backgrounds. We formed a band and we toured with the band for a few years along the East coast of Australia with some success. Through that experience I began to get invitations to compose music for Radio and Theatre and Circus, and by and by I became involved in film.

My mother found a little ad in the paper one day which she cut out to show to me, which was asking for applicants to sign up for the first ever music and film course at the Australian Film and Television School based in Sidney. I applied for it thinking that I didn't have a chance of getting in but I did, and my work was noticed by some producers who were involved in the course and I was subsequently invited to write for some documentaries. During this time I was maintaining a career as a clarinet player. So I had for quite some time a dual career existence as a composer of television and media music, and on the other hand a classical career as a clarinettist in various chamber music ensembles. It was about 11 years ago that my composition career eclipsed my playing career and I started to get some fantastic offers to write film scores. But really it did interfere with my performing career, so at that point I began to concentrate fully on composition and I actually stopped playing the clarinet. So that's where I've come from. I'm a self-taught composer and gained a lot of my skills working as an instrumentalist with other instrumentalists, with a keen interest in contemporary music.

JP: That's very interesting. You say that you were self-taught but you did attend that course in Sidney.

NW: Well that was a short couse, about 8 weeks long, and it was more to do with the mechanics of fitting music with film. It wasn't a composition course as such but about applying music to film. I had as my tutor a brilliant American composer called Bill Motzing, who's been involved for many years now in a number of feature scores himself and more recently he's been doing a lot of teaching and orchestration for other composers. That was a wonderful introduction into music for film. I've also had a great opportunity to take my scores to other composers whose work I admire, and get them to commment on the work and give me feedback in a more informal situation. So "self-taught" is a bit of a long shot, but it has been more an informal approach to composition.

JP: Yes, so you didn't study composition formally for 3 or 4 years at University. In your film music you mentioned a number of documentaries but, to my mind at least, you are most familiar as the composer for the Babe films.

NW: A lot of the documentaries I've done have been for lesser known television presentations, but more recently I've been involved in Imax films, which in a sense are documentaries. I've done 5 Imax film scores to date, and that's a wonderful format to work in which is very different to the standard drama feature film score.

Miss Potter - music box theme and song

JP: So going back to Babe then, the first Babe film was directed by Chris Noonan just like Miss Potter. Have you formed a particular close relationship with Chris?

NW: Yes, we formed quite a close relationship. It was a very healthy composer-director relationship that we established on Babe, and we always said that we would look for another project to work on together. Chris has been very busy the last 10 years or so developing a number of film scripts, several of which he'll now be bringing to the screen over the next few years. But Miss Potter was one that he felt would be interesting for us to work on together, so I was invited to submit some ideas for this score. In fact one particular idea which is in the centre of the film is a very touching scene where Ewan McGregor who is playing the part of Beatrix Potter's publisher, Norman Warne, is taken up to Beatrix's bedroom one Christmas Eve in order for her to present him with a beautiful painting that she has done as a Christmas gift for him to show her appreciation for his support of her work, in the publication of her first children's book "The Story of Peter Rabbit". He notices in the corner of her room a little music box. He picks it up and it begins to play. He says "Oh yes I know this tune which is "Let Me Teach You How To Dance"." He says he's a terrible dancer but the words are rather sweet. Beatrix says to him "Oh, you know the words. Can you please sing the words for me." and then Ewan proceeds to sing this song.

Chris rang me up several says before they were due to film this scene and said we've got this song and we haven't got a tune for it. I think I'd like you to write me a waltz in the style of the popular genre of the period circa 1890s. It should be very formal, very sweet like a parlour song. This was of course a new venture for me having never written anything like this before, but I quickly dashed off a tune and sent it through to Chris on email as an mp3 file, saying "is this the sort of thing that you want? And if it is I'll keep developing it to make it better for the shoot". He wrote back a couple of days later saying "Yes, we've shot the scene and the tune worked beautifully, thank you very much. Would you like to come to London and write the score? Because I think that this theme should be incorporated as part of the score of this film and you're obviously the person to do it. So it was with great excitement that I packed up and moved to London for several months and worked very closely with Chris on the score. I had the wonderful opportunity to work in London with fantastic, top-of-the-tree session musicians. I had the great priviledge to work with people like Maggie Rodford at Air-Edel and of course Mike Batt and Katie Melua who came on board at the very last moment.

JP: So how did that happen? Were you involved?

NW: What happened was I got a call from Maggie a couple of days before I was due to leave London to return to Sidney, because the score had all been recorded and the job had wound up. Maggie said "Look, the producers are interested in turning the music box tune into some sort of pop song for the end credits." Of course my immediate reaction was "It's a waltz. When was the last time a waltz was like a popular song? Maybe 80 years ago or something." She said "I think you should give it a go, and I think the perfect person to work with would be Katie Melua, and Mike Batt. " Of course I'd known of Mike Batt's work for many years, his work on the Wombles and his music theatre piece "The Hunting of the Snark". In fact my mother played in his orchestra when he toured to Australia with that show. She brought home a CD of his work and played it to me, saying here's a distinguished chap who's doing some good stuff. So I was really quite familiar with Mike's work.

So I went up to his studio one morning and he said "OK we've got the band booked at midday and the orchestra's coming in at three, and Katie's coming in at six, so where's the song?" I said "Well here's the music box tune. Basically we have to turn the lyrics around." Because in the film it's sung by a male: "Let Me Teach You How To Dance" a sort of patriarchal male gesture. In the case of Katie singing it, Mike turned the whole thing around and in 40 minutes and re-wrote the lyrics for this beautiful song "When You Taugh Me How To Dance". So that in a sense becomes the spirit of Beatrix Potter reminiscing on her early days, and her first romantic encounter with her publisher Norman Warne. When I played it to the editor of the film, Robin Sales, he said it's just like Renee Zellwegger actually singing it in the style of Beatrix Potter as it encaptulates the spirit of it, the slightly eccentric, quirky yet warm spirit of Beatrix herself. And it happened in 12 hours!

JP: So no time pressures then!

NW: No, you know what it's like in film. So it was great to have Mike there. He works so closely with Katie and understands her voice. To write those lyrics so quickly, he's just a genius you know. That was great. We sent the finished tape along to the mixing session, and all the producers were absolutely overwelmed with the response. They were very excited by it, and so it becomes this prominent song at the end of the film.

JP: I've heard the soundtrack obviously, but I've not seen the film as it's not been released yet.

NW: As you'll see Jim that theme is a recurring theme throughout the score, and in a way it becomes Beatrix's theme that accompanies her through this labyrinth of emotional turmoil that is encapsulated within this six years that cover that period of her life.

Miss Potter - other aspects of the score:

JP: Other than this key theme then, what kind of direction did Chris Noonan give you? What kind of guidance?

NW: The score works on several levels. The other thing we spoke about in great detail was the fact that you're dealing with characters from the Victorian era, very straightlaced, people never said exactly what they were thinking. It was a very cloistered and repressive environment. All the time there's these deep emotional undercurrents underpinning the action on screen. You're not actually looking at that on the screen but you know that it's there because of the dramatic context of the work. So Chris wanted the music to take on this almost subliminal aspect, and try and support the undercurrents of the dramatic context that was happening between the various characters. So the score in some instances is working on that level, and then in other instances you've got the beauty and wonder of Beatrix's imagination, the creative spark that helps her create these wonderful characters in her books. That in itself is another strand of the score, where a particular theme is used, orchestrated with celeste and harp to give a sort of magical quality to the work.

JP: As I've said I've not seen the film, but trailers from the film have been shown on TV, and some of the characters in the illustrations in her books are animated. Is there a lot of animation and did it require a special approach to the music?

NW: No, I'm not sure that I've seen that particular trailer but the characters only come alive for very brief moments and not very frequently. So more often than not there might be a very subtle musical reference to their actual movement when they're animated. It's more a case of the music supporting Beatrix's inner life, her fantasy world. So there's no great slabs of time where the characters are interacting with her. You only get the occasional blink of an eye or character running off a page or something like that. It's not an animation in that sense, in the traditional understanding of the word animation. Certainly animation is used very effectively but very subtly as part of the film. It wasn't like working on a cartoon.

JP: Yes. It's sometimes hard to get the impression of what a film's like from a trailer because it emphasises particular moments. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is that Rachel Portman is credited with 3 of the tracks on the album. How did that come about?

NW: That was a directive from the producers. They felt that she had a certain approach that was appropriate for several scenes in the film. So it came to be that she wrote a theme which is used on a number of occasions for Beatrix's involvement in the Lake District. Towards the end of the film Beatrix moves to the Lake District and buys up a lot of farm land up there and becomes very attached to this place, because that's one of the great heritages of her life as she left all this land in its original condition to the British people. So it was seen as appropriate that Rachel become involved. I guess she had a particular approach or sound that they were looking for, so she wrote a few tracks for the film.

JP: It seems to blend quite well together on the CD.

NW: That's good, I'm glad you said that, Jim. We didn't actually collaborate at all, we were working quite separately. She was being supervised by producers so I wasn't really sure what they were up to. She had been listening to my score when she started work on the film, so she followed a very similar pattern in orchestration.

JP: Yes, that's right, the instrumentation is obviously very similar, just strings and woodwind with piano, and you mentioned harp and celeste.

NW: Yes, that's right. We had pretty much an identical orchestra between us.

JP: Were there any other aspects of the film that you saw as being key to the music, or particularly difficult to score.

NW: I guess the most challenging aspect of the score was dealing with transitional passages in time. For instance there's one track on the score which is track 9 on the soundtrack which is "Beatrix and Norman", which is basically establishing Beatrix's relationship with her publisher. She is forbidden to marry him by her parents because he is seen to be a tradesman and beneath them. So the parents say we're going on a vacation for 6 months. If at the end of that time you still love him then you can proceed and get married. There's this wonderful scene, a big romantic emotional peak of the film where he comes to see her off at the station on her way to the Lake District for her vacation. As you'll see in the picture this has to traverse some very interesting, emotional moments, and either side of that railway sequence is a bunch of footage of Beatrix and Norman together. That was quite difficult to make those transitions between those quite intimate scenes and then lightening up into a larger orchestral palette for the farewell at the station and situations like that. Once I had the thematic material at my finger tips it was then a matter of fitting it to picture and making those transitions seemless and as effortless as possible which is always a challenge. So that was the most challenging aspect of it.

Next Steps:

JP: I'll look out for that scene in the film when it comes out. So what's next for you musically. Have you got other projects lined up, or maybe you're already in the middle of some projects?

NW: Yes I've got many things lined up over the next couple of years, several orchestral commissions for local orchestras here in Australia and some chamber music works. And I'm looking at a few film scripts at the moment, one of which is with Chris Noonan again, based in South Africa, a film called called Zebras. This is a very exciting script, and he's going into pre-production shortly on that one. It will involve a lot of traditional African music as well as orchestral underscore. So I'm very excited about that. We'll see if that comes off, you know how it is with films: You never know until it's actually in the can. So plenty of work which is great.

JP: I think we're coming towards the end of our allotted time, I want to thank you very much for your time. It's been very interesting listening to you and I'm looking forward to seeing the film when it comes out.

NW: Great, Jim, great to talk to you and I hope you enjoy it.

JP: Thanks very much and best wishes on those future projects that you talked about including Zebras.

NW: Thanks very much, Jim, and best wishes to you also.

JP: Thanks very much and goodbye.

Miss Potter - Miss Potter

Miss Potter 2006 biographical drama film directed by Chris Noonan. It is based on the life of a children's author and illustrator. Beatrix Potter, and combines stories from her own life with animated episodes featuring characters from her stories such as Peter the Rabbit. Screenwriter Richard Maltby, Jr., director of the Tony Award-winning Broadway revue, Fosse , starring movie stars Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor as her publisher and fiancé, Norman Warne, and Lloyd Owen as attorney William Hillis. Emily Watson plays Warne's sister, Millie. Lucy Boynton also plays the young Beatrix Potter and Justin McDonald appears as the young William Heales. This was filmed at St. Peter's Square in Hammersmith, Cecil Court, Osterley Park, Covent Garden, the Isle of Man, Scotland and the Lake District.

Miss Potter received a limited release in the United States on December 29, 2006 to allow the film to compete for the 2007 Oscars. pre-Oscar release date of February 25, 2007 ^[2] The date seemed to change several times, but the Weinstein Company's website eventually listed the release date as March 9. The film received generally positive reviews. ^[3] and earned Zellweger a sixth Golden Globe nomination.

Content

1 section
2 Chop
3 production
4 Reception
6 Recommendations
7 External link and revealing that she is a London spinster and that her ambition to become a children's writer is widely frowned upon. She and her chaperone, Miss Wiggin, visit Harold and Fruiting Varne, who decide to publish it on The Tale of Peter Rabbit . Beatrix is delighted and returns home to celebrate the event through the parks. However, it turns out that the Warne brothers think her book is preposterous and no doubt a failure. The only reason they agreed to release this is because they promised their little brother, Norman, the project.

When Norman visits Beatrix, they make a decision about her book regarding size, color and price. Norman admits he's never done anything like this before, but he's thought a lot about her book. Beatrix realizes what Norman's brothers have done, but she and Norman are determined to prove them wrong. Norman takes Beatrix to the printer and she reproduces her drawings and sells copies of her book. Beatrix and Norman visit the Warne family, where Beatrix meets the wheelchair-bound Mrs. Warne and Norman's sister Millie. Millie has decided that she and Beatrix will be friends and is overjoyed that Beatrix is an old maid like Millie, who thinks men are just boring. The family befriends Beatrix, but Helen Potter, Beatrix's social climbing mother, is unhappy with her daughter's time with the merchants.

When she returns home, Beatrix and Helen argue about Beatrix's decision not to marry. Beatrix reminds her mother of the book she wrote, and her mother retorts that she believes the venture will fail. However, book sales are doing very well, and copies are on display in many shop windows. Norman encourages Beatrix to submit more stories for publication. Even Beatrix's father, Rupert, buys a copy of A Tale of Two Bad Mice after hearing his friends at the Reform Club buy them. Encouraged by her father's success and support, Beatrix invites Norman and Millie to her family's Christmas party. Everyone is having fun at the party, and Beatrix shows Norman a story she is writing especially for him, "The Bunnies' Christmas Party". She shows him a drawing from the story and shows him her workshop where she writes and draws. Miss Wiggin falls asleep from too much brandy (a generous helping of which Norman added to her cup of coffee) and Norman musters up the courage to propose to Beatrix. Mrs. Potter interrupts them before Beatrix can answer and they join the other guests in the living room. Beatrix confesses to Millie about Norman proposing and Millie convinces her to say yes. Beatrix then tells the guests the stories she writes, and they are delighted and amused. Mrs. Potter, however, does not understand what is being said. As the guests leave, Beatrix whispers her agreement to marry Norman, who is overjoyed.

Norman visits Rupert Potter at his club to ask for his consent and is fired minutes later. At the Potter household, Beatrix and her parents argue over her decision to marry Norman. Beatrix is relentless. Mrs. Potter tells her that Potter cannot marry a trade, but Beatrix reminds her that her grandfathers were merchants. When Mrs. Potter threatens to deprive her daughter of her financial position, Beatrix reminds them of her brother Bertram, who married the daughter of a wine merchant and was not rejected. She states that she can survive on her own with her books. Mr. Potter tries to reason with his daughter, but she tells him that she wants to be loved and not just married to someone because he can provide for her.

Beatrix asks the bank about her royalties, wondering if she could ever buy a house in the country. She is surprised and delighted to learn that book sales have made her wealthy enough to buy several estates and a house in the city if she so desires. When she returns home, her parents propose that Beatrix keep her engagement to Norman a secret and vacation with them in the Lake District for the summer. If she still wishes to marry him at the end of the summer, they agree that they will not object to the marriage. Beatrix agrees to the proposal and is quite convinced that she will not change her mind, telling her parents to prepare for the October wedding.

Norman and Beatrix kiss goodbye at the train station and write many letters while apart until one day a letter arrives from his sister Millie informing him that Norman is ill. Beatrix returns to London to find that Norman has died. Overcome with grief, Beatrix locks herself in her room. She turns to her drawing, only to find her characters disappearing from the page. Millie comes to visit and console her, and Beatrix decides that she must leave the house.

Beatrix buys a farm in a village in the Lake District and moves there to resume her work. She hires a farmhand to run the farm and finds solace in her surroundings. With the help of her lawyer, William Hillis, she outbids real estate developers at auctions and buys many more farms and land in the area to preserve nature. The captions explain that eight years after moving to the Lake District, she marries William (to her mother's disapproval) and the land she bought eventually becomes part of the Lake District National Park in North West England.

Throw
- Renee Zeleveger as Beatrix Potter
  - Lucy Boynton as a young Beatrix
  - Evan McGregor as Norman Warn
  - Emily Waln
  - Lloyd Owen as William Healys
  - Justin McDonald as young William
  - Anton Lesser as Harold Warne
  - David Bamber as Fruing Warne
  - Fillida Law in the role of Mrs. Louise Varn
  - Judith Barker as Hilda
  - Mathecus Gibbs in the role of Miss Wiggin
  - Lynn Farli in the role of Lady Sybil
  - John Vudway as sir
  - Jayn Hau as Lady Hau as Lady Haw Mr Copperthwaite
  - Claire Clifford as Mrs Haddon-Bell
  - Richard Mulholland as Ashton Clifford
  Production
  
  0003 Baby ), who waited for many years until he finally found the script that inspired him. Cate Blanchett, who originally approached Noonan to direct, was supposed to star in the film at some point, but apologetically left the project when one of her other films was greenlit beforehand. ^[4] Zellweger became the film's executive producer because she was unhappy with the script and wanted to be more involved. ^[5]
  
  The film first came to the attention of Ewan McGregor with Zellweger, who kept in touch with him after working on the film together. Down with love. ^[6] McGregor described the film as having something of a similar interest to this film and noted that he was familiar with the illustrations and stories of Beatrix Potter, which he says he reads to his children. ^[6] To prepare for the role, McGregor studied Norman Warne's photographs and visited contemporary Warne publishers. ^[7] Zellweger read actual letters between Beatrix Potter and Norman Warne and Millie to prepare for the role, but she had trouble with her accent, which she said was very different from Bridget Jones'. ^[8]
  
  Since there were no recordings of Beatrix Potter's voice, they had to guess; eventually the voice was softened so as not to irritate modern audiences with the strained, high-pitched voice that the woman who stood by Beatrix Potter might have had at the time. ^[9] Zellweger said that she read several Beatrix Potter stories as a child, but never knew anything about the woman herself. ^[10] Noonan said that when he was growing up, he never read the stories of Beatrix Potter, and that "I knew about her because of all these dishes with her characters." ^[10]
  
  The film featured animated versions of the characters and illustrations of Beatrix Potter, which were combined into live performance footage. According to Chris Knott (who previously worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit ), the film's VFX supervisor for Passion Pictures, were given access to collections of Potter's original work to help them recreate them for animation. ^[11] Noonan said it was hard to find someone who still did animation, but ended up finding such a person in Alison Hamilton, who already greatly appreciated Potter's work. ^[12] The costumes for the film were designed by the Oscar winner. Anthony Powell. The film score was composed by Nigel Westlake (who had previously worked with Noonan on Baby ) despite the fact that Rachel Portman was brought in to record music for the Lake District scenes. During filming, Noonan asked Westlake to come up with waltz-like tunes for some of their lyrics, and, in collaboration with Mike Butt and Kathy Melua, the same song was also turned into a pop song that was used during the film's end credits. ^[13]
  
  Reception
  
  The film received positive reviews. As of June 2020, the film has a 67% approval rating on the review aggregator. Rotten Tomatoes, based on 129 Paterson, Jim (January 4, 2007). "Nigel Westlake - Interview". Mfiles.co.uk . Received on December 16, 2008.