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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] I treat each performance as the voice of the character on screen you can't see. So in other words, this is another character in the film

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and it's commenting throughout. And what I'm looking for is exactly the same emotions as an actor would look for, particularly the subtext of a scene.

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So who's in charge of the scene? How do they feel? What the weather's like? All those different areas.

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People ask me, do you ever run out of music? And you calm if you do it that way? So in the process of particularly scoring these Shakespeares, what I'm looking for

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is the authentic emotions behind what we're seeing. Not so much the body language, not so much the movement, but something that sums up the scene as far as possible. And then turn that into music, that

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is a bridge between the age of the films and the age of the audience watching, because I'm always aware that I'm doing this for 2026, not for 1908 or 1913.

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And that is important to me, because that way I feel that I'm actually making a difference, and I'm giving the audience something more than they can see.

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With the film that is very well known that I've not seen before but has a good reputation, I'll happily sit down and just play it cold in front of an audience, because that way I'm giving my first impression of that film.

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And if I'm enjoying the film, the music is the best I can perform because it's not thought through. It's purely instinctive.

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With something like this, yes, I feel I have to watch every film very closely. Read up if it's a scene that I don't know so that I can see what was going on

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in the play at the point that they've come to it in the film. I try to be as authentic as possible to the changes in the story as they happen and to give it a sense of presence I think in the music.

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I can say that's the best word I can come up with something whereby the music is specific to that film at that moment. So you couldn't take that music off and put it on another film,

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because it wouldn't be fitting the same way. It wouldn't be-- the emotions would be in the wrong place, the timings would be different, et cetera. And I think with Shakespeare, you've got to take it seriously

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and you have to be absolutely sure of your material even if it's material that only uses part of the plays and is from 110 years ago. With a film like Oh'phelia, Cartoon Burlesque,

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which I think is a lovely idea, the idea was it would be part of a programme filler, you put it up there as part of a whole evening of programmes. But because it's Oh'phelia and the assumption is that

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it's going to be sad, but the cartoon is absolutely not. It's lovely and it's fey and cute. And so when the dog comes in for instance, this becomes about the dog.

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That dog's always getting into mischief. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] The snail, I'll go to slow for the snail. How perfectly sweet!

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You don't have to go house hunting. These little comments are the comedy of the day, particularly British. The snail taken by the bird is really quite horrible

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actually after I've watched it a couple of times. But for the sake of the film, I'm just going to make it about the surrounding context, not about the fact that it's what the snail has just

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been swallowed. And up comes the note saying, This House To Let Unfurnished. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] So I'm trying to play within the pace of the film.

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Hamlet, her sweetheart, known as the Gloomy Dean, owing to his mind having been unhinged. Deary me. These puns were very prevalent in comedies at the time,

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but very much of their time as well. But because it's Hamlet, I'm going to turn it into Shakespeare, [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] but then go back to it being a comedy again.

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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] When he throws the vegetables, I try and catch those. Now, this very weird moment. To Bob or not to Bob?

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Where he's going to cut Ophelia's hair? The Bob was very famous hair style at the time, which Louise Brooks had made absolutely massive. So is Ophelia going to turn into Louise Brooks?

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More puns. The thing I feel about comedy is that it can change on a sixpence, [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] and that's what makes it fun.

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And if I have a pattern for doing comedies, particularly a comedy as an animation like this, it would be Tom and Jerry, because Tom and Jerry really did just.

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First of all, Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mousing is when there's movement happening, as there is with water coming out of the pump now.

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So I'm playing the music for the water. But then Laertes rushes in, so I'm going to do rush music. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] The character of Laertes is based

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on William S. Hart, who was a very famous Western star of the time. So I've done a Western theme to go with him. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]

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But Tom and Jerry was the way that I first learned that you don't have to have a piece of music that runs all the time. It can change, change, change, change, change.

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So when a character for instance is suddenly hit on the head, you can actually go-- and straight back into something completely different. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]

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And it has to be said, Shakespeare is secondary when it comes to Oh'phelia. It's there for a laugh. It's there for a bit of a joke.

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It's there to give the audiences a laugh, albeit a laugh which respects the fact that they're intellectual enough to a, know Shakespeare and b, quite like wordplay. We drop into Hamlet halfway through the play.

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And so we're at the moment where Laertes has come back to the palace after the death of his father, Polonius, and at the point at which his sister, Ophelia, is beginning to go mad.

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But because the play is so beautifully done in this film, the Johnston Forbes-Robertson, I do think that it requires music which is deeply respectful.

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Laertes' anger is all done through body language. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] And when Ophelia comes in, the scene becomes all about her. Even though she's at the back of the shot,

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she is in bright white. She's the only character that has got that white costume. So it immediately draws the eye, which means I can then produce an Ophelia aria if you like.

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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] You can see the performance. You can see how she would have worked this on stage as she gives each of them the flower that

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represents some element of their character-- there's Rosemary, that's for remembrance. And the effect that is having on Laertes is the heart of this scene.

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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] And as she goes, I would try and slightly distress the music so that you don't where it's going to go to next. Now, in the next scene in which Claudius reads the letter

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from Hamlet, you've got a problem that's also an opportunity, because you have a lot of text to get through. And when those text on screen, there's nothing to play.

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So that's when you then burst forth with your overture. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] And Claudius is plotting. I try to make as serious as possible,

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because it is the heart of the play. And now Gertrude is by the water. We know that what they've done with this shot is set that speech of Gertrude's about Ophelia.

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So we're not going to see her fall in, but she is. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] And then her body is carried in at the back of the scene. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]

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Now in this sequence, this is the first time we see Hamlet himself. So I'm making his theme as simple as I can and as direct as I can.

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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] I do think Forbes-Robertson is a phenomenal actor. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] His reaction with the skull of Yorrick being thrown up.

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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] A tune always helps. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] And I'm not taking any notice of the gravedigger.

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Because if I tried to play laughing gravedigger music at this point, it would just kill the scene. And now we get the alas poor Yorrick soliloquy. So I try and play a soliloquy.

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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] And now the funeral March for Ophelia is entering at the very back. And as more and more people come on,

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I'm going to try and build the music under them. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC] Then as everybody's in place, turn it into a moment that holds itself, but uses that little motif

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that she had as she went off in that last scene. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]