Words by Charles Steinberg

Anne Nikitin has made a name for herself as a score composer by reliably amplifying tension and anticipation in productions belonging to the genres of documentary and narrative drama. She wields musical language that crystallizes climax and nimbly dances through ambiguity, keeping the viewer locked in the frames. If the subject matter and plot are the fish hooks, Nikitin's music moves through the story like the line of a fly fisherman, mesmerically luring you in.

Her music for award-winning docudramas like The Imposter and American Animals, and features like Calibre, showcased her instinctive sense of direction and pace in navigating the suspenseful unveiling of truths. But like a character actor always being typecast as the villain, Nikitin has been more keen of late to take on projects that allow her to show her range beyond heightening investigations of real individuals in extraordinary circumstances.

The new Netflix series Fate: The Winx Saga has allowed Nikitin to do just that. The young-adult drama invites us into a modern magical realm where we find teenage fairies attending a boarding school, learning to control their powers as well as their youthful impulses. The reframing of franchises like Harry Potter and Twilight opened up a new territory for Nikitin to explore, where she found her footing and combined new techniques with those tried and true.

We found Nikitin at her home studio in London [where else?] hard at work on an upcoming documentary about Marilyn Monroe. She shared her delight in getting to try her hand in a new genre, thoughts on the agency of music in documentaries compared to fictional features, and her impressions of the growing awareness of women in film scoring.

How am I finding you? Finishing a project? Watching your favorite show all over again?

I'm working on a Marilyn Monroe documentary, revisiting her with a Me Too, 21st-century sort of hat on, and it's fascinating.

I wonder, does this pandemic shift your trajectory back into the world from whence you came, that being documentaries because there tends to be more control in the way those are produced? Were you trending more towards features and tv series before this?

That's a good question. I have had a lot of job offers for documentaries at the moment, and it seems it's because of the pandemic, and they're slightly easier to make as far as shooting, but this one's been in the pipeline for a long time, and I love Marilyn, so I've wanted to do this for a while. And I seem to dabble in everything anyway. I flip between feature films and drama series and documentaries, and I like that. I like to do different things. Otherwise, it gets a bit boring.

If I had to identify an area where your music belongs or situations that your music brings the most out of, it would be the procedural lead-up to an ultimate moment or event, where things are coming together. Knowledge is being gathered by the viewer and being collected for an outcome that's in the balance. That kind of music can be confined to certain colors and sonic levels. Was your interest in Fate: The Winx Saga partly to do with moving away from that area?

Well, I started in documentary, so that's probably what you're identifying. The big show I was scoring a lot of was Locked Up Abroad, which is still going. I think it's in its tenth or eleventh year now. It's quite a high-intensity docudrama series about real people getting locked up abroad for doing crazy things. Lots of chase sequences. Lots of heartbreak and pretty high octane. I cut my teeth scoring those, where I had to have that brewing feeling in the music. Something is happening, and you don't know what, but you know it's bad. I suppose that's something that translates well into drama, so I started scoring more narrative dramas. I scored a film called Four Kids and It about a year ago. It's a kids' fantasy based on a very famous novel starring Michael Caine and Russell Brand. I met the music supervisor on that film, Matt Biffa, and we hit it off really well. He thought I'd be good for Fate because he was to be the music supervisor. I guess because of my experience on Four Kids and It and having the ability to create moments of tension and brewing to a climax, they thought I'd be a good fit for the series.

But you're also bringing out atmosphere and magic and an assortment of characters. It sounded like an expansion from what you have done a lot of.

I had to create a huge orchestral score with an atmospheric, magical sound for Four Kids and It, while Fate was more drummed-down for a smaller ensemble. For Fate, I wanted to merge classical instruments with synths. But yes, there were more peaks and troughs in Fate than in the documentary world. There were a lot more characters to highlight than you might get in a talking-head documentary. I had to create a sound world for each of the characters that I knit together to create one big world.

How did you go about finding the sound for each character? Was it based on their individual fairy powers?

I didn't want it to be obvious, like a John Williams theme that tells you Darth Vadar is coming. I wanted it to be more subtle, so there weren't big melodic themes for the characters. I was doing it more with sounds and little motifs. For instance, with Terra the earth fairy, I imagined her growing these plants and some weird vocal sounds associated with that. I had these vocals that I had recorded from my friend Jessica, and I knitted them together to make them sound weird, and that sound emerges when there's a focus on Terra. Then I had little prayer bells for Musa, who's the empath, and when she gets together with her love interest, Sam, that motif comes in. It's all very subtle and not that sweeping Hollywood style.

This show appears to want to carry on the legacies of Hollywood franchises like Harry Potter and Twilight but reintroduce that in a fresh context. Are you conscious of that when you initially think about what your will approach will be? What's your position on making stylistic references to similar franchises?

I consciously didn't want to go down the Harry Potter path. That's not what this show is about. That's a big-budget Hollywood film that's huge in every way. Fate isn't that beast, and I actually hadn't seen Twilight or heard the music. I didn't want to reference other shows in this kind of world. I just sat in front of my keyboard and watched segments of the edit and began tinkering away. I tried to capture the specific magical feeling that the creator Brian Young was after and incorporate my dark synth music influences. I grew up listening to things like The Cure and other "gothy" things, so I do like to add in bits of electric guitar and synth and combine them with classical instrumentation.

I'm always fascinated by how what people listen to comes out in what they write. In this case, the source music is what I guess you could call contemporary emo-goth-pop. Do you ever listen to the source music to get into a space for scoring?

Sometimes I listen to other scores and other types of music if I want ideas. I might put on a record or something for some influence. With Fate, I was privy to all the conversation surrounding the source music, which is very unusual. I had never really been a part of that conversation before. I was listening to what they were putting in the film and what ideas they had, and what they wanted to clear, which was good for me because I was able to then understand that world they were trying to create and not veer too far away from that. So some of the synths and drum kits I used worked well with the source music, I think. Sometimes they merged so much that I don't think people could tell what my music was and what was the source. I sort of wanted that to be the case.

A case in point, there was the moment when the male and female leads, Sky and Bloom, kiss for the first time. Your music romantically brings it up to the front door, and then a London Grammar song sweeps in to carry it over!

Well spotted! Yeah, I was asked if I could make it sound seamless and create something that would merge into that song. Weirdly, I recorded that track at Rak Studios in London, and I was trying to match the piano sounds to the London Grammar song, even though it wasn't the piano I had been using for the rest of the score. While we were recording, one of the studio's assistants said, "Oh, that's the piano London Grammar did use for that song!"

As a composer wanting to keep developing through your work, are you more open to series like Fate that might allow you to add to your bag of tricks and stretch your legs beyond the language that intensifies the worlds of docudrama?   

Absolutely. I've worked on things where you think, "I've done this for so many years now. I'm tired of sounding like myself [laughs] in this exact same genre. I love to be challenged and be given opportunities to go in all sorts of directions and, as you say, stretch my legs. And then maybe go back to what I was doing a few years earlier, in a circular motion. In terms of bags of tricks, when I first started out, my very good friend, who was a prolific composer at the time, was talking about a box of tricks that you pull out. I was like, "What's my box of tricks?! I don't know! Do I have a box? Am I just trying to sound like everyone else?" It's something that I think all composers go through. I still go through it. You have imposter syndrome, and you think, "How am I doing this for a living? Someone's going to find out the truth and I'm never going to get hired again!" 

But as with everything, it comes with experience, and suddenly you go, "Oh, that's something I keep going back to. That might be what's in my box." On Fate, I went back to my favorite instruments that I like to use now that are my box of tricks. I'm very comfortable writing for strings and harp and piano, and I wanted to merge that with a synth-based world. That genre is something I hadn't done before, and I loved it. I thought it was very fun.

Did you have more fun than normal in making the music for this series?

[Laughter] I have a lot of fun on ninety percent of what I work on. You do get the nightmare movie once in a while. In the last few years, I've had the most amazing projects and the most amazing people to work with. I've been really lucky in that way, and Fate was one of them where we all just jelled as creators and as friends. We had a music meeting every week for about eight months, which is quite unusual. We would meet in London each week, spotting it and talking about music. It was great to connect that way, and we wound up really looking forward to those meetings even though it was work. We would go through all the music and make sure we were on the same page and then have a laugh afterward and decompress. I also felt a lot of respect from Brian and [Executive Producer] Judy [Counihan] towards me, making me feel like part of the team. Normally, composers can just sort of be tacked on the end. You're on your own and don't really know what's going on, but they made me feel part of the whole production, which was really nice...I was pleased that Fate was one of those instances where I was brought on board very early, and I had a blank canvas in a way. I had time to mess around and to mess up. That's always great because it creates a real moment of trust when you can get something wrong and nobody freaks out.

That seems like the ideal work arrangement. It makes me think about your relationship with Bart Layton. I got the sense from your work on The Imposter and American Animals that you are very compatible aesthetically and share a film sense.

We get along super well, and again, he's one of those directors that likes to bring me on early and makes me feel a part of the entire production. He tries to make the whole production a big collaboration with everybody involved. He asks my opinion about things other than music, and I love that about him. On The Imposter, I already knew him quite well because he runs a production company called Raw TV, and they're the ones that did Locked Up Abroad, which was my first job. So, I had been working for his company for many years, and as the executive producer, he was always hearing my music. I was incredibly excited when he approached me to do his music for The Imposter. It was this crazy idea, and we all jumped into it together. It was a first for all of us, a first big film. I think because of that relationship, and that it worked out so well, he brought me back for American Animals. We've got a great relationship that I hope continues.

I love his filmmaking style, the blending of documentary with feature. Even The Imposter felt like a feature film during parts of it. I'm not sure I've seen another film like American Animals in the ways it incorporated documentary exposition into the feature narrative.

I remember I, Tonya came out around the same time and sort of felt in the same realm [of mixing the two genres]. I felt Bart really pushed the boat with American Animals and even with The Imposter. I think prior to that, documentary was a little more straight. He started to blur the lines and experiment on that film, and it paved the way for American Animals. Bart sent me the script before he started shooting, and I loved it. I couldn't put it down. I love his stories and ideas and the way he shoots things. He's an incredibly clever director.

He gives you creative opportunities, right? Does the way he tells stories open some doors for you as a composer with the way he plays around with perspective and breaching the fourth wall? I remember a moment in American Animals when Spencer's character is tapping porcelain dogs on a table in a rhythmic pattern, and your score cue is born from and extends that pattern. That was so cool. I love the way perspective is toyed with there. 

Absolutely. Bart plays a lot with truth and what is real and what isn't, and you have to consider where you draw the line between the documentary and the drama. Who are you going to believe here? I say it was an incredible experience, but it was also incredibly tough. It was a tough edit and tough to find our feet musically. I think we are all on it for about a year in post-production, figuring out how to tell the story. From a musical point of view, there were so many elements to the storytelling and it was a question of how to pull them together so that it didn't sound disparate – so that it sounded of one voice and world. It also started off being a lot darker than it turned out. I had scored a lot of it, and we watched it all through in one go and went, "Ahh, it's just too dark." [Laughs]. Alright, so let's wipe away the first half and start again and lighten it up a bit. Make it comical. One of the characters Warren is just hilarious.

When I was listening closely to some of the documentaries you've worked on, I recognised inherent pacing. I don't know how to give it the terminology it deserves, but the timing and resonance of your notes assist in building anticipation and gives weight to what the talking heads are describing. Your music has this agile way of moving the viewer through the subject matter and talking head description.

I suppose with documentary, the composer's job is to create drama. Talking heads and their stories can be very dramatic – sometimes fact is crazier than fiction – but I think music is there to enhance those moments because you're not watching the action unfold in front of your eyes. They're describing a shootout, but you're not actually seeing the shootout. You're not in that moment, whereas, in a drama, it's all there. The sound effects are there, and everything's there, so maybe music doesn't have to work so hard. In a documentary, although you have to be respectful of the talking head and be subtle and let them shine, you also have to try to create momentum through what they're saying.

Momentum and a building towards something are exactly what I feel. You're hanging on people's words more when the music is working in that way. Is that a part of film music theory that you learn? Are there principles surrounding musical agency in suspenseful stories that you learn in a formal context? Are there techniques used to build anticipation and a focus on instruments that serve that purpose as well?

That's a really good question and something I think about quite often. You know, why are we all using this to create that feeling? My memory of the study of film music was that we watched a lot of films and listened to and read a lot of scores. We had young filmmakers come in with their films that we would score to.

There are many composers out there who are brilliant, but it doesn't make them good at scoring films. They might not have a clue about how to create those subtle or dramatic nuances or twists and turns at a moment's notice. It's something that comes from practice but also a feeling, and you might just not have that feeling. I don't know if I'm using the tropes you point out because I've learned them, but it's partly from practicing my craft for so long. I spent so many years creating scores for short films before I got my first job. That helped me figure out what my tricks would be to make the audience feel a certain way. 

It also just seeps in whenever we watch something. Obviously, as film composers, we're very much aware of all the music that's going into whatever we watch. It's always very annoying for my partner when I gush, "Oh, that music!" But he's a director, so he's always criticizing everything as well. It must be a nightmare to watch anything with us [Laughter]. But I think you learn as you go what works for you and what works for other people. And also what seeps into you from what you're absorbing along the way.

I thought that a particularly strong example of taking that ability to capture and hold tension and anticipation and translating that into a dramatic feature was Calibre. That's a film that has quietly found recognition and appreciation, and I see why. For one thing, I leap at any chance to travel to Scotland in a film, but with each passing scene, the situation becomes direr, and you can't look away. What did you do to keep that mood intact?

It was Matt Palmer's first feature film that he spent many years trying to get the money to make. I read the script and thought, "Oh my god, I love this. This is ridiculous." That one moment in the film turns everything around. I remember writing a lot of cues for him while he was editing. He really liked them, and we had a nice conversation, but I didn't get the job! I was a bit heartbroken, but you're used to that in what we do. About a month later, he called me and said, "I'm so sorry, but we just keep going back to the tracks you wrote for us. They're working. Can we get you back?" and I went, "Uhhhhhhh...alright yeah [sarcastically]" As a result, I came on quite late and only had three weeks to turn it around, so it was crazy. I drew a lot from the forest, which I thought was a character in itself. I recorded the sounds of wood because I imagined the trees and the creaking in the main characters' consciousness because they don't know what to do. I also wanted to hear the wooden sounds of the string instruments as they played, the sounds of a chair creaking or a bow tapping. Then I recorded a lot of wind sounds and my daughter – who was very little at the time – singing because there was a ghost of a child hanging in the consciousness in a way, and so I meshed these weird vocals in with the wind. I just collected a lot of found sounds, and in one case, there was a review talking about the great sound design in the film. I went, "No, that was the music!" [laughter].

You mentioned the Marylin Monroe film you're working on has a #MeToo angle?

I say that, but that's not really how it's being touted. It's revisiting Marylin Monroe with our 21st-century hats on and realizing she wasn't the ditzy blonde bombshell that we all perceived her as. There was a lot more to her. She was also a victim of the Hollywood of the fifties and sixties that we know now was sort of governed by the Harvey Weinsteins of the world. She was a strong woman who stood up for herself, but we don't hear about that angle. She kind of broke boundaries and I'm learning a lot more about her. I was sort of obsessed with her when I was twelve for some weird reason. I just loved her. I had posters of her and Elvis, and I bought her album. I mean, who buys her album? But I've learned a lot more about her and I'm excited to keep going.

Speaking of Harvey Weinstein, I thought the documentary about his abuses that you scored, Untouchable, was completely riveting. I knew some things about the case and living in New York, there was obviously a lot of coverage of the trial, but I learned so much more about who he was in that film. There's nothing quite like that surge of cognition when you're discovering something new in the documentary form. Is that happening for you as well when you write along to a story about someone's life?

Yes. For Untouchable, I was like you. I knew there were things going on with Harvey Weinstein but didn't know all the details. It was quite a shocking revelation as I started working on it. Again, I was brought on early, so I was able to see sections of interviews as they came in, trying to piece that together and understand what these survivors were going through and be respectful of that with the music. I was also trying to understand what kind of a character Weinstein was. The director had told me he wanted a kind of Godfather theme for him, something to latch onto that we keep hearing whenever he was doing something evil, which is a lot. He was sort of the Godfather of Hollywood at one time, so that helped me to establish that theme. It took a long time for me to come up with it, but once I did, the rest of the score sort of wrote itself in a way...I watched the opening scene [that establishes Weinstein] over and over again to come up with ideas, and eventually, I wrote something on the nose but it seemed to work. It rises and rises and rises...and then falls, like his life.   

Can you relate anything to your experience in this industry as a woman? Do you sense more of consciousness out there about giving women composers more opportunities? Are there stigmas about the touch or style a woman might give to a score that you try to avoid or dispel?

There are so many questions there [laughter]. I think these are things that we really need to discuss and be open about. Everyone is so offended these days and worried to talk about things, and I think we should just bash it out, you know? I've lived and worked in the UK for a long time, and I never really felt any sort of prejudice here about me being a female composer. Since the first job I was lucky enough to get, it sort of just snowballed, so I've never starved for work. I've been fortunate that way, so I never felt any bias. Who knows? Maybe I wasn't getting the big films because they didn't trust a woman, but I will never know that. 

I went to Los Angeles for the first time in 2016. I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and I found it to be a completely different beast. I must say, I came back thinking, "Was that an incredibly sexist experience?" It wasn't that anything crazy happened, but there were a few weird comments about women composers that I just sort of cast aside. It was a very demoralizing experience and I thought, "Uh-oh, I don't want to move there. It's not for me. This is definitely a male-dominated world in terms of music. I came back to London and got on with it. 

Then #MeToo happened, and suddenly I was having calls saying they wanted a female composer. They wanted to turn things around and start giving women opportunities. At first, I thought, "We shouldn't need that! I've never gotten a job just because I was a woman!" I felt mixed-up when I started receiving offers like this, but at that time, a male friend of mine said to me, "Look, men have been getting jobs because they're men for centuries. They just don't say it." It's true, and sadly this might be how it has to be right now to get women in there. Before this new awareness, I wasn't referred to as a female composer. At least not in my circles. Now suddenly, I'm boxed in as that. I like it and I don't like it. I want there to be opportunities for women, but I want all composers to be lumped in as one without that distinction. I don't want the pity party. 

I realised that we have no problems getting jobs as women at the independent level and the lower and mid-echelon of TV, but the big blockbuster films seem to be off-limits to women...One of the comments made in LA was something like, "Why can't women write for action movies?" and I thought, "Wait a minute, I can!" I was a bit taken aback by that...but maybe the reason that person said that was because we haven't been able to prove that we can. Women haven't been given the films whereby we have to write action music. 

I've always known there was a domination of male composers, but I didn't know why. I realised that it was probably because young women don't see other women doing this job and so don't think of it as a career opportunity. When I studied, there were no women in my composition classes. I was the only one. And we never learned about female composers through all of my education. So maybe it doesn't occur to young women that it's a job you could do. Now that there are more of us out there and more of an awareness that there need to be women climbing up the music ladder, I think it's a wake-up call for young women writers who see women film composers and go, "I could do that." I think it's starting to happen slowly. I'm getting a lot of emails now from young women composers.