Benedict Please
- Composer
- Sound Department
- Music Department
Film composer for The Eagleman Stag (BAFTA 2011), and Robin Robin (Aardman Animation / Netflix) due for release Nov 2021. Works with long time collaborator, composer and musician Beth Porter, and is a founding member of The Bookshop Band.
Ben gained a first class degree in Natural Science at Cambridge University in 2001, winning the Gill Prize for Science and the Bronowski Prize for History and Philosophy of Science. He worked as a designer at the Whipple Museum of Science in 2001, and then as a science explainer at The Natural History Museum in London in 2002. Between 2003 - 2009 he worked for ex-BBC Natural History Unit film producer Richard Brock in Tanzania and Kenya as a solo film maker co-producing over 300 locally-based environmental documentaries and provided in-field training, in collaboration with The Darwin Initiative, for over 50 East African NGO's in environmental film making. Between 2001 and 2010 Ben was also a founder member of indie-folk band Urusen who produced three albums, including This Is Where We Meet (2010) produced by Steve Osborne (Happy Mondays, U2, KT Tunstall, Placebo, Elbow etc...). In 2006 Ben's brother Mikey Please was beginning to experiment with animation and asked Ben to create some music for his first animated short, Glen's Gloves. In 2007 this was followed by Crone and thus began a creative collaboration between the brothers that has continued to this day. Highlights include The Eagleman Stag which was Mikey's final-year film at the RCA which Ben composed the music for and produced the sound design for. It went on to win a BAFTA for Best Short Animation in 2011, along with a host of other awards including a Golden Hugo, and was long-listed for an Oscar the following year. During the soundtrack's production Ben first worked with Beth Porter and her string quartet to record much of the score and the pair went on to form The Bookshop Band, an artists collaboration between a group of songwriters and an award winning independent bookshop called Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, in Bath. Between 2010 and 2016 they had released 13 studio-albums inspired by books, and worked with some of the biggest names in contemporary literature, including Philip Pullman, Joanne Harris, Ben Okri, Jackie Morris, Robert Macfarlane and Louis de Bernieres, and had created their own gig-circuit around the bookshops of the UK, France and Ireland. In 2018 the New York Times described them as "Not just good but achingly good" which triggered a sell-out US tour in 2019 and subsequent LIVE album recorded in American bookshops. This got the ear of legendary guitarist Pete Townshend (The Who) who offered to produce the band's next album, which is currently in production. The COVID pandemic forced the band to cancel plans for their second US tour, but they were lucky to be working on the latest animation with Mikey (and his directing partner Dan Ojari) which had morphed into a full scale co-production between Aardman Animations and Netflix, called Robin Robin, a 30 minute animated musical. Ben and Beth were brought in right at the start of the films development and were kept busy during an otherwise barren time for live music, developing the songs and music. It marks a new highlight in a 15 year collaborative journey between Ben and his brother Mikey. The film is due to be released on Netflix in November 2021. They are working on four new Bookshop Band albums; one inspired by Scottish children's literature, one inspired by books about the natural world, one with Pete Townshend and an instrumental album they recorded over lock-down with author Jackie Morris. Ben and Beth got married (after making 13 albums together) in 2016 and moved to the Book Town of Scotland (Wigtown) in 2017 where they have one child together, Molly. They have finished building their recording studio and are looking forward to working on more films and creating more music in there.
Ben gained a first class degree in Natural Science at Cambridge University in 2001, winning the Gill Prize for Science and the Bronowski Prize for History and Philosophy of Science. He worked as a designer at the Whipple Museum of Science in 2001, and then as a science explainer at The Natural History Museum in London in 2002. Between 2003 - 2009 he worked for ex-BBC Natural History Unit film producer Richard Brock in Tanzania and Kenya as a solo film maker co-producing over 300 locally-based environmental documentaries and provided in-field training, in collaboration with The Darwin Initiative, for over 50 East African NGO's in environmental film making. Between 2001 and 2010 Ben was also a founder member of indie-folk band Urusen who produced three albums, including This Is Where We Meet (2010) produced by Steve Osborne (Happy Mondays, U2, KT Tunstall, Placebo, Elbow etc...). In 2006 Ben's brother Mikey Please was beginning to experiment with animation and asked Ben to create some music for his first animated short, Glen's Gloves. In 2007 this was followed by Crone and thus began a creative collaboration between the brothers that has continued to this day. Highlights include The Eagleman Stag which was Mikey's final-year film at the RCA which Ben composed the music for and produced the sound design for. It went on to win a BAFTA for Best Short Animation in 2011, along with a host of other awards including a Golden Hugo, and was long-listed for an Oscar the following year. During the soundtrack's production Ben first worked with Beth Porter and her string quartet to record much of the score and the pair went on to form The Bookshop Band, an artists collaboration between a group of songwriters and an award winning independent bookshop called Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights, in Bath. Between 2010 and 2016 they had released 13 studio-albums inspired by books, and worked with some of the biggest names in contemporary literature, including Philip Pullman, Joanne Harris, Ben Okri, Jackie Morris, Robert Macfarlane and Louis de Bernieres, and had created their own gig-circuit around the bookshops of the UK, France and Ireland. In 2018 the New York Times described them as "Not just good but achingly good" which triggered a sell-out US tour in 2019 and subsequent LIVE album recorded in American bookshops. This got the ear of legendary guitarist Pete Townshend (The Who) who offered to produce the band's next album, which is currently in production. The COVID pandemic forced the band to cancel plans for their second US tour, but they were lucky to be working on the latest animation with Mikey (and his directing partner Dan Ojari) which had morphed into a full scale co-production between Aardman Animations and Netflix, called Robin Robin, a 30 minute animated musical. Ben and Beth were brought in right at the start of the films development and were kept busy during an otherwise barren time for live music, developing the songs and music. It marks a new highlight in a 15 year collaborative journey between Ben and his brother Mikey. The film is due to be released on Netflix in November 2021. They are working on four new Bookshop Band albums; one inspired by Scottish children's literature, one inspired by books about the natural world, one with Pete Townshend and an instrumental album they recorded over lock-down with author Jackie Morris. Ben and Beth got married (after making 13 albums together) in 2016 and moved to the Book Town of Scotland (Wigtown) in 2017 where they have one child together, Molly. They have finished building their recording studio and are looking forward to working on more films and creating more music in there.