QUEENS Key Art | ©2024 National Geographic
QUEENS, the seven-part documentary series about animal matriarchs, is now streaming in its entirety on both National Geographic and Disney+. Narrated by Angela Bassett, each episode focuses on different kinds of species in different environments. QUEENS is also primarily made by women filmmakers.
Morgan Kibby composed the score for all the episodes. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE photographer captured still images related to the “African Queens” episode, which focuses on lions and hyenas.
Guyton and Kibby sit down for a joint interview arranged by National Geographic during their portion of the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour, and then join their QUEENS filmmaker colleagues for a larger Q&A session. This interview is derived from both.
Both women laugh when asked if they got to work together during either the production or post-production process on QUEENS.
“I wish,” says Kibby.
“But no,” Guyton replies. In fact, as a photographer, Guyton was separate from the filmmakers working on the live-action footage. “Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to work with them in the field. We chatted a bit about the hyena episode, but otherwise, I didn’t get to work with them. I wish I had. I did two three-week trips, six weeks total in the field, March and October, 2022, where I was working directly with the hyenas and photographing them every day.”
Guyton came to QUEENS with expertise in her primary photographic subjects, lions and hyenas. “I have an unusual background. I have a PhD in ecology, and so I’ve spent a lot of time in Africa, studying animal behavior, and I think that that was a huge asset to me, because I know how to read the animals, and can anticipate what they’re going to do.”
The “African Queens” episode includes an act of intra-family hyena violence. Can Guyton comment on whether hyenas are more prone to killing their siblings in the womb, as some believe? “I think that’s one theory. Hyena mothers have two cubs at a time, and sometimes both cubs survive to adulthood. Sometimes, one of them dies, and I’ve heard that theory, that they’re sometimes killing each other in the womb. It could be that [cubs are] also dying during childbirth, which is very tough for a hyena female, because she’s giving birth through her pseudo penis. And sometimes the cubs will kill each other in the den.”
Are lions comparatively more mellow, as families go? At least, it’s not usual for them to kill their own relatives? “That’s right. With lions, if a new male comes into a group, he’ll sometimes kill the cubs.”
Kibby worked on QUEENS for “about a year. I came in actually before the voiceover was done. I’ve never worked within this genre before, so it was a totally new adventure for me. Within the first episode, I realized that the editors who work within this genre are brilliant with music, because the cuts and the storytelling are just so dependent on the music to fill in the gaps where perhaps narration is not going to be there. So, things were mostly locked, if not completely locked, when I would receive episodes.”
With the various musical themes, did Kibby compose based on location, species, or the type of event being depicted?
Kibby replies, “Well, we worked per episode, so I guess it was more location-based than anything. Each episode is kind of in a different place. I think we didn’t really focus on approaching the score through a normal, traditional thematic lens. More thinking about texture and how to create a sense of expansion within each episode.”
A male euglossa orchid bee approaches a Coryanthes orchid iN QUEENS | ©2024 National Geographic for Disney/Oscar Dewhurst
For Kibby, QUEENS allowed her more creative freedom than she had previously enjoyed as a composer. “It’s funny. I feel like throughout my whole career, I’ve had so many people say, ‘Oh, we really want you to do you,’ and it’s a lie. It’s just not true. So, you’ll get to seventy percent there, and then you see them slowly tiptoeing back. That’s been my experience, which is fine. It happens. I’m in service to other people’s visions.”
However, Kibby continues, this wasn’t the case on QUEENS, citing the approach of showrunner Chloe Sarosh. “Chloe did not do that. I actually didn’t expect it to play out that way. I was like, ‘There’ll be a moment where I get told to kind of tone it down.’ And she just let me go for it, and I feel like when there’s such a trusting collaborative process between a composer and a creator, it makes me want to meet the mark and go beyond it, and I really felt like I was supported to do that. It was just such a pleasure to work on.”
While this isn’t a traditional approach to film composing, Kibby adds, “Hopefully, now we’re making a new space for whatever spaghetti you want to throw at the wall musically. I think that’s the whole point. We get to experiment, and that’s what was so incredible about this experience.”
Is Kibby’s music more focused on evoking the landscape, or evoking the animals?
“I think it’s multifaceted, to be honest with you, because I think music within this genre has to tell the story as much as voiceover, as much as SFX. It’s really within the fabric of the cut. There are so many action shots, and the way that the editors will work with music is to really help, I think, put a spotlight on a moment in the story they’re trying to highlight, without necessarily having dialogue on top of it. So, music comes in there and helps a lot. But I think overall, the music is inspired by, first and foremost, the location, the stories that are being told, and then also helping as a device to tell the story within the cuts.”
What kinds of instrumentation did Kibby use?
“It was three buckets of sounds – lots of vocals, I use my voice as an instrument a lot, and that was a focus for the series as a whole – a lot of synthesizers and keyboards and such, and then also some more traditional orchestration.”
Was there anything for Kibby and/or Guyton that was particularly challenging, or particularly exciting in terms of episodes, or species, or incidents?
Kibby recalls, “The ‘Tiny Queens’ episode was such a pleasure to work on, because I got to go to a very electronic, sci-fi Seventies world, and I felt like I was getting away with something,” she laughs. “It was really cool to explore that, for me personally.”
Guyton relates, “I was absolutely amazed at the breadth and depth of the hyena behaviors that they captured in the ‘African Queens’ episode. It was incredible. They were able to capture an infanticide, which so rarely happens, and I thought they did an amazing job of really representing what hyena life is like.
What would Guyton and Kibby most like people to know about QUEENS?
“It’s an incredibly fresh take on a genre I think we all love,” Kibby replies. “I’m really excited for people to see it.”
Guyton simply says, “I agree.”
Related: Exclusive interview with QUEENS Executive producer Vanessa Berlowitz and showrunner Chloe Sarosh
Related: QUEENS: Cinematographers Justine Evans and Erin Ranney on their new National Geographic miniseries
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Article: Exclusive interview with QUEENS Composer Morgan Kibby and photographer Jen Guyton on new nature series
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