Archive for May, 2009
THE MODERN FILM COMPOSER; “Find The Balance”
It has been said that music is 60% of a film. Whether or not that figure is accurate, there is no question that music has always been a huge piece of the film puzzle, and appears to be an ever-changing landscape. There is a part of me that feels like true film composers are a dying art. With apple loops and powerful software at times musicianship has become mechanized, a series of key strokes and quantizing plug ins. Don’t get me wrong, I am a firm supporter of technology, and to be perfectly honest wouldn’t be able to do what I do without the help of that support.
Here’s the thing, no matter how you are writing, you still need to know how to write. For the moment, much of the music written for film and T.V. is made up of acoustical instruments, familiar sounds that are played by humans in real spaces. If a composer doesn’t have the ability to recreate that sound with a semblance of classical knowledge, then we all begin to lose the knowledge of how real music resonates in the human ear. How the wave forms travel from a vibrating string, wind reed, or skin of a drum, to the drums in our ears. I know that may sound a bit dramatic, but the point is that music equates into emotion, with or without picture. Music can make you feel pensive, happy, melancholy, or angry, you name it the emotion is there. It is my firm belief that a composer’s responsibility is to “service the film“; To support the emotion and vision of a director drawing their audience into a film, series, or commercial. If we lose the fundamentals of what that means, we have lost the art of music in its relationship to film.
There have been many points in history where the face of music has changed. When technology threatened to alter the course of sound that we have been familiar with for centuries. A synthesizer to define an era, or a voice altering generator that defines an entertainment icon, we always end up back with the fundamentals of the “real thing”, incorporating those innovations throughout. What does that mean you ask? It means two things to me. If you are a modern film composer, don’t forget to be a musician. Don’t forget what music is and the instruments and the people that play them (another subject) give to the overall art. At the same time, understanding that we live in a world of orchestras in a box, hip hop beats testing the limits of bass levels, synthetic sounds found only in fiction, and that ignoring these advances only stifles our own inspiration.
Find the balance. Don’t forget the music.
THE MODERN FILM COMPOSER: What is music to film?
What is music to film? What is the point and the significance? Where does silence fall into the affect on film, the absence of music? There are large discussions about the anatomy of film and a film score. Music was in film before sound was in film. Before dialog was in film. Music has always been an integral part of the film process and more importantly the result of the director’s vision. It is my mission statement to “service the film”. What do I mean exactly? I mean through the process of your spotting session with a director, it is not only vital to determine where he is headed with the overall feeling of the film but with each cue. Throughout history filmmakers have used music to direct the audience either exactly where the scene is headed, accentuating the feeling of sadness or delight, or steering the audience in the exact opposite direction of what is happening on screen. Often music directs the audience to what’s happening inside the mind of a character, which may be different from what they are physically doing on screen. Many times, one of the more challenging scenes to write for are the ones where a characters emotions change on a dime. For example when the direction of the film appears to being headed in overwhelming delight only to be redirected by ones long lost love being hit by a truck… or whatever, you get the idea.
So, with all of these “royalty free” library’s and garage band mix’s, is the value of an original score being diluted? Probably to some degree, but there is a tremendous amount of thought that goes into the creation of a score. There are so many details from the musicality in its inception, to the instruments used in a hit point. For instance, you wouldn’t write the same music for a network drama as you would for a blockbuster film like Pirates of the Caribbean right? Not just because the budget’s different, or the content isn’t the same, but because they are on a completely different quality level. Having a 60 piece orchestra blowing out fat blatty horns is simply too big for a little TV drama. It doesn’t fit. Along with that, there is a rhythm to visual content. The pace in which something is edited and where the audio crosses over transitions all have an impact on what happens with the music and how you work around dialog. Sure there are a lot of things where library music can be cut in, but there is no question that it detracts from the quality of a film. There is a term, “TV Tight”. To be at a professional level, the entire mix should be as seamless as possible. Nothing should distract from what is happening on screen, in fact it should draw you in without you even knowing it.
At times even silence is your friend. Silence is uncomfortable in social situations, in observing something, possibly intimate moments that you may or may not normally be a part of. Silence is very powerful, and especially so when it is just before or just after a leading score. It’s like being dropped off in the desert in the middle of the night after blasting music on your road trip to Vegas only to be left with anxious and slightly disturbing… silence. “Sometimes less is more” is a term I think all storytellers in an age of shaky camera’s and eye blistering fire balls should keep in the front of their minds.
Whatever the call, it should always be about the intent of the film and how the music enhances its process.