Avatar
官方艺术家
Mark Allen
导演, 编剧, 作曲家
542,311 查看| 255  更新

Music For Film

Music for Film:  Music into Direction

As a director who began his professional life as a musician, studied film scoring with David Raksin, and still scores his own work when possible, I've had a lot of thoughts over the years about music in film - here are just a few of them:

The orchestra or band should be able to fit in a typical room of where the movie is taking place.

The materials used to create the instruments used should be available to the people of the story in a temporal and perhaps even a geographical way.

Thus - scoring a medieval movie with synthesizers seems awkward, but no more awkward that a 200 piece orchestra scoring a suburban teen drama.

The job of music is to tell the subconscious story.  Just like editing, it can make a comment on your subject.  If there is chaos all around - it does not mean that your music must be chaotic - you should think about where you are on your oscillation point - what comment do you want to make about your character at this moment?

Playing delicate music at a chaotic moment is called "counter-scoring" - but there are many possibilities between matching the action (which is called "Mickey Mousing") and Counter-Scoring.  Those possibilities rest as do all creative choices in being aware of what you need your audience to be aware of at this moment.

Just how in photography one might like using depth of field to draw the audience's attention to one character rather than another, or an object.

Just how in editing, one might cut from the face of the old man to the face of his wife because he wants to make a certain comment on his thoughts.

I'm emphasizing here how all of this works together so that one starts realizing that the director's job is to orchestrate all of these things, just like the composer orchestrates his score.

I'll eventually talk about what a director does since it is the most misunderstood high profile job in movies.  I just think it's important to cover a lot of the factors which play into that job before talking about it directly.

17 年多 前 0 赞s  8 评论s  0 shares
Photo 22998
musicnote - Mickey Mousing is used because you are scoring your movie like one might score a cartoon... "oh the characters are running - use running music, now they're sneaking, use sneaking music.... she sees her and falls in love - use fall in love music" It's really the continual shifting of modes which begets the term Mickey Mouse. It's okay to score in allignment with what is on screen... it's just the relentless mimicking that crosses the line. Major blockbusters still use this plenty and get away with it. eva-ring - that was interesting to say about the OST having it's own value. I think most directors would be devistated to think of their movie as a delivery system for a soundtrack - but there have been many examples of what you're talking about. Patrick - yes, you're right. and it felt odd, didn't it?
17 年多 ago
Photo 22991
interesting
17 年多 ago
Photo 22998
Jesskah - I completely concur about the Romeo+Juliet Soundtrack. I still listen to it! Another great soundtrack which I wasn't expecting was Great Expectations. About the Garden State clips - It's amazing how much music can change the mood of a piece. Did you see the "Shining" Trailer edited into being a family drama movie? It's all in that soundtrack used. Sometimes writers will put music cues into a script - but I very much discourage that. I think often music means something very personal to a writer and they think that emotion will transfer to the reader - but it cannot. Writers have to do the hard work of creating that with their writing. :)
17 年多 ago

关于

阅读全文

语言
english
位置(城市,国家)以英文标示
Los Angeles, United States
性别
male
加入的时间
April 13, 2007