now first of all i am flat out dead tired from essays, so on sunday, stoning on the couch and flipping channels on the tele, ABC was showing a short documentary of
Martin Scorsese: Emotion Through music. He was talking to an off interviewer about his musical influences.
Which got me thinking about the music or lack of music of the various films we have watched… of course most notably the strongest impression of soundtrack/score would have to be “Notre Musique” but i realize the effects of Ten and Blissfully Yours, was the realism…the actual sounds that should you have been in the taxi or in the forest, actually added to the “real-ness” of it… not to say that the other sounds/music of the movies did not help make the movie better…
I was just wondering how important music is to a movie, browsing through Sight and Sound: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/filmmusic/scoring.php and there was a quote from him…
Martin Scorsese
(Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York)
“Music and cinema fit together naturally. Because there’s a kind of intrinsic musicality to the way moving images work when they’re put together. It’s been said that cinema and music are very close as art forms, and I think that’s true. Take a filmmaker like Kubrick. He really understood the rhythmic impact of two images coming together. He also had an extraordinary feel for the pace or tempo, a musical term, of a given scene.”
“And he knew that when you add a piece of music to a scene, and if it’s just the right piece of music, hitting at just the right instant – like the refrain of Handel’s Sarabande, the main theme from Barry Lyndon (1975), over the little boy’s funeral procession, or ‘Surfin’ Bird’ by the Trashmen fading up over the panning shot of the soldiers in the second half of Full Metal Jacket (1987), or the use of the ‘Blue Danube Waltz’ in 2001 : A Space Odyssey (1968)– you’ve given that scene an extra dimension, a sense of mystery, of life beyond the frame, that it would not have had otherwise. Of course, that’s very hard to do. It requires a lot of concentration.”
Take for example, if any movie soundtrack that i watch resonates in my head at this age of 22, i have to say was Free Willy, (1993). I was like…12 when i watched it… i think in 1997? What the hell did i know about movies and music at that time…
Anyway my point being, sure the story was touching but what really stuck in my head was the soundtrack, at that time, if i am not mistaken, my cousin actually made a tape (yes cassette tape) side A and B of the musical soundtrack for me. The emotions that were evoked were i guess at much part of the storyline but the music really enhanced and brought the feelings to the brim?
Continue…Martin Scorsese
(Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York)
“Because it’s very easy for the music to become a kind of security blanket, for the filmmakers and then for the audience. It’s bad enough when it’s used for nostalgic purposes, or when it’s used to place a scene in time, but there’s nothing worse than when music is used to tell the audience what they should be feeling. Unfortunately, it happens all the time.”
MMM i tend to disagree with him on this bit i mean viewing a movie, though touch is not really involved, the eyes and ears are so important and i think its great that the music manages to tell the audience what they should be feeling, because i mean whether or not you feel it is up to you, aint it?! >.<
I think the composers and musicians who create scores specifically for a movie, not just taking it off someone else are creative genuises!
MMM…
http://www.spencersundell.com/blog/2006/04/10/the_pre-history_of_sound_cinema_part_1/
Talks about how “the history of sound cinema begins far earlier than 1927’s The Jazz Singer. Indeed, efforts to synchronize recorded sound and film are very nearly as old as motion pictures themselves.”
Can you imagine if sound in film was never invented?!
Black white silent movies, yea sure they are classic and different and all but… still… it would have been a great loss…
http://lavender.fortunecity.com/hawkslane/575/sound-in-films.htm
explains that:
“What was happening to the sound during the socalled silent period? Music came in. By acquiring a house of its own, the moving picture rose from the status of the pedlar to a more bourgeois standard, to which the greater refinements of a musical accompaniment were appropriate.
At the beginning music was used for two very different purposes at once:
(a) to drown the noise of the projectors;
(b) to give emotional atmosphere.
As cinema developed commercially, the music became more elaborate and played a larger and larger part in the show as a whole. Cinema owners vied with each other to attract the public. The piano became a trio. The trio became a salon orchestra. The salon orchestra became a symphony orchestra.
Not only the composition of the orchestra but also the technique of musical accompaniment enjoyed, or suffered, continuous development. The system of leitmotifs was introduced. Certain themes were associated with certain characters, and played whenever they appeared on the screen. A cinema musician’s desk contained a thick bundle of music of every possible kindhis music for the big picture.”
http://lavender.fortunecity.com/hawkslane/575/theory-of-film.htm
I have to agree…
“The sounds of our daytoday lifewe hitherto perceived merely as a confused noise, as a formless mass of din, rather as an unmusical person may listen to a symphony; at best he may be able to distinguish the leading melody, the rest will fuse into a chaotic clamor. The sound film will teach us to analyze even chaotic noise with our ear and read the score of life’s symphony. “
and yea not forgetting SILENCE (is golden) haha
“Silence, too, is an acoustic effect, but only where sounds can be heard. The presentation of silence is one of the most specific dramatic effects of the sound film. No other art can reproduce silence, neither painting nor sculpture, ‘neither literature nor the silent film could do so.”
(ever had those moments where you just sit and listen to the silence?)
-bliss-
that being said, its 9pm and i finally hear my microwave oven go
“BEEEEEEEeeeeeP” haha
Dinner time!
Randomness:
A friend once asked me, if you had to lose your 5 senses,
Sight Sound Touch Taste Smell rank them in order of the one you would be most willing to do without to the last being the last that you would most rather never ever lose…
Hmmm…
