NOT A CONCLUSION, BUT A FINAL REGARD

For the past month, I have been trying to find answers to various questions on film scores. I wanted to understand how they work, how they were made, why they work, whether there was a scientific study, explaining why music for film is so engaging, what kinds of people transfer the scores outside the film space and inside their own time and perception. After reading and watching a solid amount (based on the time I usually spend on research) of articles, books, interviews, video essays, films, studies, etc. (Oh, at some point I was reading a very detailed study on sound symbolism, that was just insane), I figured that I am back in the beginning, just with a lot more facts in consideration then before. It was very confusing what to include in the portfolio and what to just put in my mind, so there was a huge deal of material that wasn’t transformed into a post. 

I still think that how and why art works should stay a secret only the artist knows. It’s the same with music for film, we should give it the option to fulfill its purpose and contemplate the process without trying to understand it completely. Because if we understand it completely, it is going to stop working.

I’ll just leave a quote by Oscar Wilde and put a pause on the portfolio.

“If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question.”                                                             

                                - The Soul of Man under Socialism,1891

THAT I MADE FOR THE DRAFT-BLOG ( https://sonixtorytelling.tumblr.com/ ) 

It doesn’t really serve much, but it’s a nice little gif. 

CASE STUDY // MAX RICHTER // part three

I have gathered quotes from interviews with Max Richter that I enjoyed. The background music is his famous piece On the Nature of Daylight .  Why I chose this practitioner?  Three years ago, when I was only 17, I did my first big solo performance and my choreographer had picked the track On the Nature of Daylight for a very distinguishable part, where I used to climb a ladder on the stage and hang from a bar on the ceiling. Anyway, the piece of music just became extremely important and the curiosity to explore the rest of the Max Richter’s works was only natural. I find his music, both the film scores and his solo projects and albums, complicated but light, influential but self-sufficient. His work is powerful and engaging, yet it’s not an orchestral-kind of intense, there’s an alternative, fresh, electronic aura that just changes completely the whole classical music concept.

UNDERSTANDING THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF MUSIC

All extracts are taken from Film Music: A Very Short Introduction by Kathrin Kalinak.

“The basic building blocks of Western music hinge upon tonality, a structure for organizing musical sounds into music. Tonality may be defined as a musical system revolving around a single tone or note, which functions as a center of gravity: it is a focal point around which the rest of the notes are organized and which serves as the place where a piece of music begins and ends.”

“A distinguishing characteristic of tonal music, since about the middle of the eighteenth century, is the privileging of melody, a series of notes played in a memorable and recognizable order. Melody provides an access point into music, a hook on which to hang listeners’ attention.”

“Melody has often taken the form of a leitmotif, an identifiable and recurring musical pattern. A leitmotif can consist of any kind of musical material—a distinctive rhythm, for instance—but Hollywood composers have tended to construct leitmotifs through melody, either as short as a motif of a few notes or as extended as a theme. Leitmotifs can be developed and varied throughout the score (or repeated verbatim), reinforcing associations and becoming more and more powerful as a film progresses.” “Harmony has to do with the coordination of notes playing simultaneously. In Western tonal music, harmony privileges certain combinations of notes, or chords, over others, creating stress points built upon dissonance and resolutions that dissipate dissonance.” “Rhythm refers to the organization of music through time; its basic unit is the beat, a discernible pulse that marks out the passage of time.” “Timbre refers to the quality of sound that distinguishes one instrument or voice from another. Art music aims to produce a fairly standard timbre within a vocal range or class of instruments. Popular music, however, aims in the opposite direction, to distinguish one voice from another, one way of playing an instrument from another.”

“Musical conventions do not function universally.” 

CASE STUDY // MAX RICHTER // part two

A detailed text following Max Richter’s life story and professional path.

http://www.self-titledmag.com/max-richter-explains-his-entire-career-from-lapsed-piano-lessons-to-working-alongside-robert-wyatt-tilda-swinton-roni-size-the-future-sound-of-london/

FILM SCORE PIECES PLAYLIST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4sNhqLX1QU&list=PLN6Sek4zsP_M2Rk3W2htht-tmXcfD4Tgi&index=2&t=0s

FILM SCORE HISTORY IN SHORT

1900′s //  Musical accompaniments Piano and organ players performed discreetly during the screenings in order to reduce the loud noises made by the projectors in the cinema. The musicians usually played songs from generic cue sheets, but sometimes they also improvised. Jazz standards and Jewish prayer songs were used a lot.

1915: Joseph Carl Breil wrote the first feature length musical score for D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation 1927: The Jazz Singer was the first feature film with synchronized dialogues and song sequences 1930′s // The Time of the Hits That time was marked by tons of memorable movie tunes (“Thanks for the Memory”, “Happy Days Are Here Again”, “Singing in the Rain”, “Louise”, “I’ll Get By”) 1933: The first completely original score was composed by Max Steiner for King Kong  1950′s // The Jazz Revolution The popularity of Jazz music changed they way music for film was written.

1951:  The score of A Streetcar Named Desire composed by Alex North is a new symphonic-jazz experience and a major step forward for film music, moving Hollywood film scoring away from its prior European sound.   1954: The studio system is breaking down and many composers prefer being employed by freelance creatives, rather than by the studio. 1958: The work of Miles Davis on the French film noir Elevator to the Gallows is notable as the score is a pure jazz piece (it was scored with a trio of musicians improvising to the screen) and this was how the association between jazz or the trumpet with film noir began. Miles Davis’s work on the film made him one of the earliest African-American film composers, as he paved the way for later artists like Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock and Terence Blanchard.  1960′s // Pop, Westerns and the Experimental Tradition  1960: Bernard Hermann decided to use string orchestra for Hitchcock’s Psycho in order to reflect on the black-and-white cinematography 1964-1966: Ennio Morricone’s work on Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy established the Western music as a leading musical preference for the decade. 1967: Studios were attracted to scoring films with already released songs, it was cheaper and faster. They were inspired by the soundtrack to The Graduate, which was created almost entirely by licensing songs that had nothing to do with the film itself. 1970′s // Rock, please Everyone was obsessed with rock music, so it was naturally involved as a new leading trend in film scoring as well.  1971: Wendy Carlow used synthesized music for the original soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange  1978: The soundtrack of Suspiria was written by the Italian progressive band Goblin

1980′s // Synthesizers  Synthesizers were easy to use and they were available everywhere - the new trend in film music was set.  1982:  To create the dark and futuristic sound for Blade Runner, the electronic musician Vangelis used the combination of classical compositions and synthesizers.  1989: Hans Zimmer made the score for Ridley Scott’s Black Rain. That’s when Zimmer established his position in the Hollywood world as an influential composer, thanks to his innovative use of technology and collaborative approach to music production. 1990′s // Pop and Rock music once again  The use of well-known pop and rock songs was now more popular than ever. The Tarantino filmmaking standards were set. 1996: Trainspotting. 2000′s - now // It’s all about technology  Everything is possible in sound.  Every music genre can be used in film scoring.  Extravagant scores and soundtracks are popular.  Original orchestral scores are popular. 

Everything is popular for someone.

FILM SCORE & DANCE

Many choreographers and dance studios use film music for their performances or during their training sessions. I will use Clint Mansell’s score for Requiem for a Dream once again, in order to create a bigger picture and expose a different perspective towards the specific music. The following video is a recording of the performance "Hamlet or three boys and one girl", presented on SETKANI/ENCOUNTER (2011, Brno) by a Bulgarian dance theatre. The performance itself is an interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Start: 01:01:45

The performance is just about to end. The final words of Fortinbras echo:  “ Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this    Becomes the field but here shows much amiss. “ In this case, just like in the case of the original film, the music is used to close the curtains, to show the loss and the damage from the final battle. It’s the last dance of the corpses before they join the dead. 

...

Other examples of film scores used in the context of dance:

Max Richter: On the nature of daylight  Film: Disconnect (2012)

Hans Zimmer: Cornfield Chase Film: Interstellar (2014)

Thom Hanreich: Rooftop Film: Pina (2011)

CHALLENGE FAILED: In the first edition of this blog that I started about a month ago, I have posed a challenge to myself. Eventually, I even deleted the post, as I saw I was about to fail. However, I will still leave the link to my first attempt of organizing a portfolio space.

https://sonixtorytelling.tumblr.com/

Why and how I failed? Basically, since the idea of the whole portfolio was for me to understand why film score works so good, I decided to try and create non-diegetic sound (music would be an exaggeration for my current skills) for a video that I’ve made. The problem started right at the beginning, when I set the bar too high. As we had just finished a lecture on a Wednesday and we were talking about 360 videos and VR, I thought that I’d make a 360 video, referencing Bjork’s Stonemilker. 

My friends were keen on the idea to help me find a similar location and film the video. We went on a trip to a lake near our town with a regular camera and did some sample shots with the idea to return the week after with our rented 360 degree camera. And that’s when the weather decided to go all tropical. We went back to our beautiful lake to make sure that’s it wasn’t that beautiful anymore, as it was just a huge slippery puddle of mud, where we couldn’t bring any cameras as the rain was too heavy and the ground was sinking.  However, we decided to try and use some old footage to add sound to. We recorded quite a lot of sounds and experimented on putting them together, but at some point (as my friend is not using a legal version of the Adobe Creative Cloud Apps) everything was blocked and after two hours of hope, the whole system crashed.  Moral of the story: backup as much as you can and buy your editing apps.

MUSIC & IMAGE

I want to explore the significant relationship between the music and the visuals in a film by observing how they function side by side in a specific example.

Clint Mansell’s soundtrack for Daren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream is a cold-blue paranoia, a schizophrenic reaction and a heartbreaking motive. The traumatizing masterpiece is a brilliant combination between the music and the imagery, which creates some sort of a hell for the ordinary human senses. The editing is in tune with the music, so if the sequence is put on mute – the essence that keeps the visuals together disappears and it becomes impossible to create purpose from the chaotic and extremely disturbing camera movements.  

Clint Mansell says in an interview:

“I like to write a piece and move it to a place it wasn’t written for – which is not exactly a revolutionary idea but it brings in an element of chance, so things occur that you wouldn’t naturally gravitate towards or wouldn’t have occurred to you. You can get these ideas in with like a very violent scene but with music that’s very beautiful – you can juxtapose and it gives you so much more than just one note of: oh, here’s sex, here’s violence, here’s a kiss - you musically give in other layers. I constantly have to find my way into these characters’ heads and be aware of the fact that if something does not ring true, I have got to do something about it.”

(watch the video first on mute and then with sound)

The music (hand in hand with all other sounds and dialogues) is the element that brings liveness and tension to the sequence. It’s the detail that makes the final scene possible. First, there is the fierce, nauseous part and its perfectly timed rhythm that keeps the viewer on his toes and pushes him through the insufferable visuals and edit. Then, there is a short attenuation that gives the viewer a few seconds to breathe and to prepare for the final part - the tragedy, the real requiem - the mass for the dead.

CASE STUDY // MAX RICHTER (part one)

literature

Boltz, M.G. (2004) The cognitive processing of film and musical soundtracks. Memory & Cognition 32, 1194–1205

Nagari, B. (2015) Music as Image: Analytical psychology and music in film. London:Routledge.

Parault, S.J., Schwanenflugel, P.J. (2006) Sound-symbolism: A Piece in the Puzzle of Word Learning

Rédei, A. (2015). Film, Music, and Experimental Psychology: Reflections and Further Directions. Music and the Moving Image, 8(2), 81-86. doi:10.5406/musimoviimag.8.2.0081

Wagner, R. (1994) The Art-Work Of The Future And Other Works. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Kalinak, K. (2010) Film Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press + tons of online articles that were unconsciously closed

1) What is it in music that causes the emotion? – Psychoacoustics may be a solid source for understanding elements of sound and tone combination (music) which may affect the neurological system to perceive and respond collectively or conditionally. Most of those emotions are likely to be mainly triggered at unconscious level. The conditional elements may vary and become different through personal, cultural and social grouping’s experience. 2) Are musical emotions like other emotions? – As music does not contain emotion but rather triggers it, we are bound to regard music like any other sensory trigger of emotion. The conscious, unconscious, personal, collective or cultural ‘bias’ of this trigger is as multifaceted as the output of these trends in other triggers, whether sensory or directly psychological.

Nagari, B (2015) Music As Image : Analytical Psychology and Music in Film, Taylor & Francis Group: Florence.

Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [26 May 2020].

basic terminology

This research will be based on the concept of music, composed specifically for film and its ability to form new worlds. I will try to explain why this phenomenon is so powerful and how it relates not only to the film it serves, but often to the listeners as a separate work of art, an audio piece that builds worlds on its own, no imagery needed.

Therefore, it is essential that I outline the crucial terms and notions behind this project. These are the definitions that the Cambridge Dictionary offers:

SCORE

/skɔːr/

the music written for a film, play, etc.:

Rodgers wrote the score for/of/to “Oklahoma!”

SOUNDTRACK

/ˈsaʊnd.træk/

the sounds, especially the music, of a film:

“The best thing about the movie is its soundtrack.”

Listening to the film score outside the film space.

This is the very first post on this blog. Ironically, this track has never been used as film music.