Woah! Calm down there! I did warn you… Before those of you that enjoy film music take aim at me with your various smelly missiles, I will assure you that an explanation awaits below this formatting, and that I shall cowardly hide behind the fact that these are not my words. They belong to a well-known film and film music scholar (inside academic circles, at least; I’d vouch that if you haven’t read her books then you won’t know her name). She compares the two types of music under the premise that neither are intended to require the full attention of the listener. Claudia Gorbman, it seems, has a few things to say about my beloved craft.
Now, I don’t really
agree that we need to be ‘lulled into being an untroublesome (less critical, less wary) social subject’ as Gobman
suggests. I for one like being troublesome and critical towards film, don’t
hate the player – hate the game, and all that. However, the idea of film music
not requiring attention is completely necessary to a film, just as most of us
don’t notice all the work that’s gone into designing a set in a scene; we just
absorb it. Here it could be worth noting, likewise, that we don’t
necessarily notice cinematography, yet we absorb it in a more attentive way
than set design or costume for instance. I’d like to champion music as an art
more than a craft in this respect. We all go in to a cinema with having seen
images and heard music, and we’d probably notice if the music was awful. Audio
is ubiquitous to film as much as the visuals, and one should never detract from
the other. Nobody wants to see the nuts and bolts, they want to suspend their
disbelief and slip into a film, so the music must do its job professionally and
Gorbman has nicely set out a rough list of rules for it to adhere to. I’ve
stuck it in below, skim over it and you’ll start to see where I’m getting at.
I.
‘Invisibility’: The technical apparatus of nondiegetic film
music must not be visible.
II.
‘Inaudibility’: Music is not meant to be heard consciously. As
such it should subordinate itself to dialogue, to visuals – i.e., to the
primary vehicle of the narrative.
III.
Signifier
of emotion : Soundtrack music
may set specific moods and emphasize particular emotions suggested in the
narrative, but first and foremost is a signifier of emotion itself.
IV.
Narrative
cueing:
·
Referential
/ narrative: music gives
referential and narrative cues, e.g., indicating point of view, supplying
formal demarcations, and establishing setting and characters.
·
Connotative: music ‘interprets’ and ‘illustrates’ narrative
events.
V.
Continuity: music provides formal and rhythmic continuity –
between shots, in transitions between scenes, by filling ‘gaps’.
VI.
Unity: via repetition and variation of musical
material and instrumentation, music aids in the construction of formal and
narrative unity.
VII.
A
given score may violate any of the principles above, providing the violation is
at the service of the other principles
Now, some of the more
studious of you may have heard to terms diegetic
and non-diegetic before; Microsoft
Word, it seems, has not. Armed with their definitions and the little list
above, you have all the information you need to start looking at film music in
a more objective way, so I’d best pen them out! Diegetic is simply music (or any sound for that matter) that exists
within the narrative of a film, within the picture – the characters are aware
of it. Therefore, non-diegetic is
music outside of the narrative. The
characters can’t hear it, but you can, and sometimes it will make you cry, make
you shiver or jump, or feel a particular sense of blood-boiling anger towards
Percy Wetmore in The Green Mile, with
his stupid greasy hair and droopy lower lip that just barely prevents his
tongue from rolling out onto the floor like a slobbery water slide that would
only be appropriate for a few seconds of Robin Williams’ magical portrayal of
The Genie in Aladdin.
A scene can be scored
in a variety of different ways of course, some obviously more fitting than
others, you probably don’t find the birdie song blasting in during romantic
kissing scenes; it’s often a lush upward-moving, swelling string passage with a
few cymbals on the embrace. That’s because that makes sense, it’s typical and
it’s something we’re all comfortable with as an audience. But should we just
accept that? I’d like to think that within the limitations excluding the
ridiculous that there isn’t a right or wrong way to score a scene, save the
laziest possible attempt. What matters with film music is the emotion that the combination of image and music generate
and that’s probably the best way to start looking at movies for now. How might
something be if it had different music, would it have the same impact on the
audience? Look for the films that really get the most emotion across and you’ll
find that the music is often the keystone.
There is one last thing I should mention, something called leitmotif. A leitmotif is a recurring theme in a piece of music, usually attributed to a character as is prevalent in Wagner’s operatic labours. In film, these motifs can range from long melodies attributed to Darth Vader in Star Wars to single notes, chords, or sounds that can personify anything as small as the spinning top in Inception, as big as The Matrix or as abstract as the feeling of vertigo in, yes, you guessed it, Vertigo. Although it’s not an essential ingredient for a film score, you’ll start to notice leitmotif in quite a lot of them. Using the same thematic ideas and textures gives the film a kind of cohesive identity that has an imprint on the audience and in some cases literally makes the film and the music inseparable; Jaws, for example or maybe thinking about Jurassic Park without ‘it’s a di-no-saur, it’s a di-no-saur, holy f-‘ going through you head.
I honestly hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this, and my previous post, and that you’ve taken something from it that makes you want to think about the music in the next film you watch. My aim with these two introductory blog articles was create something of an informal guide that you could reference in your early dives into film scores. They’ve been quite lengthy, but I think I’ve been as brief as I possibly could, hopefully splitting the difference enough to tempt you into reading about my thoughts on films and their music in future. I did lightly suggest exploring failures and successes in the last testament, however, I fear if I take up much more negative space then I’ll get in trouble with the Internet, so I’ll just tease you with my thoughts on a score of each that may cause some juicy suspicions. I might even write about them in not so long. Here they are in Internet friendly speak:
WIN: Casino Royale (David Arnold) FAIL: Knowing (Marco Beltrami)
Alex
I’ll leave you with something fun just in case
you still aren’t sold on film music. Watch E.T.
The Extra Terrestrial closely next time you get the chance. When
the strange looking alien spots a trick-or-treater dressed as Yoda, you’ll be
rewarded with a bit of the little green man’s theme from The Empire Strikes Back. Both films were of course penned by maestro
John Williams, and it might interest you to know that he did the same in Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith as
well, hinting at a theme from Harry
Potter when a baby Luke Skywalker is dropped off by Obi-Wan Kenobi. Similar
characters, Luke and Harry, don’t you think?
Williams you little scoundrel, you…
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