Film Music Reading

Today was a day spent in the library, further reading up on the art of film scoring.

Reading started with "Film Sound: Theory and Practice", a collection of essays compiled together on the art of sound in film. The book itself is extremely in depth in the topics raised but were not too relative to my research aim. The book explains in detail the use of sound for objects, sound effects and foley work as opposed to the analysis of music used in film. After extensive reading in the chapters that I thought to be most of relevance gave me one quote that pretty much summed up my reading of sound in film:

"Sound can actively shape how we interpret the image" (Bordwell, D)

Feeling at a slight loss after spending time focussing on an area that although interesting wasn't relative to the musical interests of film and its focus on narrative, I moved on to reading:

"Instrumentation/Orchestration" by Alfred Bladder.
Having previously studied musical theory, musical performance and as a first study composer, I have prior knowledge into the knowhow of orchestration and how instruments function within an orchestra. The information that I wanted to take from this book was bullet points as to how we can take a single motif or musical phrase and interprete that in multiple fashions. The main points that I found were summed up in a short paragraph that was then further explained through examples and more detailed analysis on the shaping of melody, chords and individual notes:

"One may invert, retrograde, augment, diminish, transpose, repeat and link together these motives to create fresh-sounding but related material to use in an arrangement."

My last load of study material was into compositional techniques for film composition. I began looking at Fred Karlin and Rayburn Wright's book "On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring".
This book is an extremely comprehensive insight into the art of film scoring.

The first thing I looked at was a point relevant to my research: Developing the concept through characterization. The main process here is for the composer to get into the mid set of the character that they are composing for; to find out who that character is, where they come from, their attitude, their accent, their personality, motives and where they are heading in life. Once the character is understood the concept of a character theme can be established, the instrumentation may become apparent through their background and cultural roots and their timbre may be altered through their attitude of the world.

"You can't conceptualize the central character unless you understand him"

From here I continued to read up on character developments with music, music and the unseen character and then on to considerations that the composer faces through their musical choices. There may be Ethinic or Geographical considerations that alter the score of the film or there may be a strict musical style that is the foundation for the score.

The last point I looked up for the day was timing and how film music is made up and synchronised to gain a better understanding of the production of music for film. Timings including Free time, Aleatoric cues, Clicks, cues and Tempo arrangements were all apart of todays reading.



On a last note I had an idea of interest relevant to my topic which I would possibly like to convey as part of my project which is the idea of following an aggressive character who does something wrong, possibly violent or emotional strenuous that ends them with time in prison. Prison at first being a struggle but through a close encounter becomes a place of salvation and reform in which they possibly meet someone who helps them in conquering their inner demons. Upon release from prison is a sense of new life and hope for the future for this once troubled character.
The idea would be to score the character through their troubled time and shaping this new found inner peace through the use of music and character themes.