Final Executive Summary

To me, this project has been a huge success, not just in terms of managing to prove the hypothesis that I set out for myself that through the use of compositional technique that manipulating a musical theme over the course of a film clip can change the perception of a character but it also taught me the history and an in depth understanding musical themes that I had not formally studied at length before.

The reason for choosing this project was down to my great interest in the film medium and to learn, in depth and practically how music works in a film narrative and more importantly how themes may be established and used to embody a character and immerse the viewer into that character’s shoes. I began by studying the history of music in film, from the founding conventions of opera and theatre pioneered by the techniques used by the likes of Richard Wagner throughout the 1800’s, into silent cinema incorporating the accompaniment of live musicians into the sound film era which advanced over time with technological advances to allow for multi tracking, mixing and endless possibilities for the modern composer to write and create music. From here I gained an understanding of how themes may be used, from the ostinato in Jaws to character themes in Amelie, themes have been incorporated into film since its sound resurrection.

Learning compositional technique, how to compose in such a short space of time to embody an image and then how to repeat these themes without becoming boring or the same, manipulating the themes through changes in melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation and tonal colour to advance and shape a theme. This is something that I practiced throughout first semester to both static and moving image before tackling my final project.

The final area of research was into psychological and emotional impact that music has on a viewer and how a viewer’s cognitive response may alter their perception of sound to image. This was one are that I learnt a lot in. I had never once thought of sound in film in the sense of an added dimension. Music is the elevated height that takes a film from showing emotion to interpreting and feeling emotion, an area that I may have acknowledged in the past but one that I have never looked into, or into why this happens. Why do western cinema conventions work, or does our perception of sound over our life change how we think about things. Why do we associate sirens with an emergency? Because that is what we have known them to relate to for our whole life, it’s the human art of comprehension.

The practical work of composing the piece was great fun, although at times pressuring. I am no stranger to composition or composing to a brief given to me both in academic and employed formats, but giving myself clear restrictions and making sure that I was the only person that was to answer to the reasons for why I may employ certain techniques was difficult to grasp when creating the initial ideas and concepts for the pieces. I knew that using the clip that I did, that the character was to struggle with his inner emotions. The character was to (in excerpt 1) begin a fragile, mourning man who suffers a mental breakdown and ultimately loses control of his life and is a danger to his own health. I had a number of words that I knew wished to describe the man at different points of the clip although these were not set in stone adjectives till towards the end of the practical process when I began thinking of testing. This was the first time that I had really looked into how key signatures had an effect on a listener over the major/minor/modal theories. I began writing the piece in C minor but upon research into classical key relations, found B minor to further connate the feeling of despair through previous work of 19^th century composers. I don’t believe that every composition should follow these key rules as that would not simply be the case that every piece of music written in B minor should establish a feeling of tragedy, but It added to my theory that paired with western musical and film conventions that an audience knows from their pre-conceived cognition of listening and watching that a meaning that I wish to portray in a short space of time may be done so quickly in a short hand language that the viewer subconsciously understands.

By the time I got round to testing, I knew the feelings that the music were to express, I had written down as I went, notes on how the character was feeling and why/how the music was to tell that. This made it clear as to why the antonyms I chose towards the end were chosen. I knew the character was never going to be a good character or bad character so picking any positive or negative adjective just wouldn’t work, the character had to be unstable and for that the antonyms provided all reflected mental instability with the feeling of mental order.

The testing was a success. Through the sixteen participants experimented upon, it was concluded that yes, perception to a character does change over time due to the techniques that I had applied musically. I do however believe that the test was not the number one method of testing. I do feel that this would have benefited from a cinema screen showing, although the test was more personal to the participant and was able to be personally explained in the best possible way to provide coherent answers. The film clip could have been longer, giving a more realistic approach to film scoring. I believe that the score that I have written in no way sounds disjointed but it does not reflect how a score or theme would properly be used in a film. One of my biggest flaws personally, was in the analysis of testing. As I had used likert scales that were filled in on an ipad (technically by hand) all data had to be worked out by hand and calculated by hand before being imported into Microsoft excel for full mean analysis. It would have been must less time consuming and stressful had this data been completed online in an online rating survey in which all data would be instantly exported into excel for quick calculations. This in no way affected my results but was more time consuming than it needed to be. My only other flaw was that I would have enjoyed composing a second complete score as opposed to re syncing the first score in reverse with minor adjustments. This is something that I began to look into doing but due to time restrains had to begin cutting back which ate into the time I would have to make as good a job on the second excerpt and was ultimately scrapped before any substantial work could take place.

Ultimately I do believe the test prove the results that I wanted which to me was a great success. Further analysis in the field would provide findings that would not only increase the conclusive evidence that I have found but would be of great benefit to both the musical and psychological world for understanding how we take on the mind of a fictional character through the use of music and its manipulation.