Bibliography

Here is a bibliography of all that I have researched throughout semester one, this is the same as within my research proposal with a couple added extras. 

Adler, S. 1989. The study of orchestration. 2^nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Blatter, A. 1980. Instrumentation/orchestration. New York: Schirmer Books.

Brown, R.S. 1994. Overtones and undertones: reading film music. California: University of California Press.

Bullerjahn, C. and Guldenring, M. 1994. An empirical investigation of effects of film music using qualitative content analysis. Psychomusicology. 13: pp. 99-118.  

Cherry, K. 2012. What is cognition?. [online] Available from: http://psychology.about.com/od/cindex/g/def_cognition.htm (Accessed 14 October 2012].

Chion, M. 1994. Audio-visual: sound on sound. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cohen, A.J. 1994. Introduction to the special volume on the psychology of film music. Psychomusicology. 13: pp. 2-8.

Cohen, A.J. 1998. The functions of music in multimedia: a cognitive approach. Proceedings of the fifth International conference on Music Perception and Cognition, August 26-30, Seoul, Korea. Seoul: Western Music Research Institute.

Cohen, A.J. 2001. Music as a source of emotion in film In: Juslin, P and Sloboda, J. eds. Music and emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001. pp. 249-272.

Davis, R. 2000. Complete guide to film scoring: the art and business of writing music for movies and tv. Boston: Berklee Press.

Dowling, W.J. 1999. The development of music perception and cognition. In: Deutsch, D. eds. The psychology of music. 2^nd ed. California: Academic Press. 1999, pp. 603-626.

Ellis-Geiger, R.J. 2007. Trends in contemporary Hollywood film scoring: a synthesised approach for Hong Kong cinema. [online] Available from: http://www.academia.edu/1163413/Trends_in_Contemporary_Hollywood_Film_Scoring_A_Synthesised_Approach_for_Hong_Kong_Cinema [Accessed 6 November 2012].

Fischoff, S. 2005. The evolution of music in film and its psychological impact on audiences. [online] Available from: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/abloom/tvf454/5filmmusic.pdf [Accessed 4 November 2012].

Gorbman, C. 1987. Unheard melodies: narrative film music. London: BFI Publishing.

Gray, C and Malins, J. 2004 Visualizing research: a guide to the research process in art and design. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

Hoeckner, B, Wyatt, E.W, Decety, J and Nusbaum, H. 2011. Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. 5(2): pp. 146-153.

Jacob, G. 1982. Orchestral technique. 3^rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Karlin, F and Wright, R. 2004. On the track: a guide to contemporary film scoring. New York: Routledge.

Marshall, S.K. and Cohen, A.J. 1988. Effects of musical soundtracks on attitudes toward animated geometric figures. Music Perception. 6(1): pp. 95-112.

Radford, I. 2012 Music in film: Indiana Jones and the perfect fifth. [online] Available from: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/22924/music-in-film-indiana-jones-and-the-perfect-fifth

[Accessed 27 November 2012].

Rosar, W.H. 1994. Film music and Heinz Werner’s theory of physiognomic perception. Psychomusicology. 13: pp. 154-165.

Selby, S. [no date]. How does music relate to narrative?. [online] Available from: http://www.stephenselby.com/narrative.php [Accessed 6 November 2012].

Sirius, G and Clarke, E.F. The perception of audiovisual relationships: a preliminary study. Psychomusicology. 13: pp. 119-132.

Thayer, J.F. and Levenson, R.W. 1983. Effects of music on psychophysiological responses to a stressful film. Psychomusicology. 3(1): pp. 44-52.

Weis, E. Belton, J. eds. 1985. Film sound: theory and practice. New York: Columbia University Press.

Experiment Analysis

The following is a short analysis based on a similar experiment in my field. 

Thayer and Levenson (1983) conducted an experiment entitled "Effects of music on psychophysiological responses to a stressful film". 

They believed that music was an influence whether it was to influence shopping habbits, increase work productivity, treat mental health issues and cause feelings within an image that may otherwise have not been felt. 

The researchers took an industrial safety video that lasted 12 minutes and scored to opposing soundtracks for it, one 'horror' score and one 'documentary' score. These were shown to  two different audience groups with the third group watching the video with no score at all. Both the horror and documentary scores were written to conventional compositional techniques. 

The  horror score used diminish 7th chords constructed repetitively with harsh musical timbres to draw attention to the scenes involving accidents in the film. The music began before each accident to create a sense of anxiety leading up to the attack, the score would then naturally end after each accident at the next cut in the film. 

The documentary music was composed using major 7th chords in an active chord progression use to draw attention away from any one part of the film. This was used to relief anxiety and keep the viewers shock factor to a minimum. 

The volunteers were studied through measurements of  heart rate, somatic activity, skin conductance level, pulse amplitude, pulse transmission rate and a self-report of anxiety.

The data was collected, analysed then presented in response peaks to show how the audience reacted to each of the accidents shown. 

The horror movie score proved to gain the largest reaction form the audience as stress levels elevated on all of the experiments measured. The film shown with no music at all proved to be the least stressful of the films  whilst the documentary music results showed a sence of relax whilst the accidents were shown. 

To conclude the experiment, it was summed up that yes, music can alter the stress levels of an audience towards a piece of film although was noted that there may be a preconceived cognitive response in the audience to certain compositional techniques used especially within the creation of anxiety in a "horror" piece. 

Methodology

Methodology - How I will research and conduct my experiment

The two types of methodology that I am going to use to research and underpin my project are Practice Based and Quantitative research methods. 

First of I must have a firm understanding of contemporary compositional technique, a knowledge of how certain musical techniques work, why they work and how they translate into the film median to cause certain effects. My final project will consist of a short independent film shown to an audience within a screening room. There will be three different versions of the film, one scored with score A, one with score B and the third with no music at all. The musical themes will enter the film at select points where the character on screen is changing and will be composed with an expert analysis of how they will manipulate and impact the audience. 
For pre production purposes and for initial research before the final project is begun, I will compose several small themes to images with pre thought out story lines that can be manipulated to show how a theme may vary. 

The main use of quantitative research will be the implementation of questionnaires to the audience throughout the film screening. After each theme enters the audience will have a questionnaire infront of them with rating scales numbered 1-7. At either end of these scales will be opposing adjectives that will be used to describe the character we see such ass ill tempered and good natured. The audience will be asked to simply draw a line on the scale as to where they perceive the character, the number 4 will be used as an indifference or no feeling. 
By the end of the experiment the scales data should show a shift in perception as to how the audience feels for the lead character. All data will be summarised into tables and charts to show this change in perception. 

The 8 Functions of Film Music

Whilst reading about Cohen (1999) earlier, I stumbled upon his theory that there are eight functions of film music and what film music is for:

Music....

1) Masks extraneous noises

2) Provides continuity between shots

3) Directs attention to important features of the screen through structural or associationist congruence

4) Induces mood when unassociated with a particular focus eg. opening credits

5) Communicates meaning and furthers narrative

6) Through association in memory, music becomes integrated with the film and enables the                             symbolization of past and future events through the technique of leitmotiv

7) Music heightens the sense of reality of or absorption in film perhaps by augmenting arousal and increasing attention to the entire film context and inattention to everything else

8) As an art from adds to the aesthetic effect of the film

These are by no means strict guidelines for the composition of music or how music should impact a film but through the studies of compositional technique and emotive response to film music provides a firm study for the why we use music in film and an understanding of the effect it should be having on an audience.

Psychoanalysis of Music from a young age

Further reading of the development of music perception and cognition (Dowling, J) expands on the ideas that as human beings we already have a firm grasp on the understanding of music as we hear it. The majority of this understanding of musc is carried out automatically below our levels of conscious analysis as we have no time to reflect on every single detail as the piece of music progresses. This is similar to the idea of a languages native speaker, as words are spoken we don't take the time to understand the meaning of those words as we already possess the understanding as to what each word means.

Further more to expand on this is to think of a child's understanding. As a child is learning their native language for the first time, they already have an understanding for a words meaning through the actions and tones of voice used during the teaching process. This is similar in a musical sense, Tests from Cunningham and Sterling (1988) and Dolgin and Adelson (1990) showed that by the age of four, children perform well above the factor of chance in assigning one of four affective labels (happy, sad, angry and afraid) to musical excepts in agreement with adult's choices.

The perception of what we hear is not something that we think about but is something that we have learnt through the knowledge of our life of listening. To establish a character through music means to establish an initial perception of that character and how that perception should sound for the listener to identify.

The Limitations of Film Scoring - Character Themes

The biggest problem in composing themes in film is the short amount of time the composer has to establish a theme for the audience to recognise and get across the point that they are trying to make through the music.

When we are looking at character themes we are looking at complex pieces of musical composition. Brown.R.S. 1994 points out the theory that music doesn't just reveal feelings of love, passion etc. for someone but puts us (the audience) into that individuals position to be directly presented emotive information through our understanding, grasp and knowledge of those feelings without having them put through someone else in front of us. Basically the thought that we understand the emotion evoked through the music we hear directly and not though the character on screen pushing those emotions onto us.

So how can such complex ideas be limited to mere seconds of musical composition?
Of course there are many techniques in composing both in the contemporary world as well as the classical. We look at Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Colour and Instrumentation as our tools of creation. We can add dissonance, atonality, polytonality, bitonality, modal and chromatic melodic writing amongst other tools to add tension, drama and individuality to a piece. But that doesn't answer the question of how we evoke intense feelings within such a short space of time.

Brown goes on to explain the use of classical compositional style within character themes. That themes can be trimmed into motifs, invention of appropriate rhythms and finding convincing harmonic contexts for the material that won't even see the traditional eight bar phrase found in songwriting.
Brown goes on to say great musical themes can be written without a traditional melody. Instead relying strongly on the instruments used, the harmony created and the rhythmic colour. In contrast to this however some of the best and most recognisable character themes are lone, three note melodies on a single instrument.

So once again we ask; How can we evoke a powerful emotional response in our viewers that is truly believable to the characters on screen through a single theme?

So far through my reading and researching of this there is no correct answer. There seems to be no formulaic approach to writing a character theme. Some are influenced by one thing, others by something completely different, it seems to come down to the individual composer, their knowledge of musical theory and practice, their knowledge of the film they are scoring for and their own personal relationship with the music they are creating with the theme they are getting across. I will continue to study this area to see if I come across a tight pattern to theme scoring, how we establish something huge in a minuscule period of time, until then it is my own knowledge of character narrative, music and how music is made that will aid me in my own compositions of character themes.

Film Music and Opera

I have been trying to research the history of film music and where the idea of music as an emotional stimulus as opposed to the covering of silence came from.

The big tie here sees classical music and more predominately, opera showing clear narrative driven music to enhance and engage the story at a heightened level of characterization. "Overtones and Undertones" a book by Royal. S Brown quickly recaps on the relationship between Wagnerian opera and it's common traits found in todays film scores.

Wagners compositions are widely recognised for their use of characters themes and leitmotifs that are now a staple of association with characters and themes in film today. Wagner was able to take a character such as Gutrune in his opera "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and use a theme to associate that character with the music.
These themes that represented not only characters but emotive feelings and conflicting views within the story are more important for their immediate emotional impact and in their relationship to the dramatic structure of the opera than they are to the underlying musical structure (Brown,R. 1994).

Wagner didn't invent the idea of putting music to film but he produced compositions for story that didn't just enhance the story but embodied the story, captured the characters within the story and developed their feelings into music for the audience to understand and feel that they knew who the characters were and how they felt. 

The Psychology of Film Music

I have looked into a lot of reading on film music, how film music in constructive, how character themes can be established and how music is different in film than say a stand alone composition but what I have not fully looked into that I need to understand is the psychology behind film music and how an audience relates to characters and how music can be used to gain an emotive response from an audience. 

One thought that I enjoyed reading was that people don't go to the cinema or watch movies at home for the experience of realism (Fischoff, S. 2005). He goes on to add that "Music adds something we might call heightened reality or supra-realism". The thought is that in reality we don't live our life with underscore. When we feel terror or we feel scared or sad we know the feeling, we ourselves feel that feeling and know how it feels. In film we don't know how the character feels as we aren't that character. To elevate the realism of what we see on screen, music is used to tell us how that character feels and how we should be feeling for them. 

In advertisement "Hidden Persuaders" are often used to make us (the consumer) believe that we need that product and we must feel a certain way about that product to make us want to buy it. This is the same idea in film music. We are to believe in what we see on screen and buy into the feelings that the character is feeling. It isn't just enough to see that the character is scared of the dark, a cleverly composed piece of music can suddenly put us in the characters shoes and remind us that we have felt that feeling and we can feel it with them, we share the experience with the fictional character that we see before us. 

In the film "Amelie" (2001) music is used to capture Amelie's moods in a more effective way than the dialogue can put across. The psychological thought behind this being that it is "more emotively evocative as music goes directly to the brains emotional structure (the limbic system) bypassing cortically based cognitive mediation" and the acknowledgement of perception. In relation to this psychologist Rudolph Arnheim argues that "brains are hard-wired to associate certain sounds with certain moods" 

Music can subconsciously speak to the audience in a way that the reality of the visual or underpinning silence is unable to. Yes we can see the feeling of desperate despair or of all out rage but it is music that allows us to connect with that feeling and allows us to feel what the character is feeling especially when it may not be directly obvious. 

Murch (Chion, 1994) talks of a phenomenon that he calls Conceptual Resonance between image and sound, where the sound makes us see the image differently and then this new image makes us hear the sound differently, which in turn makes us see something else in the image and so on. 

As previously stated if an on screen character is crying, our perception of how they feel will be sadness. It is music however that makes us feel what they are feeling, it allows us to feel the characters mood, thoughts and feelings without having to see the character crying, we can feel their inner struggle through the delicately composed music depicting that character. This is why I believe I can change an audiences perception of a character over time through the use of music, the music heightens the reality of what we see, it is not just a companion to a visual but is the heart of the visual.

Aims and Objectives

The following are my proposed aim and objectives:

Aim

Analyse musical themes as a narrative device in film and investigates through the use of demonstrated compositional technique, musical themes and professional practice whether a viewer’s perception of a character can change over the course of a film.  

Objectives

Examine the use of compositional technique of music used in film and produce practical evidence that these techniques can be replicated through examples of stationary and moving image. 

Understand and investigate the historic background of character themes and determine how they may be established and manipulated. 

Explore the psychological and emotional impact that music can have on a listener and understand how music can create and develop a perception of an image. 

Compose multiple musical theme variations for a short film clip that establishes a character before manipulating the viewer’s perception of that character. 

Using quantitative research methods on an audience, analyse how efficient music is in changing perception and whether music alone can change how an audience responds to that character.