alicebandassassin

a good movie score by deffintion has to be the one you do not notice because it is so much part of the film

pokernut951

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - by Ennio Morricone

I listen to this album alot.

Green

Completely untrue, if you ask me. Can anyone honestly say they never noticed the score to Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Jaws?

A good score is one that enhances the movie, imo, not one that blends anonymously into the background I've already said that I love the Gattaca soundtrack/score, and the final bit of music as the incinerator fires up still brings me to tears now, after about 20 viewings and a hundred listens. The images/movie alone would not have the same effect.

chrispenycate

Sound, picture and editing should reinforce, either by synchronicity or contrast (a violent, brutal picture with delicate, etherial music and pastoral sound effects can be very effective) Within the sound, the music should never interfere with the dialogue, and should co-operate with the sound effects, rather than having to bet brought down to let them through. Thus, the album is frequently mixed differently, and not that rarely uses a different instrumental arrangement, from the version used in the film mix. In fact, whenever possible, the elements of the music are brought in separately, for optimal integration into the final product, enabling us to put the music much further forward (if this is what is desired) without interfering with comprehensibility, than was once possible.

Still, if at the cinema you find yourself listening to the music, unless the film is "Amadeus" or "Fantasia", the director has failed (you, not me; I'm probably analysing how the mixer's using the surrounds, or how much the screen speakers are rattling, but each to his own enjoyment)

Curt Chiarelli

Back in the day, when truly great work was being done by Benny Herrmann, Mikki Rosza, Erich Korngold, you could count the number of soundtrack albums on your left hand. For forty years Hollywood executives ignored all the fan mail begging for soundtrack albums to be made available to the public. Their rationale for never releasing them? Soundtrack albums "have no market". In the early 70's, Warner Bros. studio accountants, wanting to score Brownie Points with upper mangement, decided that the archived master tapes in their possession were "worthless overhead" that "took up to much space". These masterpieces - including a portion of Max Steiner's and Dimitri Tiomkin's catalogue - ended up as landfill. At other studios the magnetic oxide tape was slowly disintegrating or mislabeled or completely lost. As to this day the only studio that has a record for properly archiving and maintaining its classic scores is Twentieth Century Fox. Alfred Newman, who headed up the music department at Fox from 1940 to 1960, was, as usual, visionary in his approach: Bernard Herrmann's earliest scores for Fox ("Jane Eyre" 1944 and "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" 1947) were recorded in advanced technology that simulated stereo! Because of Newman's foresight we have many treasures released as CDs and delighting listeners today.

Green

I have to disagree with that. For a recent(ish) example, when I saw the Fellowship of the Ring at the cinema, the bit of music after Gandalf falls from the Bridge was something that really caught my ear, and I did listen to the music. It's a beautiful (but very short) piece of music. The director didn't detract from the film for highlighting that bit of music, he added to it. If done properly, emphasising the music works towards emphasising the film, without having to be anonymous.

It's the same with cinematography and things like that. Sometimes, it's done in a way so that you don't notice it (and often, it just does the job with a minimum of fuss), but a lot of the time it's very overt and has a positive effect on the end result (the Matrix palette is a perfect example of this, as is the classic "Star Wars wipe"). I'm sure "A Scanner Darkly" will have a big impact because of its interesting animation/effects - we'll just have to wait to see whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.

foytey

Yeah I agree A film with a good score can make or break a movie sometimes as it sets the mood for certain situations.
Cn enhance a comedy scene or make a deep dramatic scene come to life. Most songs I love come from a memorable scene

Taggart

One of my favourite soundtracks is James Newton Howard's "Prince of Tides."
It has provided background music for many dinners at our place.

I also love the music used in "Jaws."

Leonardo

I both agree and disagree with this. To say that the director has failed is way over the top. If the movie has your attention flying between music, dialogue, graphical scenes, underlying subtleties, that could just amplify the movie's general direction. The Godfather serves a decent example. The movie scarcely employs more than two varieties of the same musical theme, and yet the music sets the mood and attracts the focus several times throughout the movie. And I'll eat my hat if you aren't humming it for a week after you see it.

Other examples are movies that use music as a sort of obvious device, like either version of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. They're not musicals, but music plays an important part of dialogue as the oompa-loompas make fun of all the children.

And oh, The Lion King, in my opinion one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. Hans Zimmer, Elton John, Tim Rice, Lebo M. Arguably, this is a musical movie. But then all Disney movies are, and most cartoons altogether. Suddenly there are quite a few movies unaffected by this rule of thumb of yours.

I think the validity of "if you're listening to the music the director has failed" was greater before than it is now. I think soundtracks have become more and more important and that the focus has rightly been increased over time as well. Comparing A Fistful of Dollars to Once Upon A Time In Mexico is a cute way to examplify that, since they're both great westerns of their time, in a way.
In the former, Ennio Morricone seemlessly weaves music into all the important scenes, more of a sound effect than actual music some of the time. The focus is entirely and absolutely on Clint Eastwood.
In the latter, Antonio Banderas has a scene where he goes into a room playing an old spanish Malagueña on an electric guitar, and then suddenly starts shooting people as it turns out the guitar was really a guitar-gun! Woowee!


Back to the topic at hand, it seems that this thread has gone on for three full pages without a single mention of Danny Elfman! Being a big fan, I think this is a great shame. His soundtracks are kind of childish and playful. Reminiscent of Tchaikovsky in that manner. Alot of vibrophones and xzylophones and marimbas and things that you hit with mallets. Nightmare Before Christmas stands out, because not only did he write all the music and the lyrics, but he sung the voice of Skeleton Jack himself.
Other notable soundtracks are Edward Scissorhands, Charlie And the Chocolate Factory, Good Will Hunting, or any movie directed by Tim Burton.

Also not present is Mark Mothersbaugh, who usually works with Wes Anderson on his movies. Check out the soundtrack for The Royal Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, especially.