Official Artist
Mark Allen
Director
, Screenwriter
, Composer
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255
Posts
Music for Film: Music into Direction
As a director who began his professional life as a musician, studied film scoring with David Raksin, and still scores his own work when possible, I've had a lot of thoughts over the years about music in film - here are just a few of them:
The orchestra or band should be able to fit in a typical room of where the movie is taking place.
The materials used to create the instruments used should be available to the people of the story in a temporal and perhaps even a geographical way.
Thus - scoring a medieval movie with synthesizers seems awkward, but no more awkward that a 200 piece orchestra scoring a suburban teen drama.
The job of music is to tell the subconscious story. Just like editing, it can make a comment on your subject. If there is chaos all around - it does not mean that your music must be chaotic - you should think about where you are on your oscillation point - what comment do you want to make about your character at this moment?
Playing delicate music at a chaotic moment is called "counter-scoring" - but there are many possibilities between matching the action (which is called "Mickey Mousing") and Counter-Scoring. Those possibilities rest as do all creative choices in being aware of what you need your audience to be aware of at this moment.
Just how in photography one might like using depth of field to draw the audience's attention to one character rather than another, or an object.
Just how in editing, one might cut from the face of the old man to the face of his wife because he wants to make a certain comment on his thoughts.
I'm emphasizing here how all of this works together so that one starts realizing that the director's job is to orchestrate all of these things, just like the composer orchestrates his score.
I'll eventually talk about what a director does since it is the most misunderstood high profile job in movies. I just think it's important to cover a lot of the factors which play into that job before talking about it directly.
