Movies: to Score or not to Score?

The simple fact that films typically have a musical score always seems to slip right by me when I'm actually making any kind of short film or TV show myself. It's just not something that I would typically think about. Good audio? Sure. Sound effects? Yeah, why not. But never a score. This lead me to thinking, hey, who says that films need to have any kind of music or instrumentality at all? That, in turn, lead me to google, which lead me to some interesting websites, which lead me here, to this blog post.

As behind-the-scenes as they typically are, we all know the names of a few movie composers: Hans Zimmer (please click that link for your own sake), Danny Elfman, and of course, the legendary John Williams. Their scores don't just add noise to all of their respective films: they add feeling, and set a tone for any given scene or even the movie as a whole  If you need an example for a really amazing score that is spot on in terms of creating an entire atmosphere for a film, look no further Howard Shore and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It doesn't just add tension or give scenes a certain flavor: it's music that like, I could actually see hobbits playing out on their front porches. Or whatever hobbit holes have instead of porches. Dirt clods? I don't know. 

 But what I'm curious about is if some films rely too heavily on composers and a musical score in order to fix what would otherwise be a weak script. Recently, there was a video going around the internet called "Star Wars without Williams." While it was meant to be funny, it also pointed out something pretty important: this throne room scene is super awkward without music. What was once a jovial and triumphant scene is now just echoey and weird. Don't get me wrong, I like Star Wars as much as the next guy or gal, but Audio (and script) - wise, Lucas kind of dropped the ball here. 

On the opposite side of things, however, is it possible to have a good film without any scoring at all? Sure. Just check out No Country for Old Men, The Birds, and 90% of Castaway. The key to scoring films, as I'm slowly but surely finding out, is to balance a good script with subtle yet powerful music. Emphasize certain emotions or themes that you want to have emphasized, while at the same time making sure that your film could still be successful without the music shoving those emotions down your throat. If you're looking for some more interesting info on how composers mess with our emotions, you check out a BBC article on that very topic right here.

In the spirit of all Trailers

In the spirit of all this trailer creating process! (and because I'm happy this project is over) I decided to dedicate my last post to some of my favorite trailers!

My first favorite trailer is for David Fincher's Social Network:

I have to be honest, when I first heard that a movie about Facebook was coming out, I wasn't that excited. What made me go see this movie was the trailer. First of all, it uses a cover of Creep by Radiohead, as their score. Not Radiohead's best song, but it fits the concept and creates the perfect mood to catch the audience's attention (given that most of us have heard this song before). I also loved that they used a choral version of the song instead of the original one. Second, this trailer does a pretty good job introducing the conflict of the movie without giving away the whole plot. Finally, the shots and lighting are both interesting and as dramatic as they need to be.

Yes, I know this trailer is in french..... But I still love it. I first saw this because I had to watch a list of trailers in french for one of my classes. Believe me, I don't understand most of the stuff these people are saying, but it is awesome that a trailer you can't understand the words of can be so captivating. The music for this trailer is excellent. The switch in tempo and melody really gives you a taste of the different moods of this movie. It also does a great job connecting you with the characters. Every time I watch this trailer I feel compelled to watch the movie again! I also decided to upload this version, because I think the american version of the trailer is not as exciting as this one.

I remember when I first saw this, I thought "This movie is going to be epic!" I have no idea how many times I've watched this trailer, but I still get excited every time I watch this. The editing for this is excellent. I love how at the beginning they fade in and out different shots. This technique gave a certain rhythm that totally changes as you move on, especially at the end where all the cuts are fast. The editing, along with the music and voice overs work really well together. The only word to describe this trailer is epic!

Finally, the Inception movie trailer. I like this because it's pretty similar to the Batman trailer in technique (of course both movies are from the one and only Christopher Nolan). This trailer not only gives you whole picture of the movie, but also focuses in the main conflicts of the characters (especially Leonardo Dicaprio's character). I think the Batman trailer also does this. The Inception trailer also does a great job introducing the audience to the world of the movie, in order to hook them and make them go see it.

These are only a few of my favorite trailers! I also want to take this opportunity to express that it was a great semester. And that I enjoyed working with such a talented class! Hopefully I'll see you guys next semester, and if I don't I wish you the best luck!!!!

Nine comes after 8 1/2

After reading chapter 9, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, a light went off in my head like I have read or seen something like this before. I couldn't figure it out for a while, so i called my dad back at home and read some of the plot points and characters to him that the chapter described. He told me it sounded a lot like the movie Nine. So i did some research to find out that I did in fact
see the movie, and that 8 1/2 did intact have an influence on the 2009 hit movie.

Reading further into the chapter, the author kept using the term "double mirror construction," and what that refereed to was how the movie was portrayed. Unlike Hollywood films where each scene leads into the next and you can make connections, this new style of cinema took the audience into the mind of how a human really thinks, and put that on the screen. From dreams and emotions, to thoughts and ideas, you never knew what was coming and what was what. In one scene, Guido Anselmi, the director in the movie (not of the movie) would be doing something and the screen would radically change to what he was thinking of in his head. Whether it was a problem with his life, or something he didn't like in the film. Nin

e did similar cinema style, creating images of the on the screen to what the character was thinking.

As crazy as it seems, I can also relate 8 1/2 to a recent film called Inception. Both movies have similar themes finding true personal happiness in a difficult, fragmented life. In one, Guido Anselmi is trying to create the perfect film through all of his mishaps and life problems, and in the other Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is trying to go through mazes and his life problems to get back to his kids. All of these movies are considered to be "second time movies" because you have to watch them twice to really understand what is going on.

If anyone has any comments or something to add, please do

steve kinslow

The Music and Script of Inception

After talking about the spinning hallway in Inception during class it got me thinking about this complex and intriguing movie. Underneath the effects there are many other great things this movie has including its music and story.

First for those who have not seen the film, Inception is a 2010 film written, directed and co-produced by Christopher Nolan one of my favorite directors who has done movies like The Dark Knight and Memento. It was also nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Leonardo DiCaprio stars and plays Dom Cobb, a specialized thief. Instead of robbing, banks he steals ideas from the unconscious minds while they are asleep and dreaming. This is called extraction. Cobb has been on the run and unable to go home to America to visit his children because he is wanted for his wife's murder. Cobb is offered a chance to go home and have his old life back if he could perform the impossible task of inception; the planting of an idea into someone's subconscious. That is Inception in a nutshell. It is a lot more complex and a definite watch for anyone who loves science fiction, action or heist movies.The music from Inception is just beyond epic. Hans Zimmer, who has worked on movies like The Lion King, The Dark Knight, and Rango, completed the score. Now the score is described as a very electronic score but the coolest part about Zimmer's Academy Award nominated score involves Charles Dumont's 1956 song "Non, je ne regrette rien." In the movie this song is used as a "kick" to wake up them up. To know they are running out of time in the dream the song softly starts as headphones are placed on the dreamer's ears. The music builds and then they are awakened.

Now as explained in the film, time moves differently when people are dreaming or when they are dreaming within a dream. ("It's a week the first level down. Six months the second level…"). Zimmer used this information and incorporated this into his soundtrack. Listen carefully to "Non, je ne regrette rien" and then to Zimmer's "Half-Remembered Dream" from the soundtrack. Do you see what he did there? When slowed down the song, like it would be in the dream world for the characters. Check out this video for an audio comparison. Another user also did the opposite and sped up "Half-Remembered Dream" to have it sound like Dumont's song!

Two final points, one small and one large, I want to bring up involve the story and the script, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Let's start small first. Nolan was so detailed when writing the script that some of the character names are allusions. Ellen Page's character Ariadne is an "architect" who creates the various dreamscapes, which are designed like mazes. The name alludes to a princess in a Greek myth who aided by the hero Theseus by giving him a sword and a ball of string to help him navigate the labyrinth, which imprisoned the Minotaur. Ariadne in the movie aids the hero Cobb and the rest of the characters on how to navigate the dream mazes.

The other point I must bring up when talking about Inception is the ending. The ambiguous and controversial ending involves a spinning top wobbling. For the characters in the movie they each have a totem that allows them to find out if they are dreaming or in the real world. For Cobb if the top stays spinning he is dreaming but the ending fails to show if the top falls or not because of the abrupt cut. In other words the audience is unsure if the final sequence of the film is reality or just another dream. While many of speculated and even came up with theories involving Cobb only wears his wedding ring during dreams and that is your clue to look for, Nolan has denied this. When I first saw the movie I was a little confused and looked for clues to find out what happened but after my second viewing I realized how it doesn't matter what happened. Whether he is dreaming or not, Cobb is not looking at the top for the answer but is looking at his kids. If he doesn't care, neither should we. Nolan has backed this in interviews but the audience is free to believe whatever they want. Maybe they should sleep on it and dream their own ending to this wild movie.

What does Gravity have to do with it?

We talked about this in class today. Defying gravity on the set from the simple to the complex, from the cheap to the extravagant!

Though a very simple solution, it has always caused wonderment on the eyes of the public. It is probably older than that but 1930's Blood of a Poet by avant garde artist Jean Cocteau comes to my mind as one of the earliest in which gravity was defied.

le sang d´un poète

More famously and better known by the American audiences is the 1951 Fred Astaire movie Royal Wedding by Stanley Donen .

Royal Wedding by Stanley Donen

That famous sequence of course inspired an even more famous scene, albeit more complex, in one of cinema's great modern movies, Stanley Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey

The "centrifuge" set used for filming scenes depicting interior of the spaceship Discovery

And of course...INCEPTION