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Posted: |
Sep 4, 2015 - 6:50 PM
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By: |
KHashmi316
(Member)
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A philosophical and highly speculative discussion ...
Not sure how to describe this ... think about 2001 and Kubrick using music NOT composed for the film (forgetting
about North's discarded score).
Zimmer and Goldsmith scores come to mind as they're the ones I'm most familiar with -- but they're certainly not alone.
Think about the running movie (visuals, non-music sounds) and the music.
Many composers tightly couple the action (or lack of) with their scoring. But, with Zimmer, I sometimes notice the music doing its own thing. Like grocery store "Muzak" running in the background. I noticed this with CHAPPiE, which IMO was a horrible film but had a great Zimmer OST (I saw the film only after I'd heard the OST album several times).
J. Goldsmith, in his running commentary for the HollowMan DVD, noted something like this .... that the composer must do it for the art or for himself first. That the score need only make sense to composer ("as long as one person gets it" is I think what JG noted in the commentary). And I did notice this music "decoupling" in parts of HollowMan! Goldsmith's commentary seemed to indicate he did not take the HollowMan project seriously.
I think this makes OST albums work better (because, in films, subtle cues get drowned out by sound effects -- this happened in CHAPPiE often). But I'm not sure how many composers ACTIVELY compose FOR THE MUSIC (ART) FIRST. And/or proactively compose for an OST album (I assume most of their paycheck is from the initial film-project budget, which (itself) is based on projected movie-theater ticket sales -- i.e., for Joe 6-pack).
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I have to admit this kind of composing isn't really what I associate with Goldsmith at all. The composer I thought worked the most in this style was John Barry. I've always regarded it as a measurement of a composer's skill, the extent to which a given cue can both match the onscreen action ("mickey-mousing") and at the same time retain its own musical validity as a listening-only experience. This is a broad oversimplification, of course, and there is certainly much more to the art of film music than this one specific skill.
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Posted: |
Sep 5, 2015 - 1:08 AM
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By: |
KHashmi316
(Member)
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I have to admit this kind of composing isn't really what I associate with Goldsmith at all. The composer I thought worked the most in this style was John Barry. I've always regarded it as a measurement of a composer's skill, the extent to which a given cue can both match the onscreen action ("mickey-mousing") and at the same time retain its own musical validity as a listening-only experience. This is a broad oversimplification, of course, and there is certainly much more to the art of film music than this one specific skill.
I think there is a LOT of variability here ... factors that affect the quality of the score include:
How much the composer is into (inspired by) the movie project.
The $$ (up-front, royalties, etc).
Etc.
I listened to the Chappie OST album before I saw the film. I thought the soundtrack album was edited to work as stand-alone work (i.e, not as cues run in the film: scoring sessions). But, upon seeing the movie, I found that much of the OST (album) tracks matched the film. Often, it seems as if Zimmer got bored with what was on the screen, going his own direction (a good thing, IMO, as Chappie was not a good movie).
Interesting you mentioned Barry .... in the end of the King Kong's "Waterfall" track/sequence, the Jessica Lange character has a certain reaction to KK blow drying breaths. Barry saw that scene w/o music, and significantly transformed it from simple eroticism to something much more.
That was decent movie in its own right. But films like The Deep, Somewhere in Time, Mercury Rising were fairly poor, IMO, *except* for the score!
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There are times when Goldsmith would play his score “through” a scene — the chase sequence from Shamus springs to mind — but overall I would have to agree that I don't think he's a good example of somebody who does this. Barry usually is, Zimmer often is.
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