9 Chapter 9: Musical Score

As we noted in the previous chapter, before sound synchronization a musician (or musicians) often improvised music along with a film.^[1] These improvisations might have been entirely new music, or the musical selections might have been drawn from preexisting pieces. In the early 1920s, some enterprising folks like Erno Rapée published collections of music for cinema pianists. His Motion Picture Moods (1924) was a valuable resource for a solo musician who wanted a quick and easy way to sight-read music that had been categorized into “fifty-two moods and situations,” according to the title page. Some of these moods and situations included: “battle,” “gruesome,” “Misterioso,” and “sadness,” and included a host of dance forms and national songs (organized by nation or ethnic group). It had the added benefit of being a “Rapid-Reference” collection, and this was achieved by a handy list on the outer margin of each page, which would quickly send you to the next mood or situation you needed to accompany.

Motion Picture Moods

Before the technology existed to encode a musical track onto the actual film, there were attempts to sync up sound and visuals. Thomas Edison’s Kinetophone was an early experiment in linking up sound and picture, but it was designed for a single viewer. The next Edison system took the process a step further. In 1926, Western Electric used an Edison patent for its Vitaphone system (see Chapter 8 for more information on the Vitascope), which paired up sound recorded on a phonograph record with projected visual images. Each reel was designed to be the length of one side of a record.

Vitaphone System

As we noted in the previous chapter, the late 1920s saw the emergence of technology that led to synchronized soundtracks. Scholars of film sound now focus mainly on three sonic elements: dialogue (speech), sound effects (including ambient noise), and music. In his discussion on the role of sound in film, James Buhler states,  “the soundtrack shapes or interprets the image track for us: It encourages us to look at the images in a certain way, to notice particular things, and to remember them.” Just as the director chooses camera angles and shots that bring certain characters to the forefront or draw your attention to what’s happening in the background, sound can function similarly. The sound mixing may foreground dialogue in one scene, while in another background character chatter is seen but not heard as music or sound effects become more noticeable. Sound, like visual sets and costumes, forms an element of continuity.

Early Characteristics of Film Scores

As sound film took hold and the technology for recording (on-set) and reproducing sound (in theaters) became more refined, certain practices came to be expected from the film-viewing experience. According to Roger Hickman, some general characteristics of film music were established:

• Extensive use of music (often referred to as “wall-to-wall” music)

• Exploitation of the full range of orchestral colors

• Reliance on the melody-dominated style of the late nineteenth century

• Frequent borrowing of familiar melodies

• Musical support for dramatic moods, settings, characters, and action

• Unity through leitmotifs and thematic transformation (12)

Once principal shooting of a film wraps up, the film then gets edited into what’s called a “rough cut.” This cut is often accompanied by some preexisting music. This is called a “temp track.” The music on the temp track may be made up of songs, classical pieces, or other film music. When a piece of music is chosen for the temp track, it can be because the director wants this specific piece (which the music supervisor then must purchase the rights to) or it could be that they just want new music that “sounds like” the chosen piece. The director may want the composer to capture a specific mood, an overall tone, or a tempo, or the director may want to mimic the instrumentation, the melody, or some other quality in the music.

The temp track also hints to another crucial piece of information: where the director wants music. Depending on the director (and, more important, on the collaboration between composer and director), this aspect might be part of a larger discussion. There is also usually something called a “spotting session,” which is an opportunity for the director and composer to watch a film together and talk about where musical cues or silence will go. Now, this is an extreme simplification of the process because the director and composer might each have their own philosophy of how music should function in a film, and there are many different ways to score a film or a scene. We’ll break down a couple of the most famous collaborations to see how certain directors and composers work together.

Composers nowadays might score the whole film in a DAW (digital audio workstation) or use notation software to complete written scores and create parts for the musicians. In the pre-digital era, composers wrote ideas on paper for orchestrators to turn into full scores (John Williams still works this way, but he’s in his 90s). If there are many musicians hired to complete the score, there will likely be recording sessions where the composer (or assistant) will conduct the ensemble to fit to a more finely tuned edit of the film.

In addition to music, sound effects, foley, and ADR (automated dialogue replacement) are added in postproduction and mixed by a sound mixer. If you’re at all interested in sound mixing, we recommend a documentary called Making Waves (2019.)

Trailer for Making Waves

Music Supervisors

In addition to a newly written score, sometimes films use preexisting songs. Some screenwriters and directors write their movies with particular songs in mind. Quentin Tarantino, for example, has explained that he writes his movies while listening to selections from his own album collection. Those songs can then be woven into the film because someone in production handles getting the legal rights to play them in the movie. Depending on the song, the license to play a song in a film generally costs between $20,000 and $45,000, with some running up to $60,000. Sometimes directors will cut corners somewhere else in the film so they can get the exact recording they want for a scene. This is especially true on lower budget films.

Tarantino on music in film

Many times, though, a Music Supervisor will suggest songs or musical pieces for a particular place in a film. Broadly speaking, the Music Supervisor–whether working in film, tv, advertising, video game, etc.–is the person who combines music and visuals. The Guild of Music Supervisors’ website defines the job as being for “A qualified professional who oversees all music related aspects of film, television, advertising, video games and any other existing or emerging visual media platforms as required.”^[2]

Sometimes, as in the following scene from Moonlight (2016), a director will substitute the score for dialogue in a pivotal scene.

Moonlight

Leitmotif

Composers use recurring themes, or motifs, as a kind of signature (or even a brand) for a film or tv series. The most famous of these are the ones you can probably hum to yourself right now, again like Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Composers can use this same concept for a specific character as well, known as a leitmotif. A leitmotif is akin to “walk up music” for an athlete. Think of those two ominous notes we associate with the shark in Jaws. That’s a leitmotif. How about the triumphant horns we hear every time Indiana Jones shows up in Raiders of the Lost Ark? That’s a leitmotif.^[10] Leitmotifs help an audience identify a character with a particular mood, but they can also function as a cohesive device irrespective of a character.  Here’s a famous leitmotif associated with Harry Lime, a character from The Third Man (1949):

The Third Man

Here’s a scene from Australia (2008) that the film uses as a multicultural leitmotif for life and hope as well as allusions to both The Wizard of Oz and the indigenous Rainbow Serpent.

Australia

Special Functions of the Musical Score

The score can speak to a film viewer in many different ways.

• Heighten the Drama of a Scene
• Help to Tell an Inner Story
• Staying True to Time/Place
• Foreshadowing and/or Building Tension
• Adding Levels of Meaning to the Visuals
• Understanding a Character through Music
• Triggering a Conditioned Response
• Traveling Music
• Providing Transitions
• Setting the Tone of the Film
• Incorporating Sounds as Part of the Score
• Music as Interior Monologue
• Music as a Base for Choreographed Action
• Covering Weaknesses in the Film (Petrie and Boggs 265-278)

As you can see, the musical score can impact us and is a useful tool of the filmmaker to truly reinforce ideas within a film.

Silence

Ironically, the advent of sound technology also allowed for film to become truly silent for the first time.^[11] Once audiences became accustomed to listening to sound – hearing it, differentiating its layers, interpreting it – the most radical way to get attention was to turn the sound off. In 1931, Fritz Lang’s M did just this. Contrasting boisterous musicals and chatty rom-coms, M turned to dark themes of child abduction and murder. When a little girl Elsie goes missing, Lang uses silence to show the gravity of her absence. We see shots of her empty chair at the dinner table, her ball rolling to nowhere, her balloon disappearing into the sky – all absolutely silent with no music or dialogue to ease the audience’s nerves or provide solace.

Silence can help create a number of effects, including suspense, a character’s sense of isolation, visual awe, or emotional impact.^[12]

A Quiet Place (2018)

Stalker (1979)

The Assassin (2015)

Ikiru (1952)

Sometimes, a director will employ a dead track, an extreme type of silence, in which not even the slightest ambient sound is heard. Here’s an example from Munich (2005).

Munich (deadtrack around 30-second mark)