I love movies, and I love music. Movie music is a fine art. What's amazing is how much impact the music has on a movie. Imagine your favorite scenes without any music at all. Or different music. Or the wrong music. Everything changes, doesn't it? There's some fun videos you can check out online to see for yourself. One of my all-time favorite movies is "Ladyhawke" and the music absolutely defines it, every bit as much the characters.
I think it goes back to the senses. Good stories use as many as possible, letting us hear and see and feel the action. By using multiple methods, there's more impact. Plus, seeing and hearing are intimately connected with how we interact with the world. Skillfully using them together makes all the difference. Can you imagine the "Jaws" opening with comedic music? Hardly the same impact, even if the visuals are horrifying. On the other hand, the famous scene from "Clockwork Orange" uses the happy "Singing in the Rain" for unspeakable evil.
There are also different kinds of movie music. There's the soundtrack, which is what you'll buy at the music store and isn't necessarily specific to the movie, and the score, which includes music directly written for the movie. Plus, you have music which fills empty dead space where something needs to be and also has to be unnoticed. All of these combine to creature the musical backdrop of movies, and that's a kind of magic that simply has to be experienced. Incredible that it all works so well!
- M
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