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  • Yet another winner!...

    Who else here saw the 2nd instalment of the 'Deathly Hallows'?

    The person with whom I went to see it - who knows I'm somewhat aware of film-music - turned at some point and asked me: "Is this the same composer that scored 'Batman'?" I answered: "Yes! In a way..."

    Congratulations Mr. Thesplat, even the uninformed can tell you have long been awarded a conspicuous place in the "majestic" Pantheon of 21st century film-composers...


  • I was going to see it - but then I was reminded that I was being put to death that very same evening.

    Desplat wrote a great theme to The Girl with the Pearl Earring.


  • What I always wonder about when listening to this sort of music in cinema - which part of the concept "loud music can only sound convincing and expressive instead of drab and tiresome when a) employed with measure and skill and b) not everything is loud all the time" these people don't understand?

    As Berlioz put it:

    "General prejudice charges large orchestras with being noisy. However, if they are well rehearsed, well balanced and well conducted, and if they perform truly good music [my emphasis], they should rather be called powerful. In fact, nothing is as different in meaning as these two expressions. A shabby, little vaudeville band may appear noisy, whereas a large orchestra, skillfully employed, will be extremly soft and of the greatest beauty of sound even in passionate outbursts. Three trombones, if clumsily employed, may appear noisy and unbearable; and the very next moment, in the same hall, twelve trombones will delight the listener with their powerful and yet noble tone."


  • That is a fascinating quote and very insightful which you would expect from such a great orchestrator.  Also what you are talking about with the loudness is something I have particularly been affected by.  I have grown more and more intolerant of loud music (though have written a lot in the past) and even felt physically disturbed, by that horrible pounding blaring score so often heard today. 

    You know what the exact opposite film score conceivable to these is?  Something by Roy Webb for the Val Lewton films.   It is delicate even exquisite music in I Walked with a Zombie, Cat People (original one), Isle of the Dead and most of all the masterpiece Seventh Victim.   The sound effects are quiet but vivid and the music is like Debussy without being imitated, performed by a small chamber ensemble of strings, woodwinds and only a small, sparing use of brass/percussion.  Those along with several Herrmann are my favorite of all film scores.


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    @William said:

    You know what the exact opposite film score conceivable to these is?  Something by Roy Webb for the Val Lewton films.   It is delicate even exquisite music in I Walked with a Zombie, Cat People (original one), Isle of the Dead and most of all the masterpiece Seventh Victim.   The sound effects are quiet but vivid and the music is like Debussy without being imitated, performed by a small chamber ensemble of strings, woodwinds and only a small, sparing use of brass/percussion.  Those along with several Herrmann are my favorite of all film scores.

     

    I too find the loud wahm! bam!, in your face orchestrations of today's film scores to be quite tiresome.  Having to sit through this summer's blockbuster offerings (I have kids) I've come to the realization that films today are just overscored.  Less is more, so much more.  However, I thought Alan Silvestri's score for Captain America was refreshing because it sounded like he tried to recreate a score from a 1940's serial when most of the film was set during the war.

    It's interesting to me that the selections suggested by William here are of the Horror/Supernatural/Thriller genre.  It seems that that is pretty much the only genre today where minimalism supports the visuals instead of competing with them.  Did anybody see Insidious?  If I remember right the score was comprised of chamber or solo strings.  It wasn't very memorable in the sense of themes and melodies, in fact it was rather atonal but it worked so well.  Creepy stuff.  It kind of reminded me of the score to The Evil Dead .


  • I still remember what a great soundtrack Evil Dead was. Try and ask one of those Planet of the Orkestral Apes to do that. Ask those Con-Posers who score an orchestra like it were a garage band (almost everyone playing all the time, and loudly), to write for a piano quartet or quintet. Come on people! You can write for double Symphobia Orkestras and double choirs! What's the difficulty with 4-5 instruments?...

    [:D]It just occured to me that the result would be three string players doing chuggas with some piano stabs, and the composer timidly asking: "You're sure you don't want Taikos with that?"


  • A lot of films today would not be able to support film scores from the past and that is why filmscoring has had to change over time. Conversely, you get films today, that need an enormous amount of input from the filmscore simply because the film needs that support. In the same way it may need a great deal of support from say, CGI. Acting is becoming a by-product of film making but even more important than that is the lack of storyline and script writing and editing. You may be able to count the number good films released in a year on one hand if you're lucky. But a moron can't.

    When you talk about the chuggs of orchestral string sections for example, it's become obvious over recent times that this is merely a substitute of and for the background drone of 21st century day to day living. You are sublimily, as a director/producer in certain instances, simply trying to recreate the comfort zone in terms of SOUND, a bottom-up way of making films that will not frighten the age group that relies on the constant noise production of the mobile phone.

    Last night, I watched Sunset Boulavard with a score from Franz Waxman. Not a bad score and works well with film that doesn't actually need the support of a great score because the film in and of itself is a great story and character study. After the film was over, I naturally watched the news and noticed that London was burning. This immediately triggered me getting out the violin so I could fiddle while London burned. Best thing for it in my view. Son of bitch that Nero, Kind of guy played with himself nights.


  • Interesting idea Paul, that people MUST feel a continuous drone throughout their daily "busy" urban insectile existences, and should that be absent from the movie-screen, they would subconsciously miss it. I had thought of this before, but I had narrowed it down to their constant need for pop music in their ears - I've also read a couple of studies regarding MUZAK - but I hadn't made that connection with film-music.I  believe that a lot of people who say they can't stand European cinema, one of their reasons - and unbeknownst to them - is the relatively sparse amounts of music in those films, perhaps affecting the speed of the already slower narrative.

    How bad are things there right now? I'm asking because the media had grossly exaggerated whatever "riots" we were supposed to have had the past few months over here.


  • European cinema can be as good or as bad as anything else. But I must say I have a great fondness of French cinema in particular because as I mentioned maybe before they don't really pander that much to other people's cultures. They make French films for French people and if anyone else on the planet likes it too, then that's bonus. They are very cultured as a nation and have, like the Italians, a great sense of art and style. And their music in their films is as good as anything else out there as far as I can tell.

    What they don't have and the same with the other Euro nations excluding Great Britain, is the very large production values that Hollywood is known for. Ironically to me, Hollywood was at its best when it was making film noir and just about anything from 1930 to 1965. That's just an opinion of course. British, or so-called British films have traditionally been made on an Anglo/American basis, with a mixture of American and British actors and mostly American money. An honest British film is generally very low budget and a lot of the time, but not always, fucking crap these days. British TV is usually better, but the BBC for example are unable to make much these days because most of the taxpayers money goes to paying the communist fucks that work there, their salaries.

    When you talk about filmscore music, as far as I can tell, it's all to do with the time and the place. Let's face it, Bernard Herrmann isn't coming back.....ever!

    If you take quite few films from around the mid/late 60's into the 80's, you will have maybe noticed a lot of the scoring was done with Fender Rhodes pianos and various stages of development synthesizers - right from the very first modular Moogs and Arps etc right onto digital synthesizers. Then came the Fairlight and Synclaviers. Most of these scores, and some of them very good naturally, usually had a beat, either real or imagined. 

    So when you think about it, the appearance of firms like VSL who specialize in orchestral instruments, allowed old and new synth rockers to simply get hold of this and just use the sounds as you would use say, patch 74 on a Roland Jupiter 8. Ususally without any knowledge of scoring and how an orchestra works. Hence the really big growth in orchestrators. So what you get a lot of nowadays, is orchrestral sounds - with a beat. So blame VSL. it's all their fault.

    How bad are things here right now? In Budleigh Salterton??? Things are great and the golf course looks really good right now. Thanks for asking.


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    @PaulR said:

     British TV is usually better, but the BBC for example are unable to make much these days because most of the taxpayers money goes to paying the communist fucks that work there, their salaries.

     

     

    Ya know, that's a damn crying shame!  All the more reason to privatize the BBC.  Like that's going to happen.  I thought the Brits made the best documentaries ever, hands down.  I loved watching BBC documentaries.  They were so good.  Forget that Michael Moore Socialist propaganda crap.  The BBC just told it like it was.  I have those old David Attenborough series on DVD and watch them everytime the wife and kids are away.  But my favorite has to be the Connections series by James Burke.  James just had a way of making some of the dryest mundane material interesting and fun to watch.  Not to mention that dry British humour that I love.

    We get the BBC here in the states on some cable outfits but It's mostly just British versions of American Drama shows.


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    @jasensmith said:

    [...]  All the more reason to privatize the BBC.  Like that's going to happen. [....]

    Hopefully not.


    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
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    @PaulR said:

    this is merely a substitute of and for the background drone of 21st century day to day living
     

    That is probably true and why current film scores are so hideous to me.  They must have a constant drone and that is exactly what Zimmer the Destructor is doing - constant heavy drones with percussion. 

    This is in total contradiction to what is essential to true meaning in any field of human endeavor - SILENCE.  Without silence, human beings essentially go mad, and that is what is happening with the constant drone of horrible noise like thumping woofers in cars to punctuate the din of traffic, wall of sound stereos at work, earbuds while jogging - you name it, it is all constant din of sound. 

    This is absolutely contrary to what is needed for real music, which is the organization of purified sound out of silence, NOT out of noise and chaos. 

    btw those Lewton scores again are a perfect example of extremely quiet subtle music that comes out of the silence and is therefore immensely more effective.   


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    @jasensmith said:

    Forget that Michael Moore Socialist propaganda crap.  The BBC just told it like it was.  


  • The BBC is sponsored by The Guardian - or is it the other way round. You chaps don't know a fucking thing about the BBC. They are certainly not a capitilist organization. Although I try not to laugh out loud whenever  I hear about the BBC moving their operation to...........Salford. HAHAHAHA. That's funny.

    What would be great would be once they've moved there - the same people that trashed the place a couple of nights ago went in and trashed the BBC. All those people at the BBC that earn 600k p/a aren't going to want to disrupt their pretend left - wing existences to go to fucking Salford. Believe me.

    The BBC should be overhauled into the margins of virtual non existence. I, along with most people that think and don't read The Guardian, find it incredible that we are forced to pay for a service we don't really want. A public sector tv station that can no longer make programs and is a glorified left wing news channel. How would that go down in your countries (of origin).

    Ha!



  • Thanks for the link Paul, but what a sorry untalented conductor!! How did he ever get this gig?! The whole thing sounds more like a reading than a performance; a mock-up before humanizing automation is applied. No phrasing (in terms of theme-structuring), no mystery, no shades, no dynamics, no interpretation, even the shower scene sounds more like a parody of somebody with a facial tick, rather than a murder scene...

    P.S.: Guys, please stop tempting me to get into a political discussion here...


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    @PaulR said:

    A public sector tv station that can no longer make programs and is a glorified left wing news channel. How would that go down in your countries (of origin).

     

     

    Well here in the states we have PBS and NPR News which are "partially" funded by tax dollars.  The funny thing is, these organizations have turned a profit in the last couple of years yet they will put a strangle hold on the federal money they recieve and absolutely refuse to give it up under any circumstances.  Why?  Good question.  My guess is because of the fact that both organizations are dominated by Lefties (and I don't mean left armed people) if they give up that federal money then they will loose the persona of being Run by the Government.  As if this is a bad thing.  I don't know why they seem to think that something run by the government is somehow cleaner, more pristine, pure, or uncorruptable then if it were being run by Microsoft or something.  Then again it's just a theory and I could be right.  


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    @PaulR said:

    The BBC should be overhauled into the margins of virtual non existence. I, along with most people that think and don't read The Guardian, find it incredible that we are forced to pay for a service we don't really want.  

     

    I didn't know that the BBC and the Guardian were connected.  Now I know why I get flamed and called all sorts of hideous names whenever I post my conservative views on some of their articles related to America.


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    @jasensmith said:

    [...]  All the more reason to privatize the BBC.  Like that's going to happen. [....]

    Hopefully not.

     

    Well, Dietz I don't know how things are in your neck of the woods but in the states TV programing that is funded completed or in part by the government tend to promote political views that I don't agree with.  I respect your point of view but why should I be forced to pay taxes to support TV programing that I don't agree with.  Even if I did agree with their political point of views I don't think others should be forced to pay for them if they don't.


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    @Errikos said:

    P.S.: Guys, please stop tempting me to get into a political discussion here...

     

    Yeah try to resist doing that Errik.  I admit I may have started it with one of my previous posts but I was only responding to something Paul said that caught my attention and that I felt contributed, albeit in a small way, to the discussion we were having.  It kind of got out of hand however and I appologize to those who want to keep the talk to music.


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    @William said:

    Also what you are talking about with the loudness is something I have particularly been affected by.  I have grown more and more intolerant of loud music (though have written a lot in the past) and even felt physically disturbed, by that horrible pounding blaring score so often heard today. 

     

    Do you think technology has something to do with this loudness and constant "droning" that most audiences tend to favor today? 

    I remember when I bought my first Walkman.  I thought it was the best thing to come out since peanut butter and toilet paper.  I could ride the subway or walk or work or whatever turn the volume up and just sink into my own little world. 

    Today, you walk down the street and if they're not talking on cell phones people have Ipods or MP3 players or whatever in their ears and they are just tunning out of the world around them.  I especially see this in younger generations.  They are just in their own droning worlds.