Getting the Score

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Previously my boys and I counted how many times the themes appeared in the first act of the first Harry Potter film.
Yesterday, we did the same thing for Jurassic Park, but this time, we did it on a micro-scale: we counted how many times the main theme comes in during the helicopter’s flight over the [...]

How many times do we state a theme in a film? Once? Twice? Most director really don’t pay attention to this, and that’s fine, because I do (and your film composer should, too) so they don’t have to.
Some films take more melody than others, such as fantasy films, animation and similar genres, but for the [...]

In “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” there is a scene where Indy and his father go the get the diary back and, in the process, meet up with Hitler.
That scenes begins with the score functioning as source music. John Williams wrote music that an unseen brass band would be playing in the square as [...]

Structure is a crucial element of beauty, and film is no different. As I wrote in the previous post, a music cue can do more than just highlight action or represent the subtext; it can also play a large role in clarifying or even creating structure.
To that end, here are some questions to ask during [...]

You can learn a lot about the power of music in film by looking at the smallest, most seemingly inconsequential scenes in a film.
For my first Scene Analysis I will look at a short scene in E.T.
But before I begin, I would like you to read this fabulous quote from Hugo Friedhofer, golden age composer, [...]

One of the important uses of music in film is to provide tension and momentum.  This is especially useful when the tension is in the subtext and not in the visuals or dialogue.
Jurrasic Park are a great example of this.
At 55:27 the character of Dennis Nedry begins the shutting down of the computer systems to [...]

In last week’ s post, Scooby Doo showed us that melody is still an important asset to a production at any level.
One of the challenges is when to present your melodies and when not to. A common fear among directors is that melody will interfere with the dialogue.
Of course it is crucial for the dialogue [...]

Today’s topic: Should the composer read your script? Well, sure, but not to write musical ideas from.
You know how it goes, you read a book and then you go see a movie and the movie is never like you imagined it. You had completely different ideas of what the characters looked like, etc…
A composer reading [...]

This is a very short post that poses a very serious artistic question; is the use of the temp track an artistic dead end for film scoring?
During an seminar at USC, John Williams was asked about temp tracks. He was very cautious in his answer, saying that, for better or for worse, temp tracks appeared [...]