Updates on Production

What’s the Score?*

February 19, 2009


It’s Day 3 of the Final Mix and I’m sitting here on the stage while our Sound Re-Recording Mixer, Chris David, works through the pre-dub on Reel Three. How’s that for a pretentious amount of film terminology? Yeah, suck it. With nothing to do but wait for the pre-dub to wrap up, I thought I’d address an aspect of the score that Tucker brought up the other day. This is what he said:

“What’s so funny is that sitting here writing, I can’t remember a single thing about the music in either scene. But I think that’s the point with most score. If it fits the scene perfectly, you don’t notice it, you just feel it, and it enhances the scene. I don’t know if this is making sense, maybe Nils can explain better, but I felt like the score brought out the essence of the scene in the music.”

Having spent the last two days mixing the sound for the first two reels of the movie, what has become most apparent to me is that score is not only a surgically precise enterprise, but it is the single greatest tool at the filmmakers disposal for elevating emotion. Effects, ADR, Walla all help, but they really only establish a baseline of emotion. They are a sonic basecoat on the tapestry that will become the sound design. Songs, or source music, often complement emotion in a scene beautifully, but rarely do they work perfectly or exactly. And it makes sense when you consider that most songs are conceived of and recorded on their own merits, for their own sake, prior to any consideration of their suitability for a movie that, often times, has not even been made yet. Score, on the other hand, is conceived of and recorded concurrently or after the fact by a composer hired by the producers of a film for the express purpose of complementing, elevating, and sometimes supplementing that film’s emotional content.
This is especially important for broad comedies like this one, where emotion tends to find itself buried underneath humor, despite emotion being the primary focus in some of those scenes often times. For instance, it is possible to have a sentimental character moment sprinkled with fat girl jokes, but if you don’t bring the sentimentality out sufficiently then it simply becomes “the fat girl scene”. By hitting the emotional spikes with complimentary tones, or creating those spikes with crescendo, the score helps to flip the focus.
Score also helps tip the scales in those scenes that, sans score, could be interpreted in opposing ways. Is he being mean because he’s mad? Or is he being mean because he’s sad? Is she crying tears of relief or tears of regret? Score takes the viewer by the hand, or the ear, and guides them toward the emotions the filmmakers intended to express and the conclusions they intended to reach.
This is the idea that Tucker was circling around when he wrote that “the score brought out the essence of the scene…” And it is this idea that requires a composer to craft his score with surgical precision. The fact that Jim Venable pulled it off in so many important scenes is a testament not only to his ability but to the magnitude of our excitement as well.
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*There is so much to say about score that I have neither the time nor the expertise to discuss intelligently, so I figured I would leave you with a couple videos about Hollywood’s pre-eminent composer and two of his most important achievements.


John Williams on the Score for Superman


John Williams and Steven Spielberg on the Score for Jaws


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