BFI | Sight & Sound | The Best Music in Film

The Best Music in Film

(Coldcut are Jonathan More and Matt Black, DJs and remixers who are often credited with inventing 'Big Beat')

S&S: What is your favourite film soundtrack music and why do you like it so much?: "Bladerunner (1982). The film is perfect and the music matches the film. Coldcut's first engineer Raine Shine assisted Vangelis on it."
S&S: In what ways does music best enhance a film?: "To me, it is not a question of music enhancing a film. Broadly, a film is an audiovisual composition. Hence the audio in it, all of it, including the music, cannot be separated form the visual elements: they should be so tightly bound to each other that it is one thing. This is what we are striving towards in our av work. To make a film and then add music later is the reflection of the often plastic process of pop video making, where a mimed film is bolted on to a piece of music as an afterthought. We would seek to find a midpoint between the 2 extremes where each element is equally important and composition is a holistic process."
S&S: Which film either has music that you wished you'd written or is one you would like to rescore and why?: "Well, I like music films like Babylon (1980) with music from Aswad. Proper heavy roots music right at the heart of the film. I'd also like to remix Ballet Mécanique (1924) by Ferdinad Léger, early montage classic and put it through VJamm, our software we have developed for audiovisual remixing. Also, check out www.nowthemovie.org for a totally new type of film we are making. I'm looking forward to doing the music for that."