The Best Music in Film

Scoring

Musicians

(see also: Directors)

Sight & Sound

Q: In what way does music best enhance film?

Badly Drawn Boy
(Mercury Music prize winner Damon Gough composed the music for About A Boy)
"I think the first thing it has got to do is somehow speak for the emotion in any particular scene. In Hollywood a lot of the composers get a lot of the work because it does boil down, in an ironic sense really, to the formulas. There's a lot of formulaic stuff. That's because it works. A hell of a lot of money gets spent on films so risk-taking is not a big part of what Hollywood wants to do. When I did the soundtrack for About a Boy (2002) it was pretty much a risk, because I was an unknown entity in terms of applying music to a film specifically. My music had been used in films before, but this is very different to actually writing music for a film. They don't want to take risks so a lot of the same composers will do the scoring that you will hear in blockbuster movies. I suppose that kind of makes them similar, makes it formulaic. What everybody, who want to do it well has to do, is to make the visual play better; somehow enhance the theme. That was one of the nicest thing I learnt whilst working on the film. Stephen McLaughlin, who was the score producer, taught me a lot about studying the pace of the scene and they do usually have a metre to them, even with no sound you can study the action, even if it's just two people in a room and a glance. Sometimes you have to play the action literally. I based the initial few songs on breaking down the script into the characters and writing from various viewpoints lyrically. It was largely guess work working on melodies and lots of chord structures to suit character. Different scenes suit different paces. There's one piece in About A Boy of a very successful marriage of sound and image. It is New Years Eve and Hugh Grant falls in love with Rachel Weisz's character. The piece is one of the most successful to listen to on its own. It is the nearest thing to a proper score in the film and merges themes from other songs in the film. It was of the most challenging pieces. It's probably been the most used piece of music that I have written. It has been used by the BBC as trailer music and by Nickelodeon, which undermines the fact that it was written for the scene really."
Cinematic Orchestra
(Rescored Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera)
"The film composer has to completely understand the scenes and the director's intention. A soundtrack works at it's best when it completely interacts with the movie. ie. Tempo, accents to the scene, edits, characters, mood, emotion. The music should, in a sense be the underscore. Suggestive and open........"
Coldcut
(Coldcut are Jonathan More and Matt Black, DJs and remixers who are often credited with inventing 'Big Beat')
"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."
John Luther Adams
(Composer from Alaska. Former percussionist with the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra)
"The best thing music can do for a film is to be itself. When music illustrates a film, it lessens both. When music is complete in and of itself, both music and film are augmented. Sound and image unfold together as equivalent dimensions of a larger whole."
Barry Adamson
(Performed in the groups Magazine, Visage, and The Bad Seeds and contributed music to Lost Highway and The Beach)
"It depends, really. I personally think that the 3rd dimension of the movie (the emotional) is where a composer can be of the greatest aid to a director. I'm thinking again about putting us in the characters shoes. Everybody has an emotional life and music should speak their language and play around with the possibilities of dramatic incident. It also of course can become a commentator on time, space and location. (See Vertigo and know that we are in San Francisco by the way the score moves up and down the scales like a street car! before plunging into the Jimmy Stewart character's fear of falling (in love?) Finally I think music can also shift the perspective, giving the Director another tool to manipulate (in the best possible way) the audience from an obvious eventuality, thus keeping us glued to the screen without even realising the effect the music is having on us."
David Arnold
(Composed the music for Independence Day, Zoolander)
"It enhances a film best by retaining a voice for itself which can tell us something about the truth of what is actually happening in the story whether it is, or is not, on the screen"
Charles Bernstein
(Composed the music for A Nightmare on Elm Street)
"Perhaps music best enhances a film when it captures the essence of that particular film, when it renders the very spirit of that film into sound, when it serves both the separate scenes and unifies the overall structure of the story, when it is fresh, original and a pleasure to listen to. (I have a lot more to say about this in my book, "Film Music and Everything Else." It's a fascinating subject, worthy of more than just these few words)."
Claude Bolling
(Composed the music for California Suite)
"I think that the quality of the soundtrack of a motion picture is also to exprimer l'inexprimable (express the inexpressible)"
DJ Brahms
(House and techno DJ performing Big Beat)
"Music is the soul of film. Even when movies were silent, the mood of a scene was best conveyed by how the piano player played the music along with the silent film. When all else fails, a director can easily send a message to the audience just by what music he plays. It also works in the opposite way. In the film Birds where no soundtrack was used, Hitchcock left a very unsettling atmosphere as the audience did not know what to think."
Neil Brand
(Composer and silent film accompanist. Rescored South, Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic and Alfred Hitchcock's The Ring. Recently composed a new jazz score for E. A. Dupont's Piccadilly)
"Good film music tells you more than you can see - as children we reacted to frightening things on TV by putting our hands over our ears rather than our eyes -and good music can fill in the gaps in a cheap set, poor performance or dodgy script better than any other single aspect of film-making. The good score is the one you hear when you need to. It doesn't chunter away meaninglessly behind the action or annoyingly announce its presence at the wrong moment. Nor does it simply dictate the cutting. At best it continuously opens up layers of insight to the complete film while establishing and detailing the changing world of the story."
Joanna Bruzdowicz
(Frequent composer for Agnès Varda's films, including Vagabonde)
"I think, that the film score must give some new dimension to the picture, make the message of the story clear, without to repeat or underline too much the action. The best moment to put the music on film is when is no dialog and no sound effects! I had this chance only in Agnès Varda films!"
Gavin Bryars
(Minimalist British composer who composed scores for independent film-maker Stephen Dwoskin)

"It depends entirely on the film. There are many approaches - Prokofiev's with Eisenstein, Ennio Morricone's with Sergio Leone (and Once upon a time in the West (1968) is perhaps one of the most extraordinary uses of music in film). What I despise though is the commercial expedient of assembling a sequence of pop tracks which can serve as a subsequent soundtrack album. Perhaps the only time this has been acceptable is with Tarantino whose addled brain appears to find this the norm."
William Camilleri
"Music best enhances a film by depicting the event, situation, and mood exactly as it is, however very strong film themes are lacking in most films today and one of the most important factors is emotion which has the power to connect to the audience. The music should be there to assist the film to bring out the very best in it. One example that comes to mind is the theme of Forrest Gump (1994) where Alan (Sivlestri) depicted the main character of the film with his childlike yet powerful, melodic theme."
Eliza Carthy
(Folk singer and fiddle player)
"Previous answer. Got carried away!"
Carl Craig
(Detroit techno pioneer)
"When it doesn't get in the way. I like how the music in Kill Bill vol.1 (2003) set up the drama more than the actual scene (Daryl Hannah in the nurse's uniform)."
Luis de Pablo
(Composed the music for Víctor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive)
"Sorry for my broken English!...And sorry also for telling you, that, to me, film music was only a matter of money. In other words, I don't think my film music deserves any interest. I left it as soon as my own music gave me a decent way of living. (As a matter of fact, I wrote film music together with "my" music for, at least, twenty years). Nevertheless, I am grateful to film music because it saved me from starving (in the harsh Spanish days of the 50s and the 60s) and also because I learned a lot about "metier" and practicalities. That I will never forget."
Mamadou Diabaté
(Composed the music for Moussa Sène Absa's Madame Brouette)
"Music helps explain the action. Sometimes when you're watching a movie, you know when the good and bad action is coming from the way the music sounds. Music gives vibrancy to the movie."
Robert Farnon
(Composed the music for Raoul Walsh's Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.)
"As an old romantic, I'd say music always adds to the romantic effect. A battle scene will work well enough with just sound effects, but you need music for romantic moments"
Simon Fisher Turner
(Composed the music for many Derek Jarman films, including Caravaggio, The Last of England and The Garden, and recently Mike Hodges' Croupier and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead)
"I think if you come out of the cinema and say to yourself, "that was a wonderful film", then hopefully we've done a good job. Music for me these days should enhance invisibly. I'm a fan of the simple tune, or a memorable sound, i.e. The Third Man (1949) score, the zither is the film, and Mr Welles' character. On the other hand I love György Ligeti score for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and was even today listening to Pola X (1999)."
Lisa Gerrard
(Composed music for The Insider, Gladiator, Ali and Whale Rider)
"Music is the last character in the play, it is the toll for story telling that either reveals the sub text or conceals it from the audience, it also help us to feel the deeper reactions of the actors."
Christopher Gordon
(Composed the music for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World)
"It is particularly good at expressing the aspirations and fears of the characters even if these feelings are not apparent on the screen in a given scene. Also, music can help bind a number of dispirit stories or characters by expressing the emotional heart of the film...that thing that all the stories and characters have in common."
The Handsome Family
(Husband and wife alt-country stars Brett and Rennie Sparks. Provided additional music for Bullet on a Wire)
"By functioning as another character."
David Hirschfelder
Original music for Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth (1998) and Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom (1992)
"Music enhances a film best when it succeeds in creating a hypnotic underbelly that literally keeps the audience in a trance, so that a simple audio-visual experience can be transformed into a metaphysical journey."
David Holmes
(Composed the music for Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight)
"When it's used properly and you don't feel your emotions manipulated by the director, emotion, atmosphere, mood, etc... there's music that matches every situation or time in our life. So in a film where real life is often emulated you gotta reverse the situation & try to imagine what you can hear & feel, if you were in that position. I hate films that are bombarded with 70 piece orchestras that are far to loud. Sometimes subtlety and silence can be a great thing."
Trevor Horn
(Former member of the groups The Bugles and Yes. Composed the music for Toys and Coyote Ugly, and was executive music producer on Mona Lisa Smile)
"I think music adds to the emotional impact of a film."
Klive Humberstone
(Part of Sheffield based band 'In The Nursery'. Started the 'Optical Music Series' to compose scores to silent movies)
"The film experience should imitate in some way the dimensions of subjective reality: the symbolic, the real and the imaginary. The method by which this is done involves very heavily the use of film music. The best test of a good soundtrack is when you are unaware of the music and what it is doing to your senses. When we watch a film and music cascades from the speaker, it remains, largely, unnoticed in the way that a "normal" musical experience, such as might be had in a concert, is noticed and enjoyed. In a very necessary way, the film music becomes submerged, producing a field of effects, not the least of which is our enjoyable immersion in the movie. That in essence is good soundtrack composition."
Mark Isham
(Composed the music for The Hitcher, Point Break, Short Cuts and Quiz Show)
"For me, music best enhances a film when it doesn't draw attention to itself as “music” but adds a depth of emotion that reaches an audience at a completely subjective level. As a subjective language, music consults the listeners own ideas and emotions and so can make the film experience a much more personal one for the audience."
Jan Kaspersen
(Danish composer who wrote the music for Den Blå Munk)
"To build up an atmosphere, stress the different moods sex. fear, anger, happiness, and sometime when you are lucky: to become a synonyme or symbol with the film. Just think of Henry Mancini´s 'Pink Panther theme'."
Kid Koala
(Chinese-Canadian DJ. Contributed to Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead)
"I don't know, I guess some things make more sense in notes than in words."
Kris Kristofferson
(Country singer/songwriter. Composed music for The Last Movie and acted in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Heaven's Gate)
"Music enhances a film by adding an emotional depth, of full colour, to the action. It attacks subconsciously through the emotions, bypassing the rational mind all together."
Borut Krzisnik
(Composer for theatrical productions who recently worked with Peter Greenaway on The Tulse Luper Suitcases)
"In film, visuals get married with music and - as in the marriage - there are countless different variations of relationships between the two, countless indeterminable ways to make the marriage what we want it to be. One can't make good marriage only by following some rules. There are no magic rules - it depends on the film, on the scene, on specifics. What functions in one film may not in another. Finally - to answer the question - some films or scenes are made the way they don't need (much) music and it would be inadequate to apply music by some rule. If the director makes enough room for music in the scenes, then it's more likely to make a good match. Secondly, I think it is a good sign for the perfect marriage between the video and music when visuals are made with some specific music already in mind."
David Mansfield
(Composed the music for Heaven's Gate and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood)
"Music best enhances a film when it amplifies the subtext rather than the text, when it has a life of its own rather than mimicking the surface emotions of the actors or the primary emotions evoked by the action. Also less is more."
Branford Marsalis
(A regular saxophonist on Spike Lee's films, including Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing)
"When done well, the music can create the emotion that the scene requires before the dialogue or action establishes it. Kubrick had a keen understanding of this, as best exampled in Barry Lyndon (1975). I heard an excellent Elliot Goldenthal score for the movie A Time to Kill (1996). The music seemed more ominous to me than the ominous scenes in the film. Unfortunately, when I saw the movie in the cinema, most of that music had been changed. See question 1."
Marcus Miller
(Composed the music for Siesta (1987) with Miles Davis, Above the Rim and House Party)
"When the music guides your emotions through a film in the way the film maker intends, then it's a successful score. When the music gives you a character's thoughts - in a way that words couldn't do, then the score is successful. Film is interesting in that characters who you might deplore in real life can become interesting to you. It all depends on the presentation. If you are exposed to enough interesting information about someone, you can't help be interested in what happens to them. Music helps this. I think I've changed people's opinions about a character in a film based on the music I wrote for that character."
Jeff Mills
(One of the biggest names in American techno. In 2000 composed an alternative soundtrack to Fritz Lang's re-edited Metropolis)
"I believe music best serves film when the viewers are not aware of it. When the music soundtrack drapes itself in the interaction between actors and very discreetly instigates a certain situation. I often think that music soundtracks may resemble passing clouds in the sky. In any given situation that evolves in our everyday lives, the movement of clouds are undeterred. Always moving to allow a certain amount of light for exposure or realization."
Angela Morley
(Composed the music for The Heart of a Man and Watership Down (1978). Frequently composed for television, including Hancock's Half-Hour)
"Music can set a mood or energize a scene and can create a third dimension by suggesting something or someone (as in 1b) that cannot otherwise be expressed by ordinary cinematic methods."
Daniel Mudford
(With Pete Woodhead, composed the music for Shaun of the Dead)
"When the composer suppresses their ego enough to serve the film as a whole, rather than grandstanding simply to get on another job afterwards. When the composer acknowledges that what's best for the dancefloor or concert hall might not be best for film. When the composer works with the director in the same way the photographer and editor do."
Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian)
(Lead vocalist with Belle and Sebastian who contributed to the soundtrack for Todd Solondz's Storytelling)
"Woody Allen has the right idea. He just plays all his favourite old records. And the key thing is that the result is “greater” than the sum of the parts. Music + film = “something else!” Something great... I should perhaps try to give you a couple of examples of where I think this happens. 'These Days' by Nico when Richie and Margot Tenenbaum are reunited at the bus station in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Such a great track, the film doesn't have to do too much except look pretty and unassuming; let Nico and the boys do the rest. The choir of soldiers singing sweetly while Eli Wallach gets beaten up by Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966). A bold combination that is quite stunning. (Great when a musical sequence becomes the bit in a film you're looking forward to. Unlike musicals when you just usually want them to get on with the story.) 'Sweetness' by Yes at the end of Buffalo '66 (1997). A still picture brings the film to a perfect end, but the beauty of the Yes track sends it home. One is frozen to the couch until the last bar of the song, while the credits run. How many times can you say that's happened? Music also enhances a film when it completely comes in and takes over, turning the visual experience into an overall sensual audio/visual extravaganza. The start of The Graduate (1967) may be noted; Benjamin arrives at Los Angeles airport and travels down the moving walkway as 'The Sound Of Silence' by Simon And Garfunkel plays. Intermittently you hear a voice telling the pedestrian to 'stay on the right' etc. Never can I travel on a moving walkway without hearing that song in my head. The same thing happens a couple more times in the film, notably when the director sets two complete music tracks back to back without dialogue. It must have just felt right, 'April Come She Will' and 'Scarborough Fair'. It never feels long, that bit."
Monty Norman
(Wrote the James Bond theme and composed the music for Dr. No (1962) and Terence Fisher's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1959))
"Other than main themes and obvious moments where music should be right in the foreground, the best soundtracks are those which work subliminally on the listener. As someone once said: "If the cinemagoer doesn't realise that the main enhancement of that particular scene is the music - then the composer has done his job!"
"
Will Oldham (Bonnie 'Prince' Billy)
(Singer songwriter, aka Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. Starred in Matewan)
"The best way is when a movie couldn't be what it is without the music."
John Ottman
(Composed the music for Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects and X2)
"I always say that it's the soul of a film. A film can certainly exist with music, but most often it will be as if the film is a sort of living dead. Once the music is added, there's life, emotion and a greater understanding of the world of the film, if the score is done tastefully. Aside from that, music also has technical offerings, such as helping stale or awkward areas of a film flow without anyone noticing that these areas needed help."
The Pastels
(Scottish indie band who composed the music for David MacKenzie's The Last Great Wilderness (2002))
"Mostly in terms of atmosphere, in bringing a coherent sense of style to the film. Music can heighten the impact of certain images or affect our perception of them. Properly integrated, it will help with the continuity, pace and feel of the film. Hopefully it will make the film more memorable."
Jocelyn Pook
(Worked on soundtracks for several Derek Jarman films and composed the music for Eyes Wide Shut and L'emploi du temps)
"I think music best enhances a film when it has its own distinctive voice, having its own course, its own comment, its own rhythm - when it acts as another layer which embodies something of the atmospheres, tones, emotional undercurrents and essence of the film, rather than simply underlining the obvious."
Zbigniew Preisner
(Composed the music for numerous Krzysztof Kieslowski films, from No End to Three Colours Red, Louis Malle's Damage and Charles Sturridge's Fairytale A True Story)
"For me, soundtrack music is absolute metaphysics. It is like blood rushing through the veins. You can hear it, you can feel it, but you just cannot see it directly. Ideal soundtrack music adds something which is not shown in the film but which is left to be guessed. It is some kind of a complement."
André Previn
(Composed the music for Bad Day at Black Rock, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Long Day's Journey into Night)
"Good film music can enhance scenes, which seem bland, or frankly, boring."
Alan Price
(British rock musician of the 60s and keyboard player with The Animals. Composed music for Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital)
"When it's unnoticed"
A. R. Rahman
(Popular Bollywood composer. Composed the music for Ashutosh Gowariker's Lagaan)
"I feel music should say what the film maker tries to say and sometimes fail to express ...because music has the power to go much further in expressing any emotion...to enhance the movie..and making it memorable!"
Josh Ritter
(American folk singer who's work has featured in Six Feet Under)
"I think a great film soundtrack is like another actor in the movie. If it is subtle it can reveal new meanings, deepen the relationship of the characters to each other, and furnish a backdrop to the plot. I loved the soundtrack to The Godfather (1972). It fit so perfectly with its surroundings the whole movie took on the colour of mahogany."
Ryuichi Sakamoto
(Composed music for Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and Gohatto, and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky)
"I don't know whether music can enhance a film or not......"
Lalo Schifrin
(Composed the music for Norman Jewison's The Cincinnati Kid, Peter Yates' Bullitt and many others)
"The answer to this question is obvious. We should go back to the days of silent films and ask ourselves why they had a live orchestra in the theatres in order to help the images."
Geoff Smith
(Recently conducted a live soundtrack on the hammered dulcimer to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)
"Music best enhances a film if it makes the viewer watch the film more intently and therefore experience it's intended essences more intensely (at any given moment) than if there was no music at all. And the greatest film music does even more than this: it enhances the film further by transcending it."
Tomasz Stanko
(Jazz musician and composer. Wrote the music for Michal Rosa's Cisza)
"For me the most important is adding musical value to a motion picture's mood, effecting viewer's subconsciousness, and putting him/her in a certain state that facilitates intuitive perception of the picture's message. But there are many ways, by which music works, for example counterpointing, such as matching some brutal scenes with specifically lyrical music, etc. I appreciate less illustrative merits of film scores."
John Surman
(Jazz musician. Composed the music for Chimère and Respiro)
"It's pretty obvious that we expect the music to help create atmosphere and add tension and release - a sense of time & place and so on - but I've always enjoyed those moments when the composer has been able to reveal something unseen and unspoken by the characters involved - a view into the subconscious perhaps?"
June Tabor
(British folk singer)
"Frequently by its absence. Jules Dassin's Rififi (1955) is a classic example - the 20 minute robbery sequence takes place in total silence. More recently, Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot (1981), admittedly made for television but also shown as a director's cut in the cinema. is similarly sparing: music is only heard in relation to long shots of the u-boat at sea, and the claustrophobic atmosphere inside the submarine is reinforced by the sounds of the boat itself and the crew - no music at all (apart from the radio, which is part of life on board and not an imposed score)."
Neil Tennant
(Singer of the Pet Shop Boys, who contributed songs to Scandal and The Crying Game)
"People use music in a film to reveal something which is not necessarily evident on the screen. For example, if someone is seen walking down a street, and all we hear is the ambient sounds of traffic and so forth, the audience will receive a particular impression. But if you then add a minor chord to the same scene, it will create a totally different effect - suggesting tension or forthcoming drama or whatever. In the music of Pet Shop Boys we have always been interested in the relationship between ambient soundtrack and musical effect, and in particular that sense of drama and tension."
Linda Thomson
(British folk singer)
"Music doesn't just enhance a film, it's an absolute necessity. Makes an ordinary film watchable, and can make a merely watchable film a hit."
Dickon Hinchliffe Tindersticks
(Violinist and arranger with the band Tindersticks. Composed the music for Claire Denis' films Nenette et Boni and Vendredi soir)
"Many people say that the sign of a good soundtrack is when the audience does not notice it. In Taxi Driver and in many of the best soundtracks ever written, the very opposite is the case. For me, it is not a question of writing music that sits passively within the picture, but to rub up against it and create something vibrant and new. Dull soundtracks simply ape the visuals - they are a tool to help the rhythm of the narrative, the editing, character development etc. The best soundtracks create a third dimension, beyond these functional devices as music has a more direct and unconscious route to people's emotions and memories than images. These scores give films the power not merely to entertain, but to hit you in the gut."
David Boulter Tindersticks
(Member of Tindersticks)
"I think music should be another character, as important as any actor. Bad music ruins a film for me."
Amon Tobin
(Producer and DJ on Ninjatune Records)
"I think, when it's done well, music interprets actions, moods or thoughts into sound and enhances the emotions that the viewer is meant to feel at that moment. Often it tells you what's really going on in a scene in-spite of the dialog or even the visuals subtly revealing the true intentions of a character or the direction of things to come. That's not to say it always has to be subtle though. I think there's a lot of crap said about how the best film music is hardly noticeable because it's so seamless and transparent. It seems to me that nearly all the greatest films have really strong music with loads of character. It's hard for me to separate any of Sergio Leone's westerns from the music for example."
Colin Towns
(Composer and music arranger on films and television, most notably Our Friends in the North)
"A film can be dramatically changed by music. A track or song can create contrast, attitude, period etc but the best music result for me comes when chances are taken by all, to create another dimension, something not in the script, location or acting."
Jonny Trunk
(Musician who also runs Trunk Records. Has reissued several soundtracks including The Wicker Man and Dawn of the Dead)
"Lots of ways of course, but it depends totally on the film. And I strongly believe that music is not always necessary and is in many cases over used. Take The Hill (1965) for example, a phenomenally powerful movie with no music at all, not even an opening or closing theme."
Joseph Vitarelli
(Composed the music for The Last Seduction and She's So Lovely)
"It depends on the film. Some films require the score to be an active “character”, some demand you stay out of the way."
Debbie Wiseman
(Composed the music for Brian Gilbert's Tom and Viv and Wilde)
"Music is a very powerful force in a film. The audience will always "believe" the music. If the music is telling the audience tension, then even if the picture is seemingly not tense, the audience will believe the music and expect something ominous to occur! Music connects absolutely directly with the audience - it goes straight to the heart. In this way, music can help the audience to feel terror, romance, horror, tension, fear. Often, just a few notes can do this - but they have to be the right notes!! Finally, music at its best will help the audience understand the delicate subtlety of the storyline - the subtext. Often what can't be spoken or seen in film is heard in the music score."
Pete Woodhead
(With Daniel Mudford, composed the music for Shaun of the Dead)
"Music when it is composed and used well can give a film its emotional heart. I am often struck by how sparingly music is used within great films and it is this relationship between action, dialogue, music and most importantly silence that seems to have become a little lost in a medium that appears to take it's modern cues from the sensory barrage of video games."
Otomo Yoshihide
(Avant-garde musician and composer for Japanese films)
"It is just depends on the film and director's direction and ideas I am always trying to forget the ways to make soundtracks when I start making film music and try something new for me or for all the film stuff anyway the sound (not only music) is very important and some times more important than images."
Last Updated: 05 Sep 2006