Film Music #3

The Day the Earth Stood Still was a really good movie. They used 2 theremins, which were electronic instruments that make eerie sounds. The music was very stereotypical in the sense that the theremins would come out every time the alien man popped up. The music was pretty dramatic and gave subliminal emotions that were occurring at the moment. It was the composer Herrmann’s philosophy of creating custom-made instrumentation for each film assignment.

During the 1950s, the movie industry introduced the 3-D motion picture experience. This was short-lived because the audience did not like to wear cardboard eyeglasses every time they watched a 3-D motion picture. Also, the attendance for the movies started to decrease greatly because of televisions at home. Less people went to the movies because it was affordable to watch at home.

The style of music started to change. It was becoming more jazzy, rock and pop music. Music was becoming more background music rather than foreground. I don’t personally like pop music being in the background. I feel like when the music has less depth, the movie itself has less depth. The Symphonic music made a simple movie full of emotion and complication. It captured the audience in full imagination while pop music only brings recollection of a memory of childhood. American Graffiti had so much pop music. To me, the movie was boring and only reminded me of high school memories. There was pop music playing everywhere! It was like part of the air that they breathed. They could not keep away from music playing constantly.

In the Heat of the Night had lots of blues tunes. I really liked this movie. The tunes in the movie brought lots of cultural depth.