Last Film Music Blog.. I'm so sad

We watched Poltergeist and I thought it was a really good movie. There were some unusual orchestrations. There were also subtle mickey mousings when ghosts appear. The Stars Bangles Banner from the television was mostly source music. Music seems to be another character just like in the movie Close encounters of the third kind. It’s very interesting that lots of films use music as a character when associated with things that are out of ordinary or unknown. Every time the little girl showed up, they would play innocent, sweet melody and then it would turn into dissonant. The music was creepy because of the use of harps and fluttering strings. They played a lot of glissandos. It made me realize how in classical music, composers wrote lullaby’s in a creepy way. I never understood that until now.

There was definitely cultural clichés. Child like tune in a major key is used for the innocence of childhood. Most composers use that as a dark undertone; terror and child-like innocence. People associate things and make it part of our culture. Bernard Herrman uses weird orchestration. The music was mostly dark music with strange instruments.

I started to see Matrix in a new way. I never noticed the sound design. In the Matrix gun ballet, everything is in rhythm. Everything is done like music. Sound effects and music are one. Silence is used very effective too. Music contributes enormously to the pace of the movements. It is heavily based on rhythm and percussive instruments. Emil Richards has the biggest percussion collection in the world.

Technology has changed so much where it takes less time and less effort to write scores for music. All recordings here are now samples. Computer takes measurements of sound waves. Computer takes a measurement 4000 times a second. A computer technician can manipulate them. They just need to change 0 and 1. That will change the sound.

The style in music has also changed since the 1970s. The style right now is called minimalism, which is very mathematical and very hard to listen to. The famous composer of minimalism is Philip Glass. His music is repetitive and can get really boring. There is a lot of ostinato and synthesizer. The other thing that is the in style is that composers are not writing melodies.

I thought Up was great! After taking this film class, I learned to appreciate that movie and the film score. I also learned to appreciate the credits and the music after. My favorite part in the movie was when the grandpa comes down the stairs and Habanara is playing. The mickey mousing is very sublt with the dorm slamming in the end and ect. I thought it was funny because it was such an ironic piece to put in the movie. It really made me laugh. I’m so glad I took this class. Film industry is a whole different world. I am now interested in films I’ve never had interest in. Thanks Dr. Berry!!