Research: SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY (2017)

Director: Matt Schrader
Cast: Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, John Williams
Release year: 2017.

I came across this documentary about the significance of sound and music used in films which was released in 2017.

What I learned from the documentary:

-In the earlier days, when film was first invented, music was seen as something to cover up the noise of the projector.
-Orchestra music was used for 'King Kong' which was one of the major scores that made the film successful. The sound was what made the film scary.
-David Arnold - using a room for sounds and instruments. They use a solar roof to allow them to have a certain amount of sound that they want. They also have over 200 mics in this acoustic room so they can choose which sound of how close or far away they want the sound from the instrument.
-There are different jobs in the sound and music art of the film industry, such as composers. These are the people who are mainly close with the director, as they have to sit with the director, listen to the director and the director has to listen to what the composer makes, as it it has to get across something that is in one person's ind but not in the other's. The example they use in this documentary is that of telling someone to imagine a forest, but people have different types of forests in their heads and not just one specific one.
-Action movies have a lot more music than others.
-The sound and music added in horror movies creates a sense of seeing more violence and horror than what you actually saw.
-Hans Zimmer took strings from a cello and made it sound like a guitar. On 'The Dark Knight' he tried to have a 'constant pulse' going on throughout to make it exciting.
-People are are song artists can also try to do the job of composers for some directors.
-"All your other work on film can come to nothing if you don't get the music right" - James Cameron, a director (includes Titanic).
-Not all music is orchestrated - the sketching scene in titanic was made by just a piano to create the emotional effect.

How does this help me with my coursework?

This documentary was useful in realising how important music is in creating a film, as it can determine how your audience thinks and can change moods in different ways. For example if you intend to create a funny scene in a comedy film and do not use the right music, the audience may not find the joke funny. For our horror film, it is crucial to get right what sounds and music we want to flow with our narrative and what instruments we should use in order to create these sounds. We may also need to consider how to orchestrate it on a low budget since we are low-budget producers as students.
When recording sounds, we may need to record more than one time and use different mics to get the sound just how we want it, but we can also use different editing software in case they don't sound right so that we can match it up with our footage.

The trailer of the documentary is shown below.