Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: Thomas Newman "American Beauty Theme" ::
As a fan of The Movies, I like to think that I look at them from as many angles as possible. One such viewpoint is that of soundtrack. The music in a film is very important as it can be *ahem* instrumental in setting the tone of the scene you are, or about to, see. You can take footage of a woman walking down a long hallway and score it one way and the audience is tense, but another and the audience will be totally at ease. Sometimes I wonder how much attention the average person gives to the score of a film. I bet loads of people don't even care about it, but to me it is important to score a film RIGHT. A film score should compliment the action on screen and enhance the mood, and this doesn't always get done. Some composers score films like they're high, which can greatly lessen my enjoyment of the movie. Take, I don't know, semi-famous film composer Alan Silvestri. His name nay not ring a bell, but I'm certain you have seen some of the films he's scored. I greatly enjoyed his work of the Back to the Future movies and Who framed Roger Rabbit?, but I find the scoring of Predator to be insane. I mean, there is something going on "musically" in that movie almost every single second of it, and sometimes, I don't think that is called for. Many composers have this problem, I find. They feel like they MUST SCORE THE HELL OUT OF THIS MOVIE and as a result, moments which may have been better off with silence or something light and subtle get lambasted with loud, overly symphonic explosions from the orchestra. Moments that demand suspense and dread are usually best served on the subtle side: just look at the world-famous strains from Jaws as a prime example. The score should blend in and literally become one with the film, not strive to stand apart from it. I'm sure every composer wants their music to be noticed, but making it jarring and not complimentary to the action on screen is NOT the way to do it. This sort of thing has made some cuts of silent movies difficult for me to watch. I really do like silent films, but some of them come with bizarre organ scores dubbed onto them. Now, back in the silent film days of yore, not every movie had a score made expressly for it, so sometimes the theater organist would just make something up. I can appreciate that you are a fine organist and all, but if you just puttering away on that thing and not even paying attention to what's going on up on the screen, it is simply detrimental to the whole experience. I'm sorry, but it is. Charlie Chaplin recognized this too and revisited some of his old silents and wrote scores for them himself in order to make them complete works of art. The music needs to work in union with not only the images but also the other sounds of the film. Take the famous scene on the steps in The Untouchables: Ennio Morricone, the composer, knew when to let the sounds of the scene echo, to have an impact, over and in union with his music. It is overall a very well put together scene. Then there's the scene in Road to Perdition where Tom Hanks guns down Paul Newman's posse and all you hear is the music, but gradually the sound fades in, so you hear the rain and Paul Newman say "I'm glad it's you", gunshots, then the sound fades back out to the gentle, haunting music. This is a perfect example of visual, sound and music working together to create something utterly fantastic. Thomas Newman scored the hell out of that scene without scoring the HELL out of it. Of course there are times when you DO need grand emphasis on the score, Star Wars being a prime example. When you have all that expository text scroll up the screen with nothing but stars for a backdrop, you need some REALLY interesting music going on to liven it up. And if you think the opening "crawl" score of Star Wars is anything short of completely BITCHING then, well, there is obviously NO HOPE for you in appreciating film scores AT ALL.
William the Bloody (score!)
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