Welcome back to Scoring for Films by Vito Lo Re and Fabrizio Campanelli. Today, despite a severe hoarseness I'm here, on the front line. Because "What lisUnderneath" is waiting for us and it's an unmissable appointment. Whose side are you on?... I'm always with the winners. What does "Whose side are you on?" mean?
We're not interested in your political opinions or your personal tastes. What we're interested in is how a composer should approach a scene. What we're trying to explore today is an aspect that's as rarely discussed as it is fundamental. Namely, what direction to give to the score... Do you remember the talk about keeping the job, seeing it through? Well, "How to avoid arguing with the director and live happily." Because obviously there can be different interpretations on this.
We have enormous power with music: to shape the perceived psychology of the characters and show their character even when that character is either hidden for directorial reasons or is only evident in certain moments of the acting but needs to be expressed more strongly, or more intimately... And so the level of musical composition and scene and character characterization obviously falls within the realm of the director, who is the artistic director, the one responsible for the choices of the entire staging. You've surely seen videos too where the same scene is shown with three completely different scores, and how different an emotion is conveyed to the viewer. So, this is one of the preliminary operations that must be done when starting a score; obviously in agreement with the director, if you want to keep the job. you need to clearly understand the direction of the film. direction the score should take, And be careful, this may seem obvious: if it’s a comedy, it’s a comedy...
if it’s a thriller, it’s a thriller... but that’s a very superficial way of looking at it, first of all because a thriller can contain also very dramatic scenes, I’m not saying a light scene, but a different way of telling that scene, right? Music can be set to describe the characters in one way or another. There’s the example of "Happy Corleone" in "The Godfather", where sometimes we show the theme in a major key and they all seem like shepherd boys on a field trip, right? Which is really funny. But what we're talking about instead is not so much what tone to give the scene (more dramatic, less dramatic, more ambiguous, etc.) but how that scene is experienced by the viewer.
Because music allows you to make the same scene feel like it’s experienced through the emotions of the main character in the scene, or on the other hand – as if we were spectators outside the scene; the same psychology of the characters within an action can be experienced by the audience in two different ways and this is what we’re about to show you practically with some visuals. Yes, so we have to understand then – when deciding what tone to give the score – whether we care more about the action or the emotions. So are we on the side of the viewer or the actor? But here comes Zimmer... Here comes Zimmer who in a recent interview said something interesting: "The director shouldn't tell me what music he wants, because if he already knows what music he wants, then he should make it himself!... he should tell me the story and then give me full freedom." And I say that's nice, beautiful, but as we often say: don’t try this at home!
Zimmer can say it, he can afford it... and I think even he in certain situations has to compromise. My beloved Thomas Newman says exactly the opposite; in "Finding Nemo" he says in an interview how he had exactly this problem: how to approach the initial events told by the animation? By describing the action, the mechanics of the scene, or instead by describing the same scene as perceived if we were the little fish. And pay attention to a very important point. Sure, we all say: "Ah, it would be fantastic if the director gave us full creative freedom." But actually, everyone who has done this job knows that many times you arrive at certain results – which are very far from the first version you created – because you were pushed to do different things, and almost always the final result was better than what you would have done if they had given you full creative freedom.
Even in the editing phase, we don’t know the full direction that a character or the film is taking. So maybe we see a scene in which we’re inclined to use a certain kind of description but the director instead has ideas that are more long-term and that therefore develop later on and so the directions he gives are useful to create an organic work. So, to create this organic work we must pay special attention to genre films, because genre films obviously aim to match the audience’s expectations. If I go to see a thriller, a horror, a romantic comedy... I may not know the plot but I already know what kind of film I’m about to see. So in this case, the composer must find the right balance between not disappointing expectations and at the same time creating something not trivial.
Why don’t we start by watching "The Silence of the Lambs"? Here we’re in the opening credits and we already perceive very dramatic music over a normal scene: a girl running. Now, this dramatic music could make us think that something will happen to this girl. Can you hear how dramatic the music is? In reality, it’s just a girl jogging. but it represents a metaphorical depiction of what Jodie Foster will experience later on.
The trick is to play on the current scenic situation, to make us think that what we’re hearing is related to the mysteries of the woods, to the mysteries of a person we’re seeing running without a clear purpose, overcoming obstacles. These obstacles are the same ones she’ll face later on. The music is already telling us something enigmatic and dangerous that she will experience later. And so, with this device, our brain is already prepared for a certain kind of film, but without having yet explicitly stated the actual threat that will appear later. This is a classic device in main titles. Howard Shore’s score is truly one of the reasons why this film is a masterpiece.
There’s a nice anecdote about the soundtrack of Shrek, where there’s a scene that the composer scores in a way that, according to the director, is a bit too light; and he says, “No, no, this isn’t working at all; we need to feel danger here, tension, we need music that rips at the soul.” The composer rewrites the music and the director says: “Oh well, now we’re terrifying children!” So, as you can see, compromise is not always easy to find. This dynamic exists at all levels, you’ll find it in your friend's amateur short film, and you’ll find it in big studio productions. And speaking of children, we can watch a scene from Harry Potter. We see a monster, a troll, threatening the children. John Williams’ music is obviously very dramatic; we clearly perceive all the danger, you can really hear the sforzato trombones; what’s more menacing than a sforzato trombone? The monster is approaching, but when the girl hides and he starts destroying, the tone shifts.
Hermione is in the middle of the action and we’re watching the scene from the outside. It’s a very frantic action, but the tension is being delivered to us by John Williams, we’re hearing an over-the-top musical excitement that serves two purposes. The first is to narrate and let us relate, not so much to the characters, but to the situation. We are experiencing a situation from the outside, and the link between us and the scene is mediated by the music. The music works by helping us reconstruct the scene in our minds. But there is no psychological approach to the situation or to the characters’ experience of the troll and the moment.
It’s a pure description of the scene that also serves to defuse the threat. Also because, after all, this isn’t a horror movie, it’s a film where we know that the three kids will make it, so we see them in danger, but only up to a certain point. That’s the key function of the music in this scene: to let us feel the adventure but not the threat to their lives. Because in this case, the music’s action is to shift the threat psychologically from something experienced firsthand to something placed in a fantasy realm, and in this sense, music displaces the danger. Danger that, this time, we can experience through music, inside the mind of one of the protagonists precisely in this other scene from a film called Glory. With a beautiful score by James Horner.
What’s this film about? The American Civil War, in which there are Black soldiers fighting for the Union. In this case, the function of the music is not to narrate the action but the psychology of the characters, particularly the innocence of many of these former slaves, who were given a rifle, dressed in a uniform, and told to fight for an ideal that they fundamentally knew nothing or very little about. Broderick, in this case, must tragically obey orders and commands his soldiers to start a fire, which we are experiencing from inside Broderick's mind; so from his point of view, of the mistake, of the tragedy hidden behind the glory, but with a sense of guilt for the action we are watching, which is the tone set by the music that’s describing the whole scene; there is no kind of action in the music here, only the inner conflict of the main character. We heard the tension in the musical movements, unfolding broadly, using almost exclusively strings, which for this kind of language are incredibly effective. This type of contrast is experienced as if we were inside the head of the protagonist of that scene.
Another example, this time not from a film, but from an episode of the series Dexter; in just a few minutes it manages to switch register and point of view (the famous perspective shift) several times in a very interesting way. Yes, we start with this extremely dramatic scene: we’ll spare you the details, but we're witnessing something very gruesome and very violent, yet this gruesome, violent scene involving a villain —how is it lightened up? With music. Because over this terrible scene what do we need this Cuban music for? It helps us enter the point of view of the vigilante criminal. Dexter is a serial killer of criminals; the Cuban Son that we hear underneath lets us share in his euphoria; we're not watching the action of the scene right now, we're experiencing his intoxication from this otherwise horrible act.
Then there’s a beautiful shift, driven by the reverberation of the song and the entrance of a scoring cue that brings us back to reality: "Wait, what are we watching?" Okay, this is the scene, this is the situation, this is the drama— only to return to him, but not with the same euphoria as before, but with an acoustic guitar that leads the new musical mood, which is more reflective, and accompanies his dive into the water and accompanies his thoughts. Did you see how within the same scene you can completely change register three times, or more, even many more, if this is obviously agreed with the director. But I'm sure the most important thing you’ve understood is that if you don't ask yourself this question, you risk writing beautiful music but delightfully useless, or at least ineffective for the goal the director intended; that’s why it’s necessary to talk a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot with the director, also because the in-out dynamic, in and out of the scene, in and out of the protagonist's head is also a storytelling device that helps to keep the viewer engaged and playing with the audience is essential. I’d say for today we’ve given you quite a few insights; write in the comments what you think; let us know in the comments if you’ve noticed in some films this kind of shift in perspective; subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already; and if you liked the video, maybe go wild and leave a like, and we’ll see you in the next episode. Bye!