Movies, Music, Manipulation: Studying the Mechanics of Film Music

Course Description

Film is, in the minds of most people, primarily a visual entertainment - we talk of watching a film or going to see a movie. So when a filmmaker as respected as George Lucas states '...sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie’, many folks are taken by surprise. But why? In this course (which requires no pre-existing film or music education to fully enjoy) we will take an in-depth look at how music and sound help elevate the narrative of a film, manipulate and enhance a viewer’s emotional journey across different genres and stories, and survey how the use of both has evolved in filmmaking over the course of 125 years.

We will begin with a discussion of how music and sound help bring to life the stories in film, proceeding to the stylistic origins of film music in the European classical tradition (if you believe John Williams wrote all those famous themes straight off the top of his head, then think again!).This will be followed by an investigation into what the transition from silent film to 'The Talkies' meant for Hollywood and the evolution of film music as we know it today. Our second task will be to situate the role of music in some of the most vital cultural movements of film history. For example, we will consider Prokofiev’s music in Soviet-Russian war epics, why folk music was a natural fit for neorealist Italian films and how the influence of music use in the French New Wave stretches all the way from the 1950’s to the work of Tarantino in the present day. In our third unit, we explore the importance of songs in movies and how they can be used to build narrative beyond what the viewer sees on screen.

Each week of our fourth unit will focus on a genre, including action & adventure, horror, musicals, comedy - with detailed discussions of representative works in these genres from a variety of time periods and locations. For instance, during our week on musicals we will consider how the early history of the genre was situated in Hollywood, but quickly spread internationally including creative re-workings, such as Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and the truly global production, Dancer in the Dark, before coming full circle and returning to the USA with Barbie. Certain composers, such as Hans Zimmer and John Williams, have become mainstays within the film music canon; we’ll examine some of their most beloved works and then ask the question - where to next? Dominated for decades by creators of a narrow type, film music has struggled to overcome the movie studio’s resistance to new voices - in the final two units of the semester we’ll look at emerging composers and compositions that are already reshaping the landscape of film music as we know it.