Intrada Soundtrack Forum

Usually I'm not bitter about today's film music, but I had this thought while watching some recent movies, all containing a very restrained musical score, very beat driven, very synthetic, and soooooo far from, let's say, the BIG orchestra that slowly disappeared in the 90's.

And I asked myself, why the fashion has changed in that period ? And I came to that conclusion : Digital special effects !

For decades (since the begining of film music in the 30's), directors have been asking to composers to enhance their movies, to MAKE IT BIG, because it wasn't big enough with the relatively poor visuals they could offer. Don't get me wrong, I love the old fashioned optical special effects. Star Wars and Superman the Movie were the greatest SFX movies of their time. But still, the directors and producers felt that the movies needed a BIG in your face orchestral score to carry the visuals and make them even more spectacular.

Now, with digital effects, if you can imagine it, you can do it. Who needs a BIG emphatic score anymore ? You just need to give rhythm to smooth the editing with synthetic beats and put the mood to a certain scene with atmospheric cues. In the 80's Batman was carried by explosive orchestrations, themes and powerful symphonic melodies, in the 2000's, scoring a Batman movie is just a matter of rhythm and mood.

So what happened in the 80's and the 90's that put an end to rich big old fashioned melodic orchestral film music ? I'll tell you what : digital effects. Now everything is in the visuals, you don't need the music anymore (say the producers).
That's the main reason why we are all here waiting for Intrada to release all those pre-2000's scores here, unearthing musical treasures from the past decades that couldn't exist anymore today. Of course there are exceptions, and a few composers that still decide their way of working. But even in the works of Silvestri, Elfman or Horner (the last BIG ones) we can feel some changes, adapted to today's cinema, compared to what they were asked to do in the old days. And we still have some rare people like Michael Giacchino who deliberately write old fashioned scores and are nostalgically asked for that speciality.

So what do YOU think ?

Totally agree with you McFly

And i think that a few composers are feeling it too, so much so that they just aren’t scoring as much as they used to.
The movie experience has changed to incorporate huge sound effects to tell the story when the score did a fine job back in the day. (80's, 90’s)
Scores we love because we heard them to warn us of a great white shark or let us know when the bogey man was near & they stood out.
The last five years have been dominated by either larger than life comic book characters or giant robots, not that there's anything wrong with that from an entertainment value but when you go to see a movie & the score is lost under huge battle scenes the score just becomes loud noise from a digital recording studio.
Don’t get me wrong I love film music as much as film itself it's just that scores aren’t what they used to be & you just hope & prey that the next Intrada release is music to your ears.

There's something called MIDI that's revolutionized the recording studios, it can synthesize a whole orchestra (& put a lot of musicans out of work). Also, these days, I wonder if new composers are spending more time learning to use the kit, & less time learing how to write notes on paper. I'd think these days, a lot of movies don't want or need melody.

I remember having a short conversation with a film producer over a very famous composer who doesn't score like they used to.
We both agreed, if he doesn't feel it anymore, then why does he even do it? It's certainly not a lack of money -- he's got enough to retire right now and live very confortably.

While that's a large part, I think that composer, and others are simply not inspired. What's inspiring about insiped, one-dimensional cliched characters? Leads that have no presence? Plotless funbling around? Extremely poor dialogue? Movies with half or more made of songs (unless a Disney or Pixar work)? Films that constantly go through editing, then re-shooting because of poor testing?

OR films with too many cooks in the kitchen , each trying to cook them film his way (want a new example? See, if you dare, "Men In Black 3"), and occassionally mutiple parties each telling a composer how the score should be, thus no direction and a parilous journey on a tightrope of producer/director idiocy.

Many director's today don't even know how music works, have any musical knowledge, and don't have trust in their composer. They seek not by how a composer scores, but rather who's "new", "hip", scored a recent film like his or hers, and even ventures out into non composers like popular bands (meanwhile countless composers, many working in the industry for two decades or more, languish waiting for the phone to ring).
Don't get me wrong, we've gotten many great compsoers from musical bands, song bands, etc., like Henry Mancini, I think John Williams did some work like that, too; Christophe Beck (pretty sure he still has the band); the sword-swallowing, fire-breathing boobie honkin' redheaded going deaf Danny Elfman (how many film composers today have THAT resume?); Nile Rogers (if he'll score anything ever again), etc.
But many of the ones chosen today aren't displaying the same promise. They lack compositional knowledge, know how.
I'm reminded of one composer whom had never scored before and was asked if he was interested. He said "Yes" without knowing how, realized his error, and started calling around to orchestrators, etc., to get a crash course (ultimately he was passed on), while it sounds like today's newbies just muddle together their band friends and improvise. At least Masterdon called upon John Powell to help with "Jonnah Hex" (rejected, but still).


And so many Hollywood studios don't want to shell out for the big orchestra unless your a "name" (like Brian Tyler or Hans Zimmer), and claim they have no money; they reject one score, pay the composer; they reject a second score, pay the composer, then claim they have no money -- but they made that claim the previous two composers, too. Then you got a rush job. They have no problem plopping down money for actors who call us racist, say they voite for a President based on skin color, or actresses who've shaked hands and hung around with the bad guys who shot and killed Americans, or fly over and hang out with dictators, but for the composer -- no money for you!.

I remember one composer telling me about how some studios now are offering "package" deals wherein they give you a certain amount of money and that's it -- you got to do the score within that budghet. So, the composer, desperate to spread his wings and contribute something good when needed, has to shell out of his own pocket to get extra players, staff, recording time.


I think I've gone on too long. The atmosphere is counterproductive to scores of the passed. Hollywood makes films that we're saying are going to suck, meanwhile they are editing the trailers in fruitless efforts to make it look goo, appealing, or recapturing the "'80's", but blow just like we all knew they did (though there's always some member who think that stiming pile of Hollywood guano is a "go0d moviee!!1 !").



Well, aren't we lucky? There's hundreds, and hundreds of scores from the 1980's and lower on CD to go sample. One never has to delve into today's scoring. One could spend years and years just finding and listening to Morricone scores.


Need a break? Here's some old goodies (most never on CD) to enjoy and bring back the nostalgia of scores passed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a22yrRNB11s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkyiI3CJjb4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_NgXw6lrkw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ytZztvoH7k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxZFOHc8Ll4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MopIS80fvjw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHAQ7pfaxJA

You're welcome.

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Erik Woods
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Would you simply imagine a compilation "best themes from 2011" with those titles ? Dream House, The Tree of Life, The Artist ? This CD would obviously sell millions of copies ! ;o)
Even the Captain America's theme, which is the best of last year, isn't fully heard in the picture and not even on the CD...

Now let's imagine a compilation of 1985 movie themes :
Lifeforce
Back to the Future
Explorers
Cocoon
Enemy Mine
Flesh & Blood
Silverado
Young Sherlock Holmes
King Solomon's Mine
Mad Max 3
Brazil
Baby
Pee Wee
The Goonies
The Ewoks Adventure
Red Sonja
Legend
The Black Cauldron
Return to Oz
Out of Africa
Agnes of God
Natty Gann
Rambo II
Remo Williams
Invasion USA
Missing in Action 2
...

Something has clearly happened between 1985 and 2011... But I admire your optimism if you don't see the change...

"Old fashioned" orchestral scoring is coming to an end? I wholeheartedly disagree. There may, indeed, be a popular bend toward quick and easy music for one's film, but if more traditional scoring is going by the wayside, then the academy surely made a mistake when they handed out the nominations for Best Score this year. Nearly every score on the Oscar list is cut from a more traditional cloth and not one of them is a Zimmer'r'us sound'a'like. This is very refreshing to see and lets hope that it's a sign that filmmakers and studios alike, still see the advantage of intelligible music adding to the emotional connection that audiences deserve and thirst for.



- Oz

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Erik Woods
host and producer CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO PODCAST


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I'm a man of few words but I love to deposit my two cents on topics of ENORMOUS interest to me. I agree 150% with Erik and Ozmeister... film scoring is alive and well. It won't disappear anytime soon. Studios are retrofitting old recording stages and contracting to build completely new ones to accommodate innovations in new recording technology. I would say that there IS a difference in musical styles and thematic approaches in modern-day scoring in comparison to say, the 70's and 80's but orchestras are still the go-to medium by which to musically capture the essence of a film today.

The fact that so many films scores are finally being released today after sitting in vaults for 20+ years is a testament to the fact that good, old-fashioned orchestral scores still retain a place of high importance in the biz today.

Don't lose hope... keep the faith!

I've listened closely to all the tracks you put in that compilation. I already knew half of them, so I'm not completely living in the past.

I think we just disagree about what is a big old fashioned score. It's not just about the orchestra. It's about catchy themes, over the top swashbuckling action, lush orchestrations, naive melodic romance,...

As I said, there are some exceptions and I'm aware of that since I've bought some of these albums in 2011 and really enjoy them.
But when you find Djawadi's "Game of Thrones" catchy, I just can't get it, and I'm sorry about that. Once we had medieval scores by Korngold, Rozsa, Poledouris, Goldsmith,... Now we have Djawadi...
Robin Hood>El Cid>Conan>First Knight>...Game of Thrones... Doesn't seem like the perfect evolution to me...

I also noticed that you mentioned several times in your comments that only the end credits were good because the producers restrained the music inside the picture...
And let me quote you about Source Code (which is a fine modern suspense score) :
"We rarely hear main title cue like this anymore."

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Erik Woods
host and producer CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO PODCAST


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So we both agree that today's productions usually don't allow composers to do big orchestral scores anymore, and we both agree that these kind of scores still exist today (but have become very rare).
Of course I'm following the efforts of Giacchino, Lockington and co. It's such a bliss when you finally listen to a great orchestral score today, that you find it even more powerful than it probably really is...