Brian Satterwhite: Why Does Film Need Music?

Why does film need music? Seems like an easy question to answer considering the audience I’m proposing it to. We certainly have a fundamental awareness (either conscious or sub-conscious) of its physical, psychological and technical purposes, but could you come up with a wholly encompassing explanation as to why its there in the first place? I was inspired by Lee’s call-to-action a couple weeks ago where he tasked the readership to participate in a little compositional exercise. I’d like to follow suit with a little collective pow-wow myself. Before I dive in and wax poetic about my own formulated explanation of why music is a necessary ingredient in motion picture storytelling, I’d like to ask…

Gateway Scores: Men in Black

When Jai asked us to write a Blog this week on the score that got us into the business, or at least opened our eyes to the industry, I was reminded of something I was once told in an interview I had done with a composer called Andrew Sigler. I keep coming back to this time and time again, as I think Andrew really hit the nail on the head: “…I always wonder if [people] confuse their influences with their favorite composers, which are not always the same thing. I’ll put it this way, influences run more deeply and subconsciously than ‘my fave five’ composers. For instance, I love Stravinsky. And I love to say…

Silence is Golden

Why is music used here? and What is its function?

Before diving headlong into an analytical frenzy surrounding the functions of film music, I want to begin by establishing a frame of reference by which the very existence of film music centers. In doing that one must not immediately look at specific moments in film that are supported by music but rather moments which are not.