Brian Satterwhite: Manipulate Me, Please!

Over the past several years, a new word has entered the film music lexicon threatening the functional traditions the craft of scoring was built upon. This indiscriminate battle cry was practically nonexistent during the first hundred years of film music. Today, it’s a word carrying a vulgar weight amongst filmmakers and audiences alike. This is the new evil feared amongst the collective patrons of the film industry, the scarlet letter nobody wants to see branded, and the dreaded angel-of-death for all film scores of worth. At the mere hint of it, filmmakers raise their crossed-fingered hands as if warding off the demon seed of Satan himself. It has left me flummoxed, perplexed, and downright nonplussed….

Gateway Scores: Alien

I don’t know if this is a true story. Richard Burton was playing the lead in a comedy on Broadway. Before making his entrance he told the stage manager, “Tonight, I’m gonna make ‘em cry”. He went on and, as promised, he brought the audience to tears when they should have been laughing. With the greatest respect to the ghost of Richard Burton, film music can also evoke tears, tension, fright and every other conceivable emotion. Speaking of ghosts, I’ve sat many times on an empty Fox scoring stage wondering how Joseph Mankiewicz reacted the first time he heard Bernard Hermann’s main title of “The Ghost And Mrs. Muir”. Did Mankiewicz break down in tears?…

Gateway Scores: What Got You “Hooked”?

As a special SCOREcast theme for this last week of June, you’ll see several posts on the Main Page covering a topic that we all love to talk about: our love of film music. We asked our SCOREcast Contributors to tell us what film score got them hooked into the idea that scoring films might be the career for them. From many certain classics to some that you might have ever heard of before, it is possible that you’ll be as surprised as we were with the responses. Have fun reading their stories… and be sure to log in and comment on your own Gateway Score!

Weekend Provocation 3

This week’s provocation ties in with Houston’s column yesterday on the re-emergence of outboard hardware in our composing rigs. As always, this provocation isn’t intended to be a statement of fact, or even to be taken literally… it’s simply a way to get a fresh perspective on the topic. To provoke, in other words. And I can’t wait to hear what you think of this one. Provocation: Composers should have as little gear as possible. For any of us who have ever been bitten by the gear bug, this is straight-up heresy! We need that gear to be competitive. It provides us with inspiration, with new sonic possibilities. It’s an indispensable part of our work…

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.