HI, I'm new so prepare to cringe - I think music works well to emotionally push the viewer further into the world: it's already edited and the view restricted to this rectangle of light - but the music sort of fills in the bits you cannot see and builds the world. Wonderful background scores like Vangelis's Blade Runner, Glass's Candyman, Revell's 'The Crow' or even in trashy films, Zimmer's Broken Arrow is pretty much the only thing I can remember. Music itself can add more direct flavour when more in-your-face, nostalgia-soundtracks like a lot of Tarantino's films, or ridiculous films like Lock Stock or Snatch. Musicals like Half a Sixpence, Mamma Mia etc are very much to the camera of course. Trying to ting of films without or very minimal music - Alien does spring to mind as it has stabs of music which is quite dramatic.
I think a good musical score builds in a layer of nostalgia for a movie, gives you some additional things to latch onto and go back and watch something for. Movies that are like documentaries of course work without music, like City of God.
Movies ruined by soundtracks? well, I know if you watch old 70s 80s sci-fi movies with their crazy synths, they have aged very badly: would Star Wars have remained as timeless without John Williams? (although John Carpenter gets a pass here )
And what of films like Knight's Tale that try to squeeze in contemporary music using period instrumentation?
Would The Lighthouse been as-tense with music throughout?
And War films: they seem a black-and-white genre for this, often mixing within the same film - either jingoistic and musical to scenes of silence and intense dread.
Summary: the more music, the more fantastic the movie is - and the less it feels more real. So it is there to manipulate. But surely this is why we enjoy films and enjoy the emotional ride.
I think a good musical score builds in a layer of nostalgia for a movie, gives you some additional things to latch onto and go back and watch something for. Movies that are like documentaries of course work without music, like City of God.
Movies ruined by soundtracks? well, I know if you watch old 70s 80s sci-fi movies with their crazy synths, they have aged very badly: would Star Wars have remained as timeless without John Williams? (although John Carpenter gets a pass here )
And what of films like Knight's Tale that try to squeeze in contemporary music using period instrumentation?
Would The Lighthouse been as-tense with music throughout?
And War films: they seem a black-and-white genre for this, often mixing within the same film - either jingoistic and musical to scenes of silence and intense dread.
Summary: the more music, the more fantastic the movie is - and the less it feels more real. So it is there to manipulate. But surely this is why we enjoy films and enjoy the emotional ride.