The young composer Nicholas Britell is getting some attention. Sounds like an interesting and bright man. Here is an NPR segment about him from last week. The Composer With A Growing Fan Club Among Directors
Who Are Your Favorite Film Score Composers
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Alfred Newman (How the West Was Won, Nevada Smith, Airport, Anastasia, David and Bathsheba, The Diary of Anne Frank and many more) Miklos Rozsa (Ben Hur, El Cid) Erich Korngold (Captain Blood, Adventures of Robin Hood, King's Row) Bernard Herrmann (Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho), Jerry Goldsmith (Capricorn One, The Sand Pebbles, Logan's Run), Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind) Ernest Gold (On the Beach), Alex North (Spartacus) Jerome Moross (Big Country) James Horner (Troy) John Williams (Black Sunday, Close Encounters) Aaron Copland (The Heiress)
Forgot Nino Rota (Godfather), and Dimitri Tiomkin (Gunfight at OK Corral, The Alamo, Taras Bulba, I think)
Rota's score for the Godfather was at least a third of the movies' greatness.
Rota's score for the Godfather was at least a third of the movies' greatness.
Just as a short counterpoint to the discussion -- boy, some of you guys really know your stuff! -- I'm always impressed when the music is left off the sound track to good effect, as in the thirty minutes of race car engines only in the "Le Mans" movie and instances where all the music comes from the language of the dialogue, using it somewhat like poetry but without it being actual verse. That velociraptor tapping its claw on the kitchen stainless steel cabinet in "Jurassic Park" is an unforgettable piece of music.
Danny Elfman is certainly a fine composer, for sure. I forgot the masterful Randy Newman score for The Natural.
Yes, knowing where to use music and where not to use it is key to the success of a film. One of my criticisms of much of modern music scoring is that there is often a kind of nonstop music accompaniment, especially to action films.
One of my favorite movies is Executive Suite from 1954 with William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck. It has no musical score, and no ambient music that I recall, and the movie did not suffer at all.
A great score should make you care about the story and characters, make you feel that an important story is being told.
Yes, knowing where to use music and where not to use it is key to the success of a film. One of my criticisms of much of modern music scoring is that there is often a kind of nonstop music accompaniment, especially to action films.
One of my favorite movies is Executive Suite from 1954 with William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck. It has no musical score, and no ambient music that I recall, and the movie did not suffer at all.
A great score should make you care about the story and characters, make you feel that an important story is being told.
As sablebrush52 said, Elmer Bernstein. If the only score he ever did was to To Kill a Mockingbird, he would be among the greats. The opening credit music to that film is wonderful, as is the music in the scene near the end where Boo is shown shyly waiting behind the bedroom door in the room where the injured boy lies.
I also need to add Bronislau Kaper (Mutiny on the Bounty, a masterpiece!)
I think that Carter Burwell's score for the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit is beautiful and fits the story better than Elmer Bernstein's big Hollywood western score, as fun as it is to listen to.
For you John Williams and Bernard Herrmann fans, check out Black Sunday. The score should be required study for aspiring action and suspense film composers.
I also need to add Bronislau Kaper (Mutiny on the Bounty, a masterpiece!)
I think that Carter Burwell's score for the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit is beautiful and fits the story better than Elmer Bernstein's big Hollywood western score, as fun as it is to listen to.
For you John Williams and Bernard Herrmann fans, check out Black Sunday. The score should be required study for aspiring action and suspense film composers.
I don't like it when the movie depends too much on the music telling me what to feel. Great scoring is sometimes incongruous, sometimes foreshadowing, and often almost not directly noticed. The music should bring up the intensity or power of everything else, not supplant or override it. It's like a great percussionist in a band, or flavoring in a great aromatic, often little noticed. It wasn't a great score, but the shark's "theme" in "Jaws" was the shark's characterization.
Gonna have an Indian attack ... gotta have drums! A tryst? Strings, lotsa strings. Soundtrack cliches from the past.
Any movie that needs the music to tell you how to feel is a crap movie. Music, like lighting, color, camera angles, etc, is a tool for helping tell the story. Once in a while a score is so brilliant it becomes the story away from the film, but the score isn't supposed to control the film.
But occasionally the score doesn't work. One of my favorite composers, Georges Delerue, had written the score for Something Wicked This Way Comes, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. It was a beautiful score, but the Disney studio was not satisfied. They felt that the score lacked darkness and was just too light for a film about a carnival run by the Devil. I suddenly was involved with temp scoring the film in the problematic areas on orders from Tom Wilhite's office. Seems someone heard that I had a background in classical music and a pretty good record collection, so I found myself in a sound booth with Wilhite and the sound editor as well as a couple other technicians. I selected some works by Bartok and Ives, among others, suggesting where they might be slugged into the film temporarily. We spent several hours piecing together the darker bits. What I found surprising was how much of what I supplied, paraphrased of course, wound up in James Horner's final score.
Re: the Newman family, a common trivia question is "Which family has won the most Academy Awards for their work in the film industry?". The answer is of course the Newmans. Most people guess families of actors, like the Barrymores.
Trent Reznor has built up quite a resume. We just watched Netflix', "Bird Box" and he did that score as well. (great book, we enjoyed the movie as well)
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