msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (03/24/85)
geoff@ISM780.UUCP writes: > >Well, I don't know about MOST movies. The point of a film score, like the > >point of film lighting, and continuity editing etc, is NOT to be noticed. reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher) replies: > I find this point of view rather narrow. Firstly, you've just thrown out > any film that tries to work on any level other than the naturalistic, as > such films usually feature noticeable camerawork, editting, scores, etc. Agreed, but WE don't LIKE that kind of film. We are not interested in marking the director for what he can show us he knows how to do. We assume that. It is for what he can do without us noticing. > ...Think about how much Marvin > Hamlisch's arrangements of Scott Joplin's rags contributed to "The Sting". No argument there, and I know it was scoring that started this topic. Which goes to say that what I say is not absolute. But I have seen far more movies with excessive scoring and the like than movies like The Sting. > ... I would hate to have to defend the statement that > Hitchcock's editing of the shower scene in "Psycho" was a mistake, or that > it was not noticeable. Ditto Eisenstein's brilliant editing in "Potemkin". I cite both of these as an example for my side. "Psycho" and "Potemkin" were indeed brilliantly edited, precisely because the editing was NOT noticeable. Unless, of course, you were deliberately looking for it. For instance, if you went into the movie with the intention of marking it for editing, or if you were re-viewing it to see just why that scene was so effective. Compare, for instance, "Plan 9 From Outer Space", where editing is very noticeable, because the director (Edward D. Wood) had the bad judgement to shoot different parts of the same scene by day and by night, and to intercut between them. Such scenes are still somewhat coherent, you certainly notice the editing! Mark Brader
jay@umd5.UUCP (03/29/85)
I think that this is one of the most interesting topics to come up in this newsgroup in quite some time. If you take a look at traditional American film you will find that almost all of it has one thing in common; it pretends it's not there. Through the years, ingenious techniques have been perfected for hiding the fact that you are watching a movie, techniques that cause you instead to experience it. One should not make a value judgement regarding the pros and cons of the Hollywood style because it does what it's supposed to do and does it better than any other country in the world. But film, like all art forms, does not exist to satisfy any one school of criticism. It's there not only to entertain but to broaden us in ways not possible in other media. Foregrounding technique in and of itself it neither good nor bad. Composers, writers and artists all do it for reasons they deem necessary or desirable. Why then shouldn't a filmmaker do the same? When Woody Allen steps out of the narrative of one of his films to address the audience we are immediately ripped out of the action and reminded that we are indeed watching a film. When filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock use abrupt editing, extreme angles or curious camera movements, the force of the narrative is intentionally broken, often to let us know that the filmmaker is not so much interested in what's going on in the film as he or she is in showing us that we've been taken in by it all. (When filmmakers such as Brian DePalma do these same things the reasons are not so obvious, at least to me.) No aspect of filmmaking should be subject to arbitrary guidelines that regulate whether or not it should call attention to itself. As much as anything else, this maxim applies to scoring a film, the topic that brought about this discussion in the first place. There are times when attention to the soundtrack is totally appropriate, such as at a comic moment where a wrong note may be sounded to punctuate the event. The film "King Kong" is full of Max Steiner's mickeymoused orchestrations which are used in similar fashion. Films that are creatively scored with popular music of the day often enhance the scenes in which they are used simply because of their cultural association. John Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath" uses the song "Red River Valley" in lieu of a score written explicitly for the film and it works so well because we recognize the song. To a lesser degree, this same principal applies to "The Big Chill". John Williams' bombastic scores for the "Star Wars" films are appropriate to the bombastic films for which they were created. In short, if it's done well, you can do anything you want to in a film. If all you remember about a film is the fact that it had a good score, maybe that's all there was to the film to begin with! -- Jay Elvove ..!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!umd5!jay