An essay written and compiled by
Mario Cordina 2016
Part 1: Introduction
My Involvement with Music in Film
The Genesis
The Marriage of Music in Film
Questions for the Soul
How Music Can Change a Film
How Music Plays with Our Brains
Video Games
Characteristics of Music in Film
What is Actual and Captured Source?
My Involvement with Music in Film
I got dragged into film making because films need music and filmmakers needed me so I was quite upset when a certain film maker who needed my music told me that film is the supreme art form because it combines literature, images, engineering, art, music, nature and acting into one composition.
I found myself questioning and fighting this statement. A painting is born from an empty canvas, literature starts with a blank sheet and music is built on silence. Film is built on what the camera finds or what is set in front of it and is but a montage, a mosaic, a collage powered to life by previous art forms. 
Film is a medium of communication and artistic value just as all other media and the artist chooses which media to use to confront his audience. It obviously follows that an artist must be sensitive and knowledgeable about other media, especially if he wants to incorporate it into his art form. This implies that no film producer will be successful if he is not sensitive and knowledgeable about the other artistic media he incorporates. A good producer must therefore be artistic in nature, knowledgeable, sensitive and intuitive to and about acting, literature, art and music together with the mechanics of film making, like editing, montage, lighting and effects. Indeed anyone in film making must respect all elements that go into a film and that is why I decided that I could not make music for film if I did not immerse myself into all the elements that go into film making. So I got hold of a camera and got to grips with this incredibly engrossing medium.
Genesis
Music seems to thrive all around us. It is not simply a man's idle creation. It can be found all around us on earth, in the cosmos, under the sea and within molecules and cells. Our perceptions of what is music and why man is so attracted by it is unfathomable. Some will call it a universal language, others a science whilst many will refute either claim. Below is a list of indisputable facts, that I have compiled after some intensive reading into the matter.
- Music is a universal medium of communication.
- Music may not always be comprehended but it 'talks' to our emotions, feelings, conscious and unconscious spirit.
- Music came before film.
- Music has always been incorporated into other artistic media and is the artistic medium that accompanies or enhances all forms of art.
- Biologically the sense of hearing is the first sense to be developed by any mammal embryo.
- Medically music has been proved to have positive and negative effects on all forms of life and can heal a variety of mental disorders. (Apa.Org)
- In the Bible God said, “Let there be light” but there seems to have been music before that. Before man ever learnt to speak or to communicate, he could hear sound. He could distinguish that sound and he could produce any sounds that he fancied.
- Music is the control of waves which apply important principles of physics. (How Stuff Works)
- Music is a mathematical formula, an interaction of sounds, tempo and pitch. (BNB Music Lessons)
- Planets produce music in the cosmos, molecules and atoms produce sounds when they react.
- Music is a science that has still to be revealed. There are a lot of theories and a lot of experiments that have been put forward but it remains a largely unknown and un-mastered field.
The Marriage of Music in Film
First moving pictures were silent or were they? Where they not accompanied by some sort of orchestra as the crowds thronged to see this new fantastic medium?
- As silent movies grew in popularity a musician was employed to play live music as the film rolled.
- Score sheets were written for the performing musician. These set the way modern cinema still makes use of music: e.g. Negative chord is a low and diminished chord – uplifting anthems for heroes, fast tempo for chase scenes, slow and somber tunes for sad scenes.
- The ‘talkies’ appeared with the advances in audio recording introducing speech and sound effects together with the music.
- The advent of audio in film meant that directors could have more access to different kinds of music. The single live pianist was replaced by whole orchestras and later by electronic and band music.
- Film scores were written specifically for the film. However directors started getting more adventurous with their musical choices and started looking at ready-made music. This was the birth of the Soundtrack.
- Today’s films mainly make use of a combination of soundtrack and film score music. Very often the soundtrack itself performed very well in the music industry often enjoying a second life of its own in the music charts.
- 1930 saw the first nominees and winners for Oscars in Music Scoring.
- There has been an Oscar for best Film Score or Soundtrack ever since.
Questions for the Soul
- How do directors and composers determine where music is needed?
- Is good film music truly that which is not perceived by the listener, as many filmmakers believe?
- At what volume level is music most emotionally effective?
- Does the perceptibility of the music actually take away from its effectiveness?
- What other aspects of the music make it more perceptible besides volume levels?
- Does typecasting result in generic and interchangeable scores within a genre?
- Does making some aspect of a film "familiar" matter?
- Does it aid in identification?
- Is it more effective to use cliches that will elicit specific emotional responses from the listener or to use authentic music?
- Does precisely researched music performed on authentic instruments add as much to a score as the prevalent but incorrect perception of the music?
- Can music ever really be "neutral"?
- Does no music make the movie version appear more or less real?
- Most of the research in the psychology of music has dealt with the perception and cognition of music. What about the listeners' emotional response to music and the emotional effectiveness of film scores?
