The Film Music Problem

    Doubtless, there's is no bright  line between the two; but, if pushed, we would argue that the boundary between just-music and film-music stretches between the notion that the former is music for music's (or the composer's) sake and the latter is music for film's (or the director's) sake. So music for film presents problems for the film composer that the likes of a Mozart, a Beethoven or a Courtney Love never thought about and would not care or deign to even discuss. Yes, of course, even Mozart had to contend with the cavils of the Prince$ who were his patrons. But for Mozart, ultimately, color, content, tempo and metric structure were, by far, still purely self-reflexive, isolated and personal matters of creative choice. Difficult though just-music is for any composer, for the film composer the creative problem is really far more technically Gordian: Create a musical character and quality befitting a filmic scenario entwined with the demand that the music written move and modulate 'in step' with and bring out, accentuate or underscore a visual's emotional events and settings which themselves modulate and move over time. Expressed another way, consider the following two overriding 'constraints' and you will come closer to understanding the 'film music problem':

    Constraint #1: Creating and rendering the character or color of film music - its style, tone, flavor, emotive quality and orchestration - presents the same creative problems in film as it does elsewhere. But in film there are added creative limitations not usually addressed by other composers: Music for motion pictures must be, by definition, selectively evocative. This means that its character at any one point must be one with which the intended audience already has a developed response... if music is to emotionally underscore a visual, then audiences must already 'know' that music... if a scene is visually suspenseful but the music is not received by the audience as 'suspenseful', the entertainment illusion or 'suspension of disbelief' will evaporate and, well... straight to video! This requires a film composer to be in touch with the musical 'needs' of an audience and so limits and directs a film composer's creative choices. Fortunately, however, the creative domain remaining, though not as seemingly limitless as other music endeavors, is still quite broad enough to allow for creative satisfaction for the composer; and, for us in the audience, enough variety to note and appreciate the disparate musical 'styles' exhibited by different composers one film to another.

    Constraint #2: The film is the master. Except for certain specified genres (music video, for example), nearly all films are shot and cut totally without reference or thought to the music that might later be wedded to it. Thus the composer is faced with the knotty problem of structuring music to fit a picture that has only a cinematic 'tempo' - not a constant one at that - which has nothing to do with musical values. This is important because notes along with tempo consume time. Too many notes at a certain tempo, and your planned musical effect arrives late to a 'hit' (a 'significant' moment in the film); too few notes, and you're early. In either case your career in film is in jeopardy. And this is going to be true no matter how adroit or emotive your turn of phrase. Here's a not so pretty illustration:

    For the film composer, then, the question "Which notes would you have me remove, Majesty?" is one that is not just not impertinent, it is one the film composer must ask himself all the time. Those who are willing and particularly able to answer such questions have traveled much of the way toward solving the 'film music problem'.