The Blog's Maiden Voyage

Evening to all! Hey there, Dr. B. Though I guess this will be afternoon for him. Here are some of my thoughts . . . And I'll try to make this an "intriguing" read, even though it also happens to be an assignment. :-)

So . . . I have found the film music class to be extremely enjoyable so far, since it is an art form by which I've been fascinated ever since I was a young kid. I really have no idea how old I was, in fact, but I do have these fleeting, vague memories of listening to my parents' old LP of Vangelis's soundtrack to Chariots of Fire and being just entranced by the main title. (So much so that whenever I hear it borrowed by other films, such as Madagascar or Vacation, resentment boils up in my heart. Even though I like those movies, too.) I always wondered how on earth they were allowed to do that, because I figured that Vangelis would own the rights -- well, my questions are being answered! Enough chitchat -- lets get down to the actual post now.

It is always profoundly gratifying to be sitting in class when the lecture turns to things you once knew. (The only bad part is that you can't remember them by now, because your head has been crammed with so much else since then ...) I've read Rick Altman's "The Silence of the Silents" and other articles by him, as well as all the books our textbook footnotes. This is why: sophomore year I really, REALLY wanted to do my music history research paper on the music that would be played in silent films. Unfortunately, it turned into an enormous tome that was so random and sprawling that it read practically like a work of fiction. It also focused mainly on Wagner and the Gesamkunstwerk, so I'm sorry if I looked like a bobblehead during class when you were lecturing on that. It just all came back to me. How I wish -- I wish intensely -- that Wagner were still around so we could have let him loose on the film industry. He would have been even crazier, probably. One instance of "love the art, hate the artist." Totally.

I was deeply interested in the thought process behind The Battleship Potemkin. All my freakin' life have I been hearing about that film (mostly from my grandfather, who could talk the feathers off a hen) and never even thought "Odessa Steps" was literally set IN Odessa. [It would interest me -- and I need to look back at the movie -- but I know that they filmed The Legend of 1900 at, I think, that same harbour area. (Great movie, by the way -- a bit weird, featuring one of my favorite Morricone themes.)] I took especial notice of the times something would happen over and over again -- such as the plate smashing. I've seen that in modern films SO OFTEN -- I'm guessing this was one of the first, too. If I were a REAL composer (as in, if I could organize my brain), I would love to experiment with frames like that: bam bam BAM! That does give me a lot of ideas. A Trip to the Moon, to me, was both amusing and rather disturbing: what the heck happened to the guy they left ON the moon? Of course, I realize that a lot of things that people USED to think of as good clean fun have been warped by more contemporary society -- clowns, for example. (Gee thanks, Stephen King!)

Speaking of Stephen King -- nothing would normally compel me to watch a film like Carrie. However, after reading the description in the book, viewing it made for an unforgettable experience. NOT just because of the bloodstained arm poppin' out of the ground, either. Though I thought that was a nice touch. But since I had read about the flute solo, and in particular its apparent beauty, I found myself listening particularly closely, analyzing it and getting caught up in it then WHAM -- HOT DOG! Awesome. I jumped, then I laughed -- because I was so taken in. I rarely watch horror films, since I generally think they're so stupid I laugh and annoy everyone in the theater (yes, I HAVE been asked to shut up before) but I'm really looking forward to seeing more things like that and really taking note of the elements in the music, be they subtle or blatantly obvious.

Just a note on something that's getting mentioned quite a lot: how weird and freaky it is to "see dead people" on screen . . . My mom at first refused to see The Dark Knight because it freaked her out that Heath Ledger had died, partly stemming from his role as the Joker. I don't know why I didn't have the same reaction -- I guess it's because I've always tended to think of films as pieces of art (mostly) rather than documents (Galaxy Quest, ha ha!) or memorials of days past. Unless they're home movies. Caravaggio is dead; Rossini is dead; Moliere is dead; but since you can't see them, that's the difference, I guess. Which brings me to Siegfried: I found it stunning, especially visually -- although the score was well-suited and did have lovely moments. Like I mentioned, the intensites of the black, white, and gray elements on screen were so beautiful. I've never even been much of a fan of black and white films. I used to watch the old Little Rascals, but that's about it. But, it's a really unique effect that Fritz Lang used amazingly well to produce something amazingly dynamic in appearance. I didn't even mind the slowness -- I'm always very interested in the whole story and had never seen it told in such a straightforward narrative before.

Although I remain extremely interested in film music, it has been brought home to me by all the anecdotes -- and especially the interviews with actual film composers -- that I could never handle such a life. Not that I'm creative enough to begin with, but at the word "politics" I was gone. Orchestrator is also an intriguing job -- also one I'm never going to be able to do, but really, the finished product must be so insanely pleasing to hear and witness when the film's in the theater. It saddens me deeply that music remains such an afterthought in the production process -- but so many people jump up to go out and buy the soundtracks to big movies coming out, even if they're not really musical. To me that's a wonderful thing -- and really, they should give the music budget more than the crumbs from their tables.

AGB out. See y'all Monday.