Musical Scores

A "musical score" is the audio composed to accompany moving images (movies, TV shows, short films for example). The score is an extremely integral part of the film medium and can greatly enhance the feel of what the image is trying to establish, or completely change its feeling altogether. Most films would not be viewed upon the same way without their music. Due to music being proven to alter a person's mood and emotions, it serves as an excellent method of excentuating story telling by involving the viewer further than what images alone could.

The following clip is taken from Frank Darabont's "The Green Mile" in which a man, whom we've come to grow compassionate for, is excuted for a crime we as an audience know he did not commit.

This scene contains extremely melancholic subject matter, and is reflected in the music which is a slow orchestral piece that ascends and grows more emotional as the character is getting closer and closer to death.

Another example of a film's score being used in an effective way is in the opening title sequence of  Steven Spielberg's "Catch Me If You Can". The movie is about a con artist who is being trailed by the FBI for cheque forgery amongst other things.

As you can see, the music is composed in way which is reminiscent of slapstick style espionage, whilst also fitting extremely well with the era in which the movie is set (around the 1960s). The images on screen are of animated cartoon silhouettes with a very distinguished art style, which again, is very slapstick in it's feel. It personally reminds me of the Pink Pather theme, and sets the tone of the film exceptionally well.

An example of how the music can change the feeling of a scene is this clip from Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs". The scene involves a psychopath who tortures a police officer for no reason other than to torture him (boldly established earlier in the scene).

This is an example of a song which wasn't directly composed for the movie. The song playing in the scene is called "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Stealers Wheel, which is upbeat and is of a completely different nature to what is being shown on screen. The use of this music could  be viewed as a double entendre due to it changing the tone of the scene to something much less horrific, but it makes the character seem even more psychotic in the way that he dance to the music can nonchalantly torture a person. This is an iconic scene from the movie, in large part due to the music.

My fourth and final example of musical scores is taken from Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". The following clip is one of the most famous scenes in the history of film making for a number of reasons, and the movie itself was a genre defining classic.

I was lucky enough to find a clip of the famous shower scene with and without it's score. The composition has clearly been created specifically for this scene due to the high pitched, staccato orchestra stings which are very much like the sharp and stabbing knife in the scene. This method of composition creates an atmosphere of panic, and is then immediately switched to low pitched droning after the woman has been killed, symbolic of her life draining away. This video shows that the effectiveness of this scene is utterly dependent on the score due to it being signficantly dulled and less efficacious to the viewer, with all due respect.