[Welcome back to our soundtracks series. This time it's the turn of my little brother, sound designer for the Boston Ballet, who has previously written this excellent post about recording quality in rock music for the site, which went down very well indeed. Here he tackles the problem of soundtracks and their context - either they are removed from it or imported music can bring too much baggage. But I'll let him explain all that...]
The single largest problem with soundtracks, to my mind, is quite simply you are either taking art and removing it from its context, or you are inserting it into a context where it doesn’t belong. Quite simply, in most cases soundtracks, if they do not have the emotional context of the film behind them fall rather flat. This can go the other way, in which case you have a moment in a film, and in a clumsy attempt to insert a recognized song, a song that seems out of context and strange.
Let us address the latter problem first. The two most glaring examples of this are when music exists firstly as a soundtrack piece, but also as a marketing tool. The most successful example of this that I can think of is Titanic. Celine Dion released her dreadful song months before the film, and in building hype for the film the song gets played. After it’s been played, it gets over-played. Now let us really suspend disbelief (and I don’t mean buying that Kate Winslet has a tattoo, or would pose naked for a man she barely knew, or married Billy Zane in the first place or…) and imagine that you actually got caught up in the love story. Leo and Kate are parading themselves in full view of the entire ship (sorry, at it again aren’t I…) and falling in love. At the climactic moment as they release themselves from the shackles of their class and feel the freeing wind in their hair the strains of an orchestra swell behind them and the entire audience at once says to the loved one they are sharing the moment with “Oh, that’s that Celine Dion song isn’t it?”. And the moment (or what there ever was of it) is lost.
The same applies, and more so, for the movie Armageddon. Only there in our climactic love moment (and you’d have to be really struggling to get caught up in this one) they weren’t even bothered to take out Steven Tyler’s voice. The audience is removed from the movie long enough to think, “Hey, that’s Aerosmith” or possibly “Hang on, that’s her Dad singing, while she’s shagging Ben Affleck. Oh God, this is wrong, this is all wrong. I need to get out of here. No no. All wrong”. These are clumsy examples but, this is not isolated. Think of every time you have been watching a movie and “I’m Walking on Sunshine” comes on. First thought: “Huh, they always use this”.
It also works the other way around. The studio that brought you “Four Weddings in Notting Hill Actually” are masters of putting songs where they don’t quite belong. The song ‘Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone’ implies that the lady in question is coming back. Hugh Grant is facing life with Julia Roberts for ever (can’t imagine why he’s actually upset, but what do I know…) and hence it just doesn’t work. Quentin Tarentino does it as well. The song ‘Street Life’ sings about a person growing up in a poor neighborhood fighting for survival, it does not refer to stewardesses fighting to get themselves out of sticky a situation, largely of their own making. Still, they are both about black people, so Quentin probably thought that made them ‘street’, and therefore appropriate. Sorry, I’ll move on to my home ground before I get myself into trouble.
Now let’s we address classical and custom writing music used in film. This I always feel works better. For a start classical music is by its very nature more abstract. No feelings are specified, and what you feel is largely between you, the conductor and the composer (if my boss reads that last sentence I’ll never work again, so don’t quote me…). However, because of this it tends to be more malleable. The scene in Battle of Britain when you see the Luftwaffe appear en masse: with mighty sinister strings it’s terrifying. The scene in Lord of the Rings where the trees (alright, Ents) walk to invade the evil kingdom, knowing they’re going to die (they don’t die, but Peter Jackson doesn’t let that ruin the pre-fight moment), the build in the music is fantastic. Now listen to those pieces out of context. Not bad and all but, they don’t really do it. The problem is that a piece of music needs to build, the themes, tone mood, strains need to be established, need to be layered, the listener given time to submit himself and be lead to his climactic moment.
But in a film this process of emotional foreplay takes place on the screen, or at least bits of it do. If you feel scared when the Luftwaffe show up it because you’ve seen them training, you’ve seen the citizens of London digging holes, you seen the RAF trying to find their feet, and then, when the planes show up the music puts you over the edge. Same goes for the March of the Shrubbery from Lord of the Rings. The wrenching process of watching the Council of Ferns decide whether to go to war or not, and knowing that time is running out, brings you to the point where the choral crescendo is appropriate. Robbed of the back story, and the visuals, it’s just you listening to a warbling Celtic woman in your living room. This is no disrespect to the writers of these pieces. I’m sure they have more than enough ability to write a piece that reduces me to tears and that manipulates my emotions all over the place, but that isn’t what they are doing. They are writing a piece that complements a scene that manipulates ones emotions. The upshot of this is that I almost never buy soundtracks because, robbed of the film, they are intolerably uninteresting.
This is the problem with soundtracks. It takes a very specific set of circumstances for them to work as both stand alone pieces and complements to the movie. Bull Durham springs to mind, as does the Big Chill and (thank you Toad for getting this in early) Dead Man Walking. In all of these cases music you listen to is used, and played, just as though the characters themselves were listening to it. Therefore, given your characters are people of some taste it stands to reason the songs they listen to would be good; hence you just have a mix tape compiled by a fictional character. Excellent.
All this might lead you to believe that I think soundtracks shouldn’t be released, or that they are largely rubbish. Of course that is not what I’m saying. It’s music, and good music by and large, but should be appreciated for what it is, and understood as such. Both from the listener who buys a CD, and can’t figure out why it’s not that powerful in his living room, and by music exec’s who can’t figure out why the excellent song they chose doesn’t quite fit in the film they are making.
Smokey Robinson & the Miracles – Tracks of my Tears FromThe Big Chill
Tom Waits – Walk Away Dead Man Walking
Bruce Springsteen – Dead Man Walkin’
Ben didn’t mention High Fidelity but, mediocre as the film was (and the book is fucking awful) I thought they used the soundtrack pretty well, so here’s a couple of songs from that:
The Velvet Underground – Oh Sweet Nuthin’
Bob Dylan – Most of the Time
Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!
This is a not entirely accurately-titled podcast, in that the whoring only takes place over a couple of songs at the tail end and does not at all influence any of the rest of the playlist.
