Film Score Composers:
Hans Zimmer is one of the most successful film scorers in the world. He is most famous for his work on The Lion King, Dune, and Interstellar. To improve my understanding of how a successful composer works, I watched Interstellar. This film has an incredible plot but is brought to life through the use of his music. The main theme recurs throughout and is used as almost a leitmotif representing the beauty and danger of interstellar space. The instrumental is a key part of what makes this theme so special. The deep, resonant sound of the pipe organ creates an ethereal, almost spiritual feeling, symbolising the vastness and mystery of space. The choir also adds a sense of grandeur and awe, which highlights the beauty and sublime nature of the universe. The use of long sustained notes and quieter parts of the song also makes it more suspenseful. Having a musical break before the fortissimo flowing climax makes the climax seem all the more incredible.
The silence is also used throughout the film to represent the silence of space, which is a very clever tool to add realism and alert the viewer to the dangers of open space.
When doing my project, I will apply what I have understood about Hans Zimmer’s techniques to create a realistic and emotionally impactful song by using appropriate instruments that match the melody of the song, as well as using dynamics and musical breaks to add impact. Since my project is about someone who can only experience life through music, I could also do a part where the music stops and everything goes quiet and empty to represent the feelings in his head.
When it comes to shorter melodic musical lines, John Williams is the perfect person to take inspiration from. He has worked on films such as Jaws, Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter. His leitmotifs have become instantly recognisable to both him and the films, many of witch are still celebrated today. Another thing that makes him all the more impressive is his incredible emotional range, he managed to take people places through music, weather that be fear and suspence (shown in jaws) or heartwarming magical beuty of giant land (shown in BFG). John Williams talks about, in his 90th birthday interview with classisic FM , about the difficulty in matching music with picture. he talks abou the fustration it can cause many people, i will take this in mind when composing my
Foley artists:
Marko Costanzo is a foley artist who has done foley sounds for films like silence of the lambs, life of pie and wolf of wall st. He started in the industry by walking in the foley room during the post production of sofies choice. The foley artists needed a Lightbulb pull chain witch he brought in the next day witch introcued him to people in the feild. then later in life he became a very successful foley artist. In multiple interviews (both video and jurnalism) he shares the process of how he creates sounds with such feel. One part that he said that will impact me most for this part of my FMP is to give each character its own personality when it comes to recording thing like footsteps or any kind of movement, to do this succesfully i will anyalyse the scrips and conslult with the dyrector to capture the essence of the character.