The Synergy Of Film And Music

In The Synergy of Film and Music: Sight and Sound in Five Hollywood Films, Peter Rothbart examines a handful of motion pictures to convey how a variety of elements work together to create a singular experience. Rothbart considers the aural and visual aspects of five representative films: West Side Story, Psycho, Empire of the Sun, Altered States, and American Beauty. After reviewing the various roles that music can serve in a film, as well as an overview of the film scoring process, the book looks at each film, examining them one musical cue at a time, so that the reader can watch the film while reading about each cue in real time. This unique analysis makes The Synergy of Film and Music a fascinating and instructive volume that both casual viewers and students of cinema will appreciate.

Music in Film: Soundtracks and Synergy discusses a broad range of films - from classical Hollywood through to American independents and European art films - and offers a brief history of the development of music in film from the silent era to the present day. In particular, this book explores how music operates as a narrative device, and also emotionally and culturally. By focusing on the increasing synergy between film and music texts, it includes an extended case study of Magnolia as a film script which developed from a pop song. Emphasis is also placed on the divide between the `high culture' of the orchestral score and the `low culture' of the pop song.

Although writers on film music frequently allude to specific parts of scores, comprehensive examinations of entire scores are rare. In addition, most analyses of scores composed for the screen are discussed outside their cinematic context. To best understand the role music plays in the production of a motion picture, however, it benefits the viewer to consider all of the elements that comprise the film experience. In The Synergy of Film and Music: Sight and Sound in Five Hollywood Films, Peter Rothbart considers the aural and visual aspects of five representative films: West Side Story, Psycho, Empire of the Sun, Altered States, and American Beauty. For each film, the author demonstrates how a variety of elements work together to create a singular experience. After reviewing the various roles that music can serve in a film, as well as providing an overview of the film scoring process, Rothbart looks at each film, examining them one musical cue at a time, so the reader can watch the film while reading about each cue. In these analyses, timecode markings from commercial DVDs are provided in the margins alongside the text, which allow the reader to correlate the on-screen drama to the second. Rothbart explains how music is used in a specific cue and why the decision was made to use that particular musical idea at that moment. Consequently, film music aficionados--as well as students and composers of film music--can gain real-world perspective of how music is used in conjunction with other elements. In this way, the author raises awareness of music's relationship to virtually every other aspect of cinema--dialogue, sound effects, costuming, set design, and cinematography--to deepen the viewer's experience. Written in a deliberately nontechnical way, this book is intended for anyone interested in film to easily follow along. At the same time, the information can benefit professional filmmakers or composers because they can see with great detail how each cue unfolds along with all of the visual elements of the film. This unique analysis makes The Synergy of Film and Music a fascinating and instructive volume that both casual viewers and students of cinema will appreciate [Publisher description].

The growing presence of popular music in film is one of the most exciting areas of contemporary Film Studies. Written by a range of international specialists, this collection includes case studies on Sliding Doors, Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, The Big Chill and Moulin Rouge, considering the work of populist musicians such as the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Sting. Contributors to the volume include Robb Wright, Lesley Vize, Phil Powrie, Anno Mungen, Anaheid Kassabian, Lauren Anderson, Antti-Ville Karja, K. J. Donnelly, Lee Barron, Melissa Carey Michael Hannan and Jaap Kooijman.

This revealing history of the American film musical synthesizes the critical literature on the genre and provides a series of close analytical readings of iconic musical films, focusing on their cultural relationship to other aspects of American popular music. Offers a depth of scholarship that will appeal to students and scholars Leads a crucial analysis of the cultural context of musicals, particularly the influence of popular music on the genre Delves into critical issues behind these films such as race, gender, ideology, and authorship Features close readings of canonical and neglected film musicals from the 1930s to the present including: Top Hat, Singin' in the Rain, Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, West Side Story, and Across the Universe

A stimulating and unusually wide-ranging collection of essays overviewing ways in which music functions in film soundtracks.

For most of the history of film-making, music has played an integral role serving many functions - such as conveying emotion, heightening tension, and influencing interpretation and inferences about events and characters. More recently, with the enormous growth of the gaming industry and the Internet, a new role for music has emerged. However, all of these applications of music depend on complex mental processes which are being identified through research on human participants in multimedia contexts. The Psychology of Music in Multimedia is the first book dedicated to this fascinating topic. The Psychology of Music in Multimedia presents a wide range of scientific research on the psychological processes involved in the integration of sound and image when engaging with film, television, video, interactive games, and computer interfaces. Collectively, the rich chapters in this edited volume represent a comprehensive treatment of the existing research on the multimedia experience, with the aim of disseminating the current knowledge base and inspiring future scholarship. The focus on empirical research and the strong psychological framework make this book an exceptional and distinctive contribution to the field. The international collection of contributors represents eight countries and a broad range of disciplines including psychology, musicology, neuroscience, media studies, film, and communications. Each chapter includes a comprehensive review of the topic and, where appropriate, identifies models that can be empirically tested. Part One presents contrasting theoretical approaches from cognitive psychology, philosophy, semiotics, communication, musicology, and neuroscience. Part Two reviews research on the structural aspects of music and multimedia, while Part Three focuses on research examining the influence of music on perceived meaning in the multimedia experience. Part Four explores empirical findings in a variety of real-world applications of music in multimedia including entertainment and educational media for children, video and computer games, television and online advertising, and auditory displays of information. Finally, the closing chapter in Part Five identifies emerging themes and points to the value of broadening the scope of research to encompass multisensory, multidisciplinary, and cross-cultural perspectives to advance our understanding of the role of music in multimedia. This is a valuable book for those in the fields of music psychology and musicology, as well as film and media studies.