(Berklee Guide). Essential for anyone interested in the business, process and procedures of writing music for film or television, this book teaches the Berklee approach to the art, covering topics such as: preparing and recording a score, contracts and fees, publishing, royalties, copyrights and much more. Features interviews with 21 top film-scoring professionals, including Michael Kamen, Alf Clausen, Alan Silvestri, Marc Shaiman, Mark Snow, Harry Gregson-Williams and Elmer Bernstein. Now updated with info on today's latest technology, and invaluable insights into finding work in the industry.
Offers a comprehensive guide to scoring for film and television. Covering all styles and genres, the authors cover everything from timing, cuing, and recording through balancing the composer's vision with the needs of the film.
(Berklee Guide). Learn film-scoring techniques from one of the great film/television composers of our time. Lalo Schifrin shares his insights into the intimate relationship between music and drama. The book is illustrated with extended excerpts from his most iconic scores such as Mission: Impossible , Cool Hand Luke , Bullitt and many others and peppered with anecdotes from inside the Hollywood studios. Schifrin reveals the technical details of his own working approach, which has earned him six Oscar nominations, 21 Grammy nominations (with four awards), and credits on hundreds of major productions. Includes the full score of Schifrin's Fanfare for Screenplay and Orchestra , a treasure-trove of unfettered dramatic sound painting, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and a great thesis on the emblematic language of film music.
(Music Pro Guides). Today, musical composition for films is more popular than ever. In professional and academic spheres, media music study and practice are growing; undergraduate and postgraduate programs in media scoring are offered by dozens of major colleges and universities. And increasingly, pop and contemporary classical composers are expanding their reach into cinema and other forms of screen entertainment. Yet a search on Amazon reveals at least 50 titles under the category of film music, and, remarkably, only a meager few actually allow readers to see the music itself, while none of them examine landmark scores like Vertigo , To Kill a Mockingbird , Patton , The Untouchables , or The Matrix in the detail provided by Scoring the Screen: The Secret Language of Film Music . This is the first book since Roy M. Prendergast's 1977 benchmark, Film Music: A Neglected Art , to treat music for motion pictures as a compositional style worthy of serious study. Through extensive and unprecedented analyses of the original concert scores, it is the first to offer both aspiring composers and music educators with a view from the inside of the actual process of scoring-to-picture. The core thesis of Scoring the Screen is that music for motion pictures is indeed a language , developed by the masters of the craft out of a dramatic and commercial necessity to communicate ideas and emotions instantaneously to an audience. Like all languages, it exists primarily to convey meaning . To quote renowned orchestrator Conrad Pope (who has worked with John Williams, Howard Shore, and Alexandre Desplat, among others): "If you have any interest in what music 'means' in film, get this book. Andy Hill is among the handful of penetrating minds and ears engaged in film music today."
As the movie and music industries have changed, film scoring has become an overwhelmingly independent process. Film composers have more responsibilities than ever before, and they must fulfill them with smaller budgets and shorter schedules. As a result, composers are increasingly becoming armies of one. In Guerrilla Film Scoring: Practical Advice from Hollywood Composers,Jeremy Borum provides valuable guidance on how to make a good film score both quickly and inexpensively. This handbook encompasses the entire film scoring process including education, preparation, writing and recording a score, editing, mixing and mastering, finding work, career development, and sample contracts. Offering strategic tools and techniques, this insider’s guide draws on the expertise from a number of prominent composers in movies, television, and video gaming, including Stewart Copeland, Bruce Broughton, and Jack Wall. A straightforward do-it-yourself manual, this book will help composers at all levels create the best-sounding scores quickly and cost effectively—without jeopardizing their art. With access to rare and extremely useful input from the best in the business, Guerrilla Film Scoring will benefit not only students but also professionals looking to update their game.
Many musicians are finding a new market for their music scoring for films and television. This comprehensive resource guide provides all the practical tools and information needed about how to organize and run a film and television music business. Section I contains helpful marketing materials, such as sample letters, brochures, postcards, resumes, and product packaging. Section II provides forms, documents and examples for the management, production, recording and delivery of music for projects. Section III features frequently used sample contracts and agreements, and Section IV lists other composer resources, such as a glossary of terms and abbreviations, info on performing rights organizations, attorneys and agents, listings of different markets to tap, internet resources, and much more. Essential for any musician interested in a career in film and television music.
Film music is as old as cinema itself. Years before synchronized sound became the norm, projected moving images were shown to musical accompaniment, whether performed by a lone piano player or a hundred-piece orchestra. Today film music has become its own industry, indispensable to the marketability of movies around the world. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is a compact, lucid, and thoroughly engaging overview written by one of the leading authorities on the subject. After opening with a fascinating analysis of the music from a key sequence in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Kathryn Kalinak introduces readers not only to important composers and musical styles but also to modern theoretical concepts about how and why film music works. Throughout the book she embraces a global perspective, examining film music in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Europe and the United States. Key collaborations between directors and composers--Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Akira Kurosawa and Fumio Hayasaka, Federico Fellini and Nino Rota, to name only a few--come under scrutiny, as do the oft-neglected practices of the silent film era. She also explores differences between original film scores and compilation soundtracks that cull music from pre-existing sources. As Kalinak points out, film music can do many things, from establishing mood and setting to clarifying plot points and creating emotions that are only dimly realized in the images. This book illuminates the many ways it accomplishes those tasks and will have its readers thinking a bit more deeply and critically the next time they sit in a darkened movie theater and music suddenly swells as the action unfolds onscreen. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
In 1925, MGM produced a screen version of Lew Wallace's best-selling novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which became a classic of silent cinema. Nearly 25 years later, the biblical epic was remade by William Wyler and received an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards, including one for Miklós Rózsa's music. Indeed, the score for Ben-Hur is one of the greatest achievements in Hollywood film music. In this book, Roger Hickman focuses on the confluence of traditions, trends, and innovations that shaped Rózsa's score. Hickman provides an overview of Rózsa's music into the 1960s, looks at the composer's musical influences and the development of his distinctive style, and examines how Rózsa applied these compositional techniques to film scoring. The author then explores the Ben-Hur phenomenon and traces the development of the story and its musical traditions from the original novel into the 21st century. Hickman also examines the conventions of epic films and ties these influences together with a detailed analysis of the score. Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur pays tribute to not only one of the great film scores but also to one of Hollywood's most influential composers.
Christopher Nolan’s caped crusader trilogy—Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises—is considered by many to be one of the finest translations of comic book characters to the big screen. The second film in the series, The Dark Knight, was both a critical and commercial success, featuring an Oscar-winning performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker. The score—by Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer and eight-time Oscar nominee James Newton Howard—also received accolades, including a Grammy. Intricately interwoven with the sound design—and incorporating Mel Wesson’s ground-breaking ambient music design, —Zimmer’s and Howard’s music gives the film an added layer of ominous tones that makes palpable the menace facing Gotham City. In Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s The Dark Knight: A Film Score Guide, Vasco Hexel delves into the composers’ backgrounds to reveal the many facets of meaning in the highs and lows of the score. This book also highlights the working methods of Zimmer and Howard and how they collaborated with each other and the filmmaking team to create such a memorable soundtrack. By drawing on unprecedented access to some of the key creators of the film, the author provides unique insights into the score’s composition. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s The Dark Knight: A Film Score Guide will be of interest to cinema and music scholars, as well as fans of both composers.
Danny Elfman is recognized as one of the most successful, interesting, and innovative figures in recent film music composition. He came to the fore in the late 1980s in connection with his collaboration with Tim Burton on his films including Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), and Sleepy Hollow (1999). In addition to this, Elfman has composed music for more than 40 other films, including Somersby (1993), Dolores Claibourne (1995), Good Will Hunting (1997), Men in Black (1997), and Spiderman (2002). Beetlejuice was the first mainstream commercial success of the collaboration, but Batman was the film which marked Tim Burton's arrival as a major figure in Hollywood film direction, and equally established Danny Elfman as a film score composer, particularly in relation to action and fantasy genres. The score for Batman won a Grammy in 1989 and is an outstanding example of his collaboration with Burton as well as admirably demonstrating his particular talents and distinctive compositional voice. In particular, it displays the characteristic "darkness" of his orchestration in this genre and the means he uses to create a full length film score from what is often a relatively small amount of musical material, in this case the famous Batman theme. This book examines Elfman's scoring technique and provides a detailed analysis and commentary on the Batman score. The film is discussed in the context of its comic-book origins and the fantasy-action genre, setting it and its score against the late 1970s and early 1980s equivalents such as Star Wars and Superman, and revealing how Burton and Elfman between them changed the cinematic idea of what a superhero is. The book also explores Elfman's musical background, his place within the film music industry and the controversy that sprang up following the release of B
