Cinema is an art of sound and light. Sound in a movie, naturally means what we hear in a movie, i.e., the sound of voices and sound of ambience in which the scene is shot, but these are not ‘Art’ of sound. Music is the ‘Art’ of sound. ‘Art’ of sound in a movie is the background score. Have you ever listened to this ‘Art’ of sound while watching movies? Have you ever felt the emotions in a movie by just listening to its background score? Background score, if used for exaggeration, it ends up unrealistic but if used in a subtle way, to just underscore and underline the emotions in the scene, it would be an artistic value add.
Evolution of Background Score
In the silent movie era, when the movies were screened in cinema halls, the movie projector produced a distracting noise while running. The cinema halls started to employ local musicians to play piano or organs, to level down the noise created by the projector. When the movies were screened, the musicians played music in synch with the mood of the scenes. Though the backing music was employed to rectify just a practical problem, it did more than what was intended out of it then and so when gradually talkies came into being, people just couldn’t ignore the impact of the background music. Thus a time-being solution for avoiding noise became one of the most important aspects of movie making.
Background Score – What, When and Why?
Background score doesn’t always mean good music, it is apt music. Satyajit Ray in his article on ‘Background Music in Films’ says, ‘An easy way to ruin a perfectly good film is by applying unsuitable (background) music’. John Williams (one of the best and most popular composers in Hollywood) in an interview said, “Our prime goal is to achieve an apt score for the visual but if the theme music or a cue from the movie finds a life as a stand-alone piece, even out of the movie, then that is a bonus for the composer”. That is why many directors also use already existing musical pieces that best suits the mood of their film, as the background score. This makes it evident that film makers care for apt score than original score. But if originality and the appropriateness come together, there is nothing better than that. Even a bad music or any sound that fits the scene could become a great background score; remember Bernard Hermann’s violins screeching on a single note in the thrilling bathroom scene from ‘Psycho’. That way of playing violin is unacceptable and doesn’t fit in the grammar of any known form of music in the world and yet that piece is still considered as one of the best background scores provided for a movie.
Just imagine that you are watching a scene showing the golden sun rise on a sea shore. How would you feel if you can see the waves but can’t hear the sound of it? A wave without the sound of waves sounds odd. Isn’t it? A wave sound is just an ambient sound. A background score for a movie has to sound exactly like that. It has to create an aural ambience around the visuals. It is the music that doesn’t distract the audience’s attention and that is so close to the mood of the scene/shot, so that our eyes and ears sense the same. With just enough ambient sounds (like the sound of waves in this case) in the scene, the impact of the visual is not lost, here silence is the key. At times, silence is the most effective score any composer can write for a particular scene. But a composer has to know when, where and how to use it, to create the right impact. A pleasant element can be brought into this scene just by adding music of a flute playing raag Boopalam in the background. The key for a good background score is choosing between when to add music and when to remain silent. Say, if this sun rising shot is just added to tell the audience that it is the next day, it is absolute information, no emotions involved, so composer can go for silence here. But if this sun rising is shown as viewed by any important character of the movie to imply that the character feels pleasant by watching the sunrise, then a flute piece is a must, to aurally inform the audience that this character is indeed enjoying this beautiful sight.
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