2021
The found footage I used was all significant in the scenes I chose. Each scene from each film represented a very universal emotion/feeling that is easily recognizable even without context. Every score I used (and made) for each scene was put with an unrelated and almost aberrant sound in contrast to the visual. The emotions visually depicted include pleasure, jealousy, death, trauma, love, anger, and hopelessness. (Films featured: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Shutter Island, The Sound of Metal, High Life, The Prestige, and Good Time)
LMOS26
In response to Stuart Hall’s reading about language and meaning, I wanted to explore my relationship with the representation of sound, and the meaning of film composition. To represent something is to describe or depict it, and the essence of film scoring is to be able to depict an emotion tethered to a scene, to better guide the audience through the impression. That brought me to the following question, “What about ‘meaning’ that is created through sound?” An example I listed was the score Main Title: Nemo Egg by Thomas Newman, which plays in the beginning of the movie, and sets the premise for the entire film; foreshadowing the relationship between the two main characters due to this musical cue at the beginning that is emphasized when Marlin hold’s Nemo’s egg and assures him that nothing bad will ever happen to him. Then I remembered that Language, is sound. We’ve created literal meanings and representations and given them to sounds and created language. Then I thought, what kind of meaning does the audience try to interpret when the score has an almost opposite sounding score, from the tone of the visuals? Like an end-of-the-movie romantic scene with a Viking chant playing over it. Or a visual scene like a field of grass at daybreak that is very calming, with a daunting and intense score? I’m interested in exploring the relationship between the meaning that people create with intentionally unorthodox elements that are essential to a film.