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It seems as though my friends, family, and everybody I meet is bored by movie scores. I think their feelings on the matter are summed up pretty well in this Amazon.com 1-Star review of Danny Elfman's Promised Land.
"Just the instrumental background music. NONE of the Nice VOCALS!
Ad is miss leading!
I would have never purchased if I'd known.
NO VOCALS!
Hello? Soundtrack?"
People wonder where the words are! I sincerely worry about the future of our hobby with so many people expressing the same feelings. Especially in the younger generation. Does anybody else feel like they have a treasure chest of film-music gold that when shared with others is tossed aside as "Fools" gold in favor of Miley Cyrus songs?
(There's probably a thread about this topic somewhere, but I couldn't find it.)
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Posted: |
Dec 27, 2013 - 11:30 AM
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By: |
Francis
(Member)
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We are not alone; many people are aware of film music to some extent but it just isn't their main focus; they'll just have favorite songs, cues or themes from movies or know of them. Amongst my friends I hang out with, I only know two people who are into scores and own albums. The majority of them do like instrumental music (electro, techno, drum n' bass, dance, ... ) just not film music or it would have to be scores that are close to those genres; for instance Tron Legacy was popular because it was by Daft Punk and a lot of the cues were decent standalone tracks. Film music is also popular with musicians, be it bands who are influenced by their sound or just the mood of the movie or people who play an instrument (for instance in marching band) will inevitably perform some film score piece and youtube is filled with teens doing interpretations of film themes.
Oh, and people who like and buy top ten hitlist music, there should be an island where they should get shipped off to IMO. I have never in my lifetime found myself even in the slightest bit drawn to current hits and hype. 
As for the future of film music, I certainly believe that it has a greater exposure in a digital age where music is basically free (youtube, spotify, ...) and movies are still doing great and aren't being forgotten; the current onslaught of film music festivals/concerts worldwide should be evidence that it can reach a broad audience not just of fans, but also a younger audience that still has a link with movies and their franchises.
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Posted: |
Dec 27, 2013 - 1:35 PM
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By: |
rickO
(Member)
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The way I see it, good music is good music regardless of the source. I happen to enjoy movie scores but also I like classical, 80s pop rock, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Police. I like Tangerine Dream for their synthetic confections. I don't really care for opera, jazz or country. Unfortunately, the general public can't seem to separate film music from their films; I think it's the way people's brains are wired. Movies are meant to be a visual medium, so we're trained to respond to that. Who ever says "hear any good movies this weekend?"
Having said that, I went to a Star Wars concert last October in Portland, Maine and it was sold out. (The Portland Symphony performed great by the way!) Kids and adults attended. People love the Star Wars music because it is so identifiable with the film and it reminds them of why they love the movie so much. The kids attending the concert, and some grown ups too, went to the concert dressed in their Star Wars costumes and wielding plastic light sabers. So I wonder: did they go for the music or for the film? What attracted most of them to the concert? Was it the great John Williams scores, or was it the storm troopers and Darth Vader characters circling the orchestra while it played? Me, I went for the music!
-Rick O.
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Posted: |
Dec 27, 2013 - 3:51 PM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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There is an astronomical number of planets in the universe. We are only now beginning to be able to "see" planets around other stars because of the vast distances that exist between us and them.
How many there actually are is anyone's guess. What we know about galaxies is that the ones we observe contain 200-400 billion stars each. Our solar system contains 8 planets. If we assume each star has 1 planet, and not more, and we average a galaxy to 300 billion stars we can deduce:The Hubble Deep Field image contains 10,000 galaxies. At 2.5 arcminutes, that's roughly 1/2,000,000 of the visible
universe in any direction. So if we multiply 3,000,000,000 x 10,000 x 2,000,000 we get 6 sextillion or 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the visible universe.
It is likely much more than that. Billions certainly, probably billions OF billions. In the last two years since the launch of the Kepler Space Telescope, our "known planet count" has gone from eight to "thousands", and more are discovered every month. It begins to appear that planets are as common as, well, "dirt". We only know of one universe, THIS one - although there seem to be theoretical reasons why there might be other universes, it seems unlikely that we will ever be able to directly detect them.
I'm sure some of those aliens are score fans.
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In the multiverse, it seems there are probably a few other versions of me out there and some of them probably enjoy film music like I do. One of them might even like Philip Glass.
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Posted: |
Dec 27, 2013 - 6:55 PM
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By: |
pp312
(Member)
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Being an old fogey, I can remember back to when much of the audience appreciated symphonic scores and actually looked forward to the start of the Overture or Main Title. I remember when the El Cid Overture started up someone helpfully explained, "This is the music in the movie. They play some of it beforehand," and there were several appreciative grunts. (I guess they were thinking, 'Hmm, classy. Just like at a concert'). But of course people back then were more aware of 'art music'. It was more part of their lives, even if they didn't actively seek it out. Most people today are not even aware of the existence of non-popular styles. Recently I told a 15-year-old that I liked classical music. He thought I meant The Beatles, The stones etc--pop 'classics'. Ask any teenager today about classical music and he won't have a clue what you're talking about (unless maybe you said, 'You know, like Star Wars music. Trumpets and stuff).
The result of course is that producers who want to sell a soundtrack must get at least a beat and preferably vocals into it, which leads to some very bizzare and inappropriate cues. Recently I saw a movie where a chase was taking place on a fire escape. Suddenly a song started up. It had nothing to do with anything in the movie, and militated against any inherent excitement in the scene, but there it was, and clearly no one had dared say, "You know, that doesn't really work". Back in the 70s we had weird interludes in movies where the action would stop for some kind of superfluous montage (or maybe a 'wandering' scene, usually along a beach) while somebody sang a folk song of some kind. This practice is making a comeback, only the music now is much more in-your-face. People will go for long walks through the park, or drives through the country, or have protracted sex scenes, just so a song can be inserted. Or worse maybe, a song will accompany someone walking into a building, which means it has to stop after at most 10 seconds. Now if you're enjoying that song you would want it to go longer; if you're not you don't want it there at all. So what's the point? So it can included on the soundtrack, of course, because 10 seconds of it WAS heard in the movie. This is the degree to which movies have become a package, that producers will risk damaging their precious movie to get extra revenue from a soundtrack with lots of bad-ass songs.
Oh no, I've written another essay. What's worse, I don't have an ending...
Or any answers. 
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Posted: |
Dec 27, 2013 - 9:41 PM
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By: |
Jim Bailey
(Member)
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There is an astronomical number of planets in the universe. We are only now beginning to be able to "see" planets around other stars because of the vast distances that exist between us and them.
How many there actually are is anyone's guess. What we know about galaxies is that the ones we observe contain 200-400 billion stars each. Our solar system contains 8 planets. If we assume each star has 1 planet, and not more, and we average a galaxy to 300 billion stars we can deduce:The Hubble Deep Field image contains 10,000 galaxies. At 2.5 arcminutes, that's roughly 1/2,000,000 of the visible
universe in any direction. So if we multiply 3,000,000,000 x 10,000 x 2,000,000 we get 6 sextillion or 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the visible universe.
It is likely much more than that. Billions certainly, probably billions OF billions. In the last two years since the launch of the Kepler Space Telescope, our "known planet count" has gone from eight to "thousands", and more are discovered every month. It begins to appear that planets are as common as, well, "dirt". We only know of one universe, THIS one - although there seem to be theoretical reasons why there might be other universes, it seems unlikely that we will ever be able to directly detect them.
I'm sure some of those aliens are score fans.
lol say what?
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Yeah, I think we're pretty much alone, understandably so. I'm always careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that everybody who doesn't care for film music (or even knows what it is) is automatically a Miley Cyrus fan. There are many film score fans who dismiss all "pop" music as rubbish, without knowing anything about it. And my mother-in-law hates "jazz", because BIRD was on the telly yesterday and she asked me what the hell all that noise was about. "It's jazz...", I started. "Well, if that's jazz, I hate it", she replied. So there goes absolutely all jazz in one fell swoop.
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