I've always loved film scores. Orchestral works that utilize themes and a large collection of musicians that go along with the action on screen but also work independently has been the kind of music I've listened to almost exclusively my whole life. I wish it got a better documentary than this.
It's not really bad, but it's wildly unfocused. The documentary has four sections of interest: the history, the process, the techniques, and the personalities. The movie is more than the sum of its parts because I think each section is bad unto itself (shallow and uninformative) but overall the documentary has a salubrious effect on the mind. It's slickly made, is what I'm trying to say.
So, the first thing it does is try to cover some history. From the earliest theater organs to the modern use of rock stars to write scores (instead of just sourcing their music), the movie skips through Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, and a few others with words of appreciation from modern day composers and little else. There's some talk here and their about their importance, but it doesn't dig deep enough. Honestly, unless you're going to spend two hours exploring the history of the art form, leave this out completely.
The second part is the process. This was probably the most interesting, and the one that got interrupted the most and was told the most out of order. There's no real structure to the film (which is a bit ironic since some of the composers interviewed talk about structure being important), so we start with one experiment, go through sound booths and conduction, before they ever talk about basic composition. And even then, it's thin gruel. There is a semblance of structure in the fact that we end on sound mixing the score, but, again, it's thin.
The third part is technique. Here we see composers talk about their collections of weird instruments and see some demonstrations of some of them. There's no talk about the thinking behind adding them to compositions other than they're different sounds. Again, thin.
The last is the personalities, where the movie spends most of its time. There's a solid 35 minute or so block that's just composers talking about Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Danny Elfman, and Hans Zimmer. They don't dig into influences, techniques, or anything interesting. The movie just lets the composers talk about how awesome these guys are while we hear their music and watch clips from their most famous movies. It's pure hero worship.
Overall, I like it better than the above implies. The overall package is inviting and enjoyable in a superficial way, but if the object of the documentary was to inform in any way, I think it failed. I would have loved to see 90 minutes that actually explored one composer's journey from blank sheet music to final screening with snippets of the composer's thoughts on the history of film music, his influences, and techniques. That would have a been a more interesting journey to take. Instead, we got this mishmash that was enjoyable enough, but shallow.
It's not really bad, but it's wildly unfocused. The documentary has four sections of interest: the history, the process, the techniques, and the personalities. The movie is more than the sum of its parts because I think each section is bad unto itself (shallow and uninformative) but overall the documentary has a salubrious effect on the mind. It's slickly made, is what I'm trying to say.
So, the first thing it does is try to cover some history. From the earliest theater organs to the modern use of rock stars to write scores (instead of just sourcing their music), the movie skips through Max Steiner, Bernard Herrmann, and a few others with words of appreciation from modern day composers and little else. There's some talk here and their about their importance, but it doesn't dig deep enough. Honestly, unless you're going to spend two hours exploring the history of the art form, leave this out completely.
The second part is the process. This was probably the most interesting, and the one that got interrupted the most and was told the most out of order. There's no real structure to the film (which is a bit ironic since some of the composers interviewed talk about structure being important), so we start with one experiment, go through sound booths and conduction, before they ever talk about basic composition. And even then, it's thin gruel. There is a semblance of structure in the fact that we end on sound mixing the score, but, again, it's thin.
The third part is technique. Here we see composers talk about their collections of weird instruments and see some demonstrations of some of them. There's no talk about the thinking behind adding them to compositions other than they're different sounds. Again, thin.
The last is the personalities, where the movie spends most of its time. There's a solid 35 minute or so block that's just composers talking about Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Danny Elfman, and Hans Zimmer. They don't dig into influences, techniques, or anything interesting. The movie just lets the composers talk about how awesome these guys are while we hear their music and watch clips from their most famous movies. It's pure hero worship.
Overall, I like it better than the above implies. The overall package is inviting and enjoyable in a superficial way, but if the object of the documentary was to inform in any way, I think it failed. I would have loved to see 90 minutes that actually explored one composer's journey from blank sheet music to final screening with snippets of the composer's thoughts on the history of film music, his influences, and techniques. That would have a been a more interesting journey to take. Instead, we got this mishmash that was enjoyable enough, but shallow.