I didn't see Chinatown until film school at the university and I distinctly remember some other students who were screening the film with me start laughing during the scene when Jack was slapping Faye Dunaway around like a Ragedy Anne Doll. Soon, however, the laughing turned to gasps of disbeliefe when the incest was revealed. I thought It was kind of ashamed really because then and only then did Mr. Polanski have my classmates complete and undivided attention.
You notice you don't see too much of that in films today. I mean big brawly men slapping women around. There was a lot of that back in the films of the 30's 40's 50's up until about the 70's I guess. Too much political correctness these days. Not that I enjoy watching brawly men slapping women around on screen nor do I condone that type of behavior I'm just making an observation.
Anyway...
@dagmarpiano said:
Older film music has more craft and musicality than a lot of the modern (Zimmer!) stuff. But the modern stuff can sound more cool, and can be more supportive to the action by being more minimal and repetitive.
Which is better? Here's what I think. The older stuff is better to listen to and has more artistic merit. The modern stuff can work better on action films, but worse on films with any complexity, emotion and imagination. And even then, this Zimmer-style minimalism is getting a bit tired anyway. Chris Bacon's Source Code had a real old school action score and I thought it sounded really fresh.
What do you think?
We had a thread a year or so ago where we discussed crap movies that had good scores and the same composers came up all of the time. It seemed as though Williams, Barry, Goldsmith, to name a few, take pride in their work and they respect the craft no matter what kind of film they were scoring.
Most of those films we named on that thread were from about 20 or so years ago. Today, crap movies have crap scores and some good movies have crap scores too. I think it all boils down to training. 20 years ago most of the big name composers were classically trained, today, they are trained at the nearest dance club. (Boom! Chick! Boom Chick! Boom! Chick! Boom! Chick!) and from Youtube videos explaining how to side chain compress a bass beat. For example, Today, we have Sound Designers who masquerade as composers and are hired to score films. These guys load up samples, fiddle around with their DAW's and come up with all sorts of uninteresting masterpieces. But if that's what the producer/director wants who am I to criticize?
I'm a younger guy and I can appreciate composers who think outside of the orchestral box every once in a while but even with composers like Vangelis and Goirgio Moroder, there was always an emphasis on the basics. Perhaps we've just reached the end of creative film composing and it's come to somebody micing their cat drinking water, then processing that sound through a DAW, sync it to a scene and there you go. Do-it-yourself film scoring.