Score Quest Fest - Answers

Score Quest Fest

Track 3 is from Dasavatharam. Composer - Devi Sri Prasad. This is the title score. Though I am not sure how genuine this composition is, when played in the title credits, it gave a majestic entry to the much hyped film.

Track 4 is from Ivan. Composer - Ilaiyaraaja or Karthik Raja. I am not sure who the composer is as the piece has unmistakable Karthik Raja touch. It is Deetchanya's theme. It plays in the scene where Deetchanya dreams in which she asks Parthiban to write a poem. It is a scintillating orchestral piece for a very poetic scene. The shift to a melody on bells when she says 'Kavithai' and the following strings piece to imply the ecstasy of Deetchanya is simply hair-rising stuff.

Dasavatharam Background Score

Devi Sri Prasad talks about his experience while scoring background music for Dasavatharam. And in the interview, he confirms that he did background score for the Trailer too and that clears the doubts I had.

While it is good to know that people understand the significance of background score in movies and have spent nearly 1 month to score background music for the movie, I don't understand why Devi Sri Prasad has not found few minutes in that one month to score a original piece for the first one minute of the trailer.

He also says that he has used a lot of orchestral music and choir in the second half of the movie and I hope that they aren't straight lifts from Hollywood movies.

Dasavathaaram Trailer - Devi Sri Prasad

I still wonder why Kamal chose Devi Sri Prasad to do the background score for Dasavathaaram. Like how Himesh was a producer’s choice for commercial reasons to market the movie in Hindi, I think Devi Sri Prasad (he is a star in his own right there), was chosen for marketing the movie in Telugu. The background score of the trailer sounds good and matches with the grandeur of the visuals.

But I don’t know why Devi Sri Prasad has to rip off the background score piece from Spider Man-3 for the trailer. There have been many instances before where background scores of Hollywood movies were used for Tamil movie trailers to make a bigger impact. But those are done for movies with mostly new actors, directors and producers who were desperate to get people’s attention. Why use the same cheap technique for a movie with an actor of Kamal’s stature? .

Sometimes even without the consent of the composer, the producers add such music to the trailers, but here it is evident that Devi Sri Prasad has intentionally taken the material and tweaked it a bit here and there, to make it sound original. Let us wait and watch if this music piece is going to be used in the movie too. I hope it is not.