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Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Sound Vs Score

Karthik Raaja speaks about background scores in an interview

"Coming up with a background score is a tough job as it is related to the psychology of the audience. You should know how to treat a scene and create the intended impact. Not everyone can pull it off well. And today, sound effects have started dominating the BGM (background music). There will always be a debate between the composer and the director during the final mix on whether to go for a BGM or a sound effect. But sound effects cannot convey an emotion. You can convey the breaking of a glass through sound effects but then, you can even convey that through the visual alone. On the other hand, a BGM can even tell you why the glass broke. My dad gives a lot of importance to emotions when it comes to BGM; for me, it is emotions as well as what’s being shown on screen that matter when composing BGM."


Sound Effects Vs Music


4 comments:

Bharath V said...

Some times both can go in tandem beautifully like, Atonement. Or something like the beginning of Saving Private Ryan where sound FX conveys the story quite well and background score probably wouldnt have set the mood of the film like FX did. Another sequence I like is from Forrest Gump where he takes off in a bicycle. It starts with FX and music gradually takes over.

Ofcourse composers dont like it when their master piece gets overwhelmed by FX. IMHO anything which conveys the story, keep the audience involved to the point that they dont realize what they are hearing and instead feel the visuals, Director and Crew have achieved what they had set out for.

P.S. Suresh Kumar said...

Bharath - True. True. In this case, what if the director feels that viewer shouldn't know why the glass broke.

There seems to be an ongoing battle between Sound Effects and Music score since the beginning.

In the book 'Listening to Movies' that I am currently reading, almost every Hollywood composer has expressed their grouse about this. The book says that the composers are purposefully avoided in the final mixing stage to avoid arguements on sound fx and music.

Bharath V said...

Interesting read...
http://www.scorecastonline.com/2010/04/david-fluhr-spotting-with-composer-and.html

P.S. Suresh Kumar said...

Bharath - Thank for the link. I enjoyed reading the thoughts of Sound designers..