Carrie Edmundson

Carrie Edmundson December 18, 2009 Response Paper

In thinking about film music, particularly in regards to Hooper and Williams, I can’t help but think about the different roles that this type of music plays. Depending on the type of film and its subject and even on the composer different types of music would be called for by the director.

If the 5th Harry Potter film had had the same director but had John Williams signed on as the composer of the film score, would the movie have been completely different? Would the director have given more power to Williams as opposed to ‘basically composing’ through his specifications to Hooper? William’s fame and notoriety requires that the directors highlight his scores in ways that wouldn’t be required by lesser known composers such as Hooper.

I don’t think, however, that this necessarily means that Williams is better at creating film music than other composers. There is undoubtedly a place in film music for what we might call ‘background music.’ Not all films will call for the over-the-top motifs and scoring that Williams provides. I can’t think of a single film for which he wrote the score which was not an ‘epic film’ in one way or another. Not all films created are like this and thus not all films need a composer like Williams.

The problem, in the case of the Harry Potter movies, is that we were given an epic soundtrack at the beginning and then had it taken away from us in subsequent films. This creates a bias in my understanding of the Hooper score. On that note, however, I do think that the Harry Potter films are an epic series and thus do deserve the music that perhaps only John Williams can provide. Regardless, the changes in composers makes it particularly difficult to understand the shift in the importance of music in the films.