Music in Film Essay

Student No. 33187176 Production Credits The War Of The Worlds (1953) Length: 85 minutes Date of release: 26 August 1953 (USA) Writing Credits: H.G. Wells (novel) Director: Byron Haskin Screenplay: Barré Lyndon Producers: Frank Freeman Jr. (associate producer), George Pal (producer), Cecil B. DeMille (executive producer) Principal Actors: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Cedric Hardwicke (commentary) Composer: Leith Stevens Sound Director: Loren L. Ryder Sound Editor: William Andrews Sound Recording: Gene Garvin, Harry Lindgren War Of The Worlds (2005) Length: 112 minutes Date of Release: 29 June 2005 (USA) Writing Credits: H.G. Wells (novel) Director: Steven Speilberg Screenplay: Josh Friedman, David Koepp Producers: Damian Collier (executive producer), Paula Wagner (executive producer), kathleen Kennedy (producer). Colin Wilson (producer) Principal Actors: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins Composer/conductor: John Williams orchestrator: Edward Karam, Conrad Pope Music Editor: Peter Myles Foley Artist: Michael J. Broomberg Sound Designer: Richard King, Michael W. Mitchell, Randy Thom !3 Student No. 33187176 Synopsis 1. The War Of The Worlds (1953) The film is adapted by director Byron Haskin and producer George Pal from the classic H.G. Wells novel. It starts with a meteor falling near a small town in California. Despite the excitement and joy of the residents regarding this meteor, they soon find out that this meteor is an unfriendly visitor from Mars. Shortly the Marsians starts globally destroying everything in their way. While everyone panics, the military force all around the world tries to stop the machines while Dr. Clayton Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren struggle to hide out from all this mayhem. The American government fails to destroy these machines from Mars with basic military action. So they decide to drop an A-bomb on the machines but this doesn't leave a scratch on them. When it seems there is no hope for mankind, one after the other, the Marsians start dying. It turns out that they were not immune to the bacterias of this earth unlike us mankind. 2. War Of The Worlds (2005) The main character Ray Ferrior (Tom Cruise) is a divorced dockworker. After another day at work, his ex-wife and her new husband visit Ray to drop of their teenage son Robbie and daughter Rachel to visit their grandparents in Boston for the weekend. Ray and his kids mind their own business in Ray's house when a series of unusual, strong lightning hits near the neighbourhood. It then follows by a gigantic tripod emerging from the ground vaporising everyone. Ray and his kids are not even aware of what this machine is until further in the story. Just like the 1953 version, the tripods try to invade the earth. This extraordinary battle for the future of mankind begins while the focus of the film only captures this family simply trying to survive from such terror and confusion and reach to Boston to reunite with their other family in this chaos. The movie ends similarly to the original version where the aliens die due to bacterias and Ray successfully reunites with the other family in Boston. However this film does not mention any clear detail of the aliens apart from small hints throughout the story, for example, the characters including the viewer does not know whether the aliens are from Mars. This film is made purely to reflect on the horror and the agony upon one American family. !4 Student No. 33187176 Analysis When it comes to alien films, director Steven Speilberg is best known for works such as “E.T” and “Close Encounters From The Third kind”, where the visitor from outside this world is a friendly being, one of his latest sci-fi film “War Of The Worlds” is rather the opposite. He stated “War Of The Worlds is really about our deepest fears and the concept of what would happen if this planet is invaded, and it’s not one of my sweet alien odysseys, it’s the first time I’ve jumped directly into centre of science fiction horror film”1 Composer John Wiliiams who has worked with Speilberg for many years therefore had to approach the music very differently for this film. He stated “It is true that Steven’s other space epics are all very warm and welcoming in terms of the visitors, really it’s a change for him to go on this War Of The Worlds where this machines coming and bring these aliens so destructive, an interesting deviation for Steven. So it creates a different musical opportunity and a different role for the orchestra and for the music”.2 John Williams truly have used opposing musical styles from the other “friendly” alien films he composed for. The instrumentations for this film is already significantly different, it is very hard to ignore the use of strong, dark brass sections throughout the film along with occasional synthsised chime effects and various electronic lead sounds unlike the original 1953 version where the sequences are filled with “typical” hollywood orchestrated scores. The sequence of the alien encounter have a classic monster motif. Since the 2005 remake is made almost 50 years after the original, and despite some expectations that John Williams would compose the music so that the implication towards the alien encounter sequences would have a rather different style from the original, it turns out that this is not the case as he stated “There are a few sections in there, a few cuts to the machines where the orchestra does a grand gesture of a classic monster film. But we just sort of duffer our caps give a little referencial not to the genre but I think for example the intersection scene where the alien machine first emerges, I think it’s one of the most terrifying scenes I’ve ever seen”.3 Of course in the intersection scene where he mentions does not have the identical qualities as the “monster music” from the past. The sound is more modernised with the use of 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etgmye-59GY - War of the Worlds : Making Of Featurette 0:07 - 0:23 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBoSo5dW88 - John Williams scores WAR OF THE WORLDS, 1:33 - 2:00 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBoSo5dW88 - John Williams scores WAR OF THE WORLDS, 1:33 - 2:00 !5 Student No. 33187176 electronic sounds and effects not just in the underscore but the sound the machine makes themselves, also the soundtrack is less melodic but more rhythmic. But is John Williams saying that even after a decade, having the style of a traditional monster movie music as its principle basis creates a bigger impact and effect for the viewing experience? Personally this is somewhat agreeable regarding the audience from an older generation which may bring back the horrendous experience of watching classic monster movies in their childhood. The emergence or the encounter of the machines controlled by the aliens, these sequences are not the only similarities both films have musically in common, but also with pastiches in sequences such as the “electronic eye” scene and dialogues in which the characters say “as soon as the tripods starts moving, no broadcast comes out of that area”. To look at the similarities and the differences of the use of music within the two films closer, I will go through some of the scenes in particular. First, as mentioned above, the “intersection scene” where the characters first encounter the machines. In the original, every time the camera view skips to the “meteor” on the crash sight, there is an uncomfortable, mysterious motif created by a low, fat brass section. This sort of feel and instrumentation happens throughout the film even when the machines are not visible on the screen, as soon as that music cue comes in, the expectation can be made that the machines are nearby. It seems quite clear that this brass section belongs to the aliens and their machine. The remake has a similar brass sound but it’s not as grand as the original, however, it is much more rhythm based in a dark, moderate waltz pace. This heightens the feel of the sturdy weight and the threatening nature of the machine. Surprisingly unlike the original, the remake uses a fare bit of mickey mousing. For example the “intersection scene”, when the machines shoots beams and houses come down or the people gets vaporised, quite commonly is accompanied by french horns supporting the lethalness of the beams and emphasising on the “near-miss” for the character. Also the accompany of soprano choirs while people are vaporised, but this choir seems to happen throughout the film including the “ferry scene”. According to John Williams this is to “humanise” the sounds as he stated “And especially where we first have the bodies being evaporated I guess you could say by the strike of the aliens. We have orchestral gestures and sound effects but some of them also have a women’s chorus, they are women making a kind of a ugly sound that goes up almost like a scream”. He then carries on and says “The addition of something human, even though we don’t exactly know that it’s a women’s chorus, gives us some feeling here that just a zap doesn’t quite have, you recognise some pain in it even though that the victims are not privileged enough to even to say “ouch” they are gone before they can say that. And it happens again at the end of the ferry sequence when people are plucked out of the water.

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