Author: Sephora Pietrzak

“American Beauty”(1999) is  black comedy-drama film written by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes. Movie tells a story A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter’s best friend but there’s so much more hidden behind about human’s existence. Sound was composed by Thomas Newman and definitely became one of the most iconic film scores. As he said: “My approach normally is to start from a point of color, meaning do I hear woodwind sounds or do I hear plucking sounds or bell sounds, and I try to build up. I normally start from a point of color as opposed to a point of melody.”, which I find really beautiful and unique approach to creating a composition. We can find here a lot of leitmotif which unusually doesn’t apply to the characters directly but to abstract personality traits or moral statement intended by filmmaker.

“mental boy” is director Sam Mendes’s and writer Alan Ball’s biting social commentary on our society’s idea of normal and abnormal behavior.¹

“dead already” reflects the emotional state of whomever it is underscoring¹

“lunch with the real estate king” represents the concept of empowerment. It will emerge whenever a character is feeling optimistic and in control of his or her life¹

“power of denial” reflects the subconscious denial of a reality by the character with whom it is temporarily associated. This theme will later evolve as each character’s subconscious denial is confronted on a conscious level toward the end of the film.¹

“arose” is attached to a sense of optimism and self-fulfillment, not to a specific character. In this sense, it evokes those same emotions within us as the viewer, creating a sense of empathy with the character experiencing the same emotion. The leitmotif then, supports the general premise of the film, an introspective glance at our own existence. When we see the onscreen characters taking control of their choices and therefore their lives, we experience the same excitement and sense of empowerment. ¹

“American beauty” provides the vehicle for Mendes’s and Ball’s com- mentary on our contemporary society and its concepts of beauty.¹

“beyond normal” is the idea that permeates the film¹

My favorite pieces from the score are: “Arose”, “Mental Boy”, “Mr. Smarty Man”, “American Beauty” and “Any Other Name”.

¹ Rothbart, P., The Synergy of Music and Film, p.80,81, THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC, Plymouth, UK, 2013

Another scene, during lecture with Jose Macabra, was from movie “Blue”(1993) directed by Derek Jarman. The most fascinating aspect was surely abrupt transitions between calming sounds of jingle bells, nature and harsh recording of daily life and narrator’s voice.

MY FIRST THOUGHT OF THE PLOT: narrator is getting deeper inside his head, his thoughts

REAL TOPIC: narrator is talking about AIDS, how it influenced people in 90s in general, his friends and therefore brought him depression, sadness and loneliness

Reasons for the movie’s title could be various for example color blue by itself is often associated with depression, darkness, as well as color of the pills for AIDS in 90s was indeed blue.

My favorite part of the entire movie was the ending when sound of waves and calm repetition of names was disrupted by “sci-fi”, synthesized sound.

During lecture with Jose Macabra on week 24 we’ve been studying film scores from particular movies. We were checking as well how our perception and overall understanding of scene/plot differs when we hear only sound without visual reference, image without sound and see both together. We have started from scene with scary priest from movie “The Exorcist”(1973). Firstly we were listening to the recording without an image. My first impression was that the scene was very sexual and aggressive, I thought that it was rape video. What fascinated me the most was discovery that in reality, it was part of exorcism. My brain didn’t catch words from Bible, which priest was saying, at all. Instead it focused on very strong language and straight away made an assumption that it was a rape. In contrast watching scene without sound not only, for me, wasn’t scary at all but was even funny. Mainly because I have never seen this movie before and now watching it and comparing the overall arrangement to scary movies nowadays was quite hilarious. I’m sure that if I have seen this film when I was younger my perception would have been different.

How sound can have a powerful effect on your state of mind?

It’s not a secret that sound can produce one of the most intense reactions in the listener. In my piece of writing I would like to focus on psychological affect sound has on us. I would like to divide my essay into parts that will focus on different areas of examined by me topic such as: healing sounds of nature, how singing affects us emotionally and how sound changes our mind-set. Wheater agitated emotions are positive or negative, sound has always an impact on us, loud abrupt noise that will stop us in our track or sound of dogs playing around bringing happiness. „…Sound is a series of vibrations that travel into the ear and get converted into electrical signals that are sent to the brain via the vestibulocochlear nerve…When used in the right way sound has the ability to shift our perception of the world and ourselves.”(Dean Griffiths, psychreg.org)

During our lecture with Gareth on week 23 we have been working on task, that was meant to focus on:

Examining use of sound in range of films e.g. atmosphere, the diegetic, relationships between sound and image

Improvising individual scores to film extracts on a large screen using Korg Volcas, voice and foley objects.

Improvising in small groups to film extracts on a large screen using Korg Volcas, voice and foley objects.

Working on Korg Volcas( I got Korg Volca bass) we were supposed to improvise sound to exact part of chosen, by Gareth, movie. The most memorable for me was opening scene from movie “PERSONA”(1966). I liked how mysterious and worrisome in some way this movie is. I was fascinated with abrupt changes in lightening (from blank, white screen to very chaotic light game), as well as disorganized changes in scenes (from very calm to fast and intense). Creating sound for this movie’s opening scene was definitely new and fascinating experience for me. I found it very interesting as designing film scores, is the destination, in music production, that I would like to pursue.