I heard Brian Cox making his views known on Radio 4 after the news that the BBC have re-edited the sound on his latest series about the cosmos. I agree that we can sometimes be too responsive to the vocal minority that complain but he also pointed out that, working with Danny Boyle on Sunshine, he learnt that a score has failed if the audience notice it. If the music (or indeed any sound or other component of a film) distracts the viewer from the story it has crossed a line of submersion. Surely the score on Wonders has done exactly this (even if it is a minority)?
Scored music is becoming rarer on television productions. A composer I know who has created the music on a great deal of tv shows in the uk says he does not work on commission at all. He simply can’t be bothered with the procedure of scoring a “locked” edit only to learn the producers want major changes done and he must start all over again. This is where the expense of commission work comes in and why so many productions with squeezed budgets opt for “off the shelf” music from a library. My friend contributes to such a library and makes a decent living without the headaches mentioned above.
I have been watching movies from the Hollywood studios of the 40s and 50s a lot lately. It seems to me that there was no aversion to music carpeting the action in those days. Many great and well-loved pieces of music originate in the soundtracks of the film world. Memorials of John Barry, who died this year, cannot fail to mention the contribution he made to the composition of our lives. It occurs to me that every generation has its own tastes and peculiarities. Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that the audience notice the music. Nobody minds a noticeable melody in the work of Tarantino. His soundtracks add texture because they are familiar or even incongruous (think “Stuck In The Middle”) There are (or should be) no rules in storytelling. Anything you can do to engage the viewer’s attention goes.
