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Originally posted by Timmer:
Portrait Of A Lady?

I think you just pressed Franz's magic button

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Originally posted by nuts_score:
He's not going to get *excited* is he?

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I like PORTRAIT OF A LADY.

'The Innocents' I would characterise as probably one of the first horror scores to rely on the haunting power of a child singing a minor-key lullaby. So disturbing it was that after seeing the film when I was 15, I hummed the tune around the house, and my dad nearly flipped - he was like: 'How do you know that tune?' Forty years after he'd seen it, that melody set his teeth on edge with unease.

Seriously, I'll let you know when it's up. It's been held up a by an unexpected extra job (a well-paying one) I've taken on which involves me lecturing by night instead of correcting writing and re-writing reviews. Augustish is already obviously Septemberish... :shamed:

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Originally posted by franz_conrad:
They've noticed! Run!

Seriously, I'll let you know when it's up. It's been held up a by an unexpected extra job (a well-paying one) I've taken on which involves me lecturing by night instead of correcting writing and re-writing reviews. Augustish is already obviously Septemberish... :shamed:

But when it is up - there's some good stuff with it. Reviews of easily 50 albums, including most of the releases between DAVINCI CODE and LADY IN THE WATER.

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Incidentally, for those who are interested, I went through another film music workshop at Sydney Film School today. 10 directing students from the school and 10 composition students from the Sydney Conservatorium. We looked at the following films:

- Naqoyqatsi - purely music and image counterpoint - the 'Primacy of Number' is heightened allegro - all our synapses fire up... The other sequence - slow, meditative, argumentative...
- The Good the Bad and the Ugly - 'Il Triello' and 'Finale' - two very interesting playful uses of very expressive music... every gesture is underscored
- A Beautiful Mind - 'The Car Chase' - why was this scored as the slowest action scene? The idea of scoring character perspective through action...
- Star Wars - 'Binary Sunset' and 'Tales of the Jedi' - talk about the way williams manages to do a different thing with each character with his theme... the Force, Leia and Vader are all represented by their themes in different ways. We then looked at 3 expressions of Vader's theme throughout the 'Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi' - talking about how orchestration can vary character. First time I've shown Star Wars in any of these classes... sometimes the obvious case is the best.
- We talked but didn't show other ways at coming at thematic development of character - themes gradually revealed... e.g. Jacob's Ladder and Vertigo - and themes that devolve - Syriana
- Patton - 'Main Title' - packing character into a short piece... the man's life is in this main title.
- Ripley's Game - 'Main Title' and 'Ripley Plays' - the opening sequence of the film - good for source music, and also scoring...
- 2001: A Space Odyssey - Looked at the use of Lygeti and Richard Strauss in the 'Dawn of Man' sequence... made some remarks about pre-existing music and associated issues. I didn't end up showing a scene where I'd synchronised parts of North's score with the film... did that last time, but felt the time was better spent this time with...
- Signs - we went through the title three times... firstly just describing the effects... secondly relating those effects to the composition - how we they achieved, and how did they work in the moment... thirdly, the sublime architecture of that main title and how it sets up a whole score and expresses the ideas of the film. This scene was used to talk about the idea of the score concept...

Last part of the lecture was more music production-driven... issues of temp tracks, digital editing and the ever-changing edit, the right time to spot, composer-director conversations, the power of demos, and other issues.

The bit that always amazes me is how the time flies when talking about this stuff. With a few breaks factored in, basically four hours of lecture went like 'that'... and not one third of the materials I went in with were used. Now utterly exhausted... though the day was worth it, as I feel like both camps got a lot out of the ideas I was talking about.

The music that Mancini and others did for things like Tarantula, This Island Earth are some of those. Of course Mancini wrote most of that for an earlier western at UI.

Some of my top ones include the scores for things like the little known:

1. Beast from Haunted Cave, starring Michael Forest(who played Hercules some and was on TV a lot in 60s and 70s in series as guest stars)-the score in this is very, very good for a dumb, dumb film. Its by Lazlo and Fred Katz. Some of this music was reused in other Allied Artists and low budget films along in that time also. The story line concerns bank robbers going cross country on skis and they run into this monster hiding in a cave who sucks brains out.

Another one is Wasp Woman-with music by Katz and others.