BY MIKEY MIGO
I've rambled about it before and I'm sure I will again, but outside of being a music lover I'm also a filmmaker. It's nothing on a huge level yet, but we're currently in production on my second full length feature film. I'll spare the details about the filming process and all of that unrelated nonsense. What I do want to talk about is my experience scoring and soundtracking my first movie "The Moving Men". To give a very brief run down about it I'll say a black and white dark comedy on no budget. It was about three friends who keep finding themselves involved with offbeat deaths. To avoid getting caught they keep moving town to town where their luck goes from worse to worst.
I got the first draft of the movie cut together. I have something to look at to figure out what I want to do. The first thing you have to realize is that I have no budget. So getting the rights to Talking Head's "Psycho Killer" is out of the question. You have to get sync and licensing rights, which on this level is really expensive and hard to come by.
So instead of picking up mainstream bands to fill up the movie's score, I had to utilize the sources I had. Being in touch with the pulse of what's going on in Chicago, I just turned my attention to the best unsigned acts Chicago had to offer. I had the CDs already, knew the band members, and knew who'd be cool with sharing their art in a new medium.
Before even asking the bands, I took the tracks that I felt would be suitable for the movie and put them into a list. From there I plugged songs in to capture and utilize certain moods to make a temp track. I watch it and see how it feels. Once I had the songs in place, I approached the bands. Outside of two bands, everyone was cool about giving us written permission to use their music in the movie. From there, to be fair and to help out those helping us we included the band names and myspace links on press, promo, and other publications.
The bands who agreed understood what the idea behind it was. The film is art and I want to compliment it with their music. Its two groups of artists coming together for the sake of art and cross promotion. I do know a few people I know who have become fans of the bands solely because they've heard them on the movie. So even if the movie doesn't break even, the bands got something from it.
I actually think this is more enjoyable sometimes than spending a huge budget on rights from big mainstream acts. To me, those unsigned bands from Chicago are/were the top tier acts in the region. I pride myself on my musical opinion and tastes so when I get a chance to share my favorite music with others I love it.
MY FAVORITE SCORE COMPOSERS
A score if often an instrumental composition made by one person who'll fill in the background music in relation to the emotion, vibe, and action that is taking place on the screen. In many ways this is what gives the movie(and television) experience an extra little kick in the ass. Seriously, watch a movie on mute. In most cases it'll suck.
The beautiful part of a score is that it's mainly made exclusively for a movie. The composer sees the movie, reads the story, or knows just what the director wants when piecing together something to truly compliment the film. There is a small group of composers who have a signature style and have turned a underappreciated role in post production into an art form.
Let's take a look at a few score composers that I am a fan of:
Composer: Danny Elfman
Notable Scores: "Edward Scissorhands", "Bachelor Party", "Mission Impossible", and "The Simpsons"
"The Simpsons" theme is enough for Elfman to have a place in my heart, but his collection of work is as impressive as you're going to find. He is most likely the most known and talked about score composer alive right now. He's still called to upon to tackle some of the biggest blockbusters. There is a reason for this.
Composer: Bernard Herrmann
Notable Scores: "Citizen Kane", "Psycho", "Cape Fear", "Taxi Driver"
When you start with Orson Welles you're already ahead of the game. Herrmann's orchestra work was amazing. If you really think about those movies there are huge portions in all of them that have really memorable music.
Composer: Carl Stalling
Notable Scores: Anything and Everything Warner Brothers
For over twenty years Mr. Carl Stalling was responsible for the score to all of the Warner Brother's cartoons. Yes, THEE Warner Brothers. Fuck Mickey and Donald, we're talking about Bugs, Daffy, Taz, Elmer Fudd, and all of the classics. I dare anyone who grew up with a normal television watching habit to tell me they can't hum along to a cartoon song from Warner Brothers.
Composer: Randy Newman
Notable Scores: "The Natural", "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", "Toy Story"
Yeah, this is the guy they make fun of a lot. I wouldn't hang out with the guy, but I'd buy him a beer from across the bar. He's over the top and really goofy, but the dude makes a kick ass score. He's got this spastic over the top mood to where each note feels like four. Whenever you hear something from a Newman score it feels new every time.
(MORE OF)MY FAVORITE SOUNDTRACKSHere are a few more soundtracks from my collection. I wouldn't rate this bunch as "the best of the rest" or anything like that. It's not like I go out and buy a soundtrack without listening to the movie's music first. I did actually purchase these soundtracks with a reason behind it. I was either a huge fan of the soundtrack, the movie, or maybe even both.
Anyway, these are a few soundtracks I'd like to talk about. Some lived up to the test of time and some sorta just fell flat and had to be dusted off for this portion of the column. Lets take a look at some of the randomness…
Soundtrack: "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"
I am an 80's child. This 1989 soundtrack represents one of the movies I watched so much that I can still pretty much go line for line while watching it close to twenty years after it's release. The soundtrack kicks off with "Play With Me" by Extreme. The only thing about this song that I care about is the opening guitar playing and the chorus. In the movie it's used when all the historical figures are running amuck around the mall, which already means it's out of order in relation to the movie. Still it's almost as if they put their best foot forward and let the rest of it drag. It goes into songs like "The Boys and the Girls" by Vital Signs, "Father Time" by Shark Island, "In Time" by Robbie Robb, and to cap it off is "Two Heads Are Better Than One" by Power Tool. The last song basically talks about tag teaming chicks with a friend. Seriously, if you are forced to listen to this song listen to the lyrics.
Effectiveness: Novelty, Nostalgia, and Vomit. This mainly sounds like crap and is annoying. It sounds like wannabe Sammy Hagar-rock. If you don't love the movie then these songs will just annoy you even sooner than they would if you did. South Park mocks this style of music as much as possible. In the 90's we were forced to sit through movies with shitty pop-punk-rock like Lit on a lot of soundtracks. This pretty much sums up the "budgeted soundtracks" of the late 80's. It's a lot of generic rock that has no luster at all except for those who enjoy the movie. There's one exception in "I Can't Break Away" by Big Pig. It's like they couldn't afford Tina Turner or her best cover band and settled for Big Pig. It's a shame. This soundtrack sucks and I can't see that feeling being different when it was released. Stick to the movie on this one. The best parts of these songs are in the movie, the rest is filler. If they could only use their phone booth to go back and re-release this soundtrack with a budget that can afford them better than glorified bar bands.
Soundtrack: "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou"
The soundtrack is made up of three main things: Seu Jorge's Brazilian sung covers of David Bowie tunes, eclectic tracks by Devo and Iggy, and Mark Mothersbaugh's spectacular score. The movie has an "elegant water adventure" theme to it and it is felt with the soundtrack choices and pieces. You can tell this soundtrack was made to compliment the movie and not as a marketing tool. If anything, the soundtrack being so complimentary to the movie IS a marketing tool. When I bring this movie up to friends and fellow movie lovers it's easy to shift the conversation to be about the music more than the movie.
Effectiveness: Good and Entertaining. The tracks on this album really do make you feel like you're on a boat. It's got a great flow to it. From the instrumental tracks from the movie to the GREAT Bowie covers by Seu Jorge it's a pretty damn good soundtrack. Nothing beats a Bowie original, but these covers are in Brazilian and are acoustic. It's a weird, but really enjoyable and settling vibe. I love the Devo, Iggy and The Stooges, and Bowie tracks. The reason for purchase was because of the love of the movie, but I think it's an equal relationship where I can say I love the movie and soundtrack equally. That's a rarity.
Soundtrack: "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"
This soundtrack was bought for the same reasons I bought the CB4 soundtrack on bootleg cassette as a kid. The parody/funny as hell songs from the movie were so entertaining to me that I had no choice but to get my hands on this. The tracks by Jason Segel and "Infant Sorrow" were what sold me, but there's a lot more to this one. The first track is "Love You Madly" by Cake. You can never get enough Cake (the band). There's covers by a band a call "The Coconuts" all in different languages. There's also some random indie stuff with actual melody and not overbearing dramatic whines. You get this for the funny, but you do find yourself sorta just nodding your head a long with things.
Effectiveness: Pretty Good. You can tell they spent a lot of time working on this soundtrack and made it with "what's funniest and best for the movie". In that respect, it works. Still, I wasn't thrilled with the "non-funny" stuff on the soundtrack. The last song "Animal Instinct" seems really forced and doesn't fit in to the flow of things. The covers were sorta annoying outside of the realm of the movie. The whole "lets sing popular American songs in a different language" thing is something lifted from the likes of the "Life Aquatic" soundtrack. It's entertaining, but doesn't get the same awesomeness vibe you get from Aquatic. If you enjoyed the movie then you'll enjoy the songs. Jason Segel's "Dracula's Lament" and the fake band of "Infant Sorrow"(written by Segel/sang by actor Russell Brand) playing "Inside of You" and "We've Got To Do Something" is worth the price alone.
Soundtrack: "High Fidelity"
This John Cusack modern classic has a wide variety of greatness sprinkled all over this soundtrack. It kicks off with "You're Gonna Miss Me" by The Thirteenth Floor Elevators and doesn't stop until the criminally underappreciated by this generation Stevie Wonder belting out "I Believe(When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)." That still leaves 13 solid tracks in the middle. It's my introduction to "The Beta Band" and has two, count them, TWO tracks by "The Velvet Underground". Toss in a little Bob Dylan, some Elvis Costello, and even The Kinks to round off this soundtrack.
Effectiveness: Great. This is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time. It's love, it's music, and it's love FOR music. It's a beautiful and very entertaining movie. For a movie to be set in a used vinyl store it's got a soundtrack to back it up. I instantly fell in love with Stevie's "I Believe" and when I first heard this I was really into "The Velvet Underground" so it all worked out for me to pick it up. I was really taken in by the grittiness of the melodic indie tracks as well as the b-sideish tracks by established icons. There IS a song that's funny in the movie, but on the soundtrack not so much. I'm talking about Jack Black's cover of "Let's Get It On". In the movie it's shocking to see his character perform the song, but these vocals are actually pretty good on it so it's not something to laugh while listening. My only complaint is that this is not a two disc set. It could of used the songs by the shoplifting youths and I'd of loved to of heard the "I love you way" included. Overall, I suggest buying this to anyone. If you hated the movie, you'll still appreciate the soundtrack. If you loved the movie, you'll really love the soundtrack. There's no losing here for anyone.
Soundtrack: "Blow"
This cocaine induced soundtrack kicks off with "Can't You Her Me Knocking" by the Stones and follows up with some Link Wray, Cream, and Faces.. In a magnificent one-two punch it goes from "Black Betty" by Ram Jam into "Blinded By the Light" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. It breaks down into "Keep It Coming' Love" by KC and The Sunshine Band, "That Smell" by Lynard Skynyrd, and "All the Tired Horses" by Bob Dylan. The ending of this brings us to "Can't You See" by The Marshall Tucker Band and "Push and Pull" by Nikka Costa. As you can see from the few bands and tracks I've listed their music budget wasn't much of an issue. What you end up with is a great compilation album representing a gritty side of the 1970's. It works on many levels.
Effectiveness: Great. I wanted this soundtrack because I became addicted to this movie and was huge on "Blinded by the Light" and "Black Betty". Those two songs as well as my love for the movie were reason enough to shell out the cash to buy this one. What happened was that I actually bought an album that could be played at many get togethers and parties. In fact I think my original copy of this soundtrack was stolen at a party when I was partaking in illegal activity. I had to get another one. Who actually buys multiple copies of a soundtrack? It was really THAT good. I am not a fan of southern rock, but this album flows so perfectly together that now that I'm talking about it, it's going to be back into my album rotation purely on the quality of music we're dealing with here.
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