Masterclass of Eunice Martins -- Music in films and in < Man With A Movie Camera>

Generally in the lecture, Eunice demonstrated the history of music in films and cooperation between filmmakers and composers. Began with the introduction, she mentioned a point that composers had to understand the film, history of director and the genre before working on playing music for the film. For me, it is a really basic and important common sense. I believe that starting a movie requires being familiar with the direction and the partners first. As Eunice said, directors and composers worked together to inspire each other, and they used the shot and music to show their feelings of the story. So looking back to our work, for instance, a producer must follow the director’s and script writer’s work and get the idea of this project so that he can lead the team with the director to work toward what they expect. If the producer didn’t understand his team and the script, it would be hard to create the atmosphere of the team. My position, a designer, it is also necessary to keep good partnerships with the director and the art department, so we can throw the ideas and start with unrestrained and any possible concept. The goal is to fulfill the creation.

Afterward she talked about the history. By introducing some well-known musicians with their masterpieces and work experiences, it had a great impact on me. Now I realized that music occupied most of my interests. I used to play piano and violin and know the music theory, and I enjoyed the music in various art forms. While I was learning and being a choreographer, “feeling” and “analyzing” the music was spontaneous. When I am watching movies now, I always pay attention to the incidental music and it is spontaneous for me. I didn’t think about the process of creating music deeply until I worked in film and theater fields. Although our major and main duty is not about the music, there’s no denying that music enriches the atmosphere. Even when I am reading a story or a script, I can always have some melody in my brain, and it helps me to have a complete image of the plot. Not like words and paintings, musical language is so abstractive that the expression for the same plot can be far different, which Eunice played examples in a later lecture.

In addition, the feelings I have had are just related to some of Eunice’s points. She indicated that she got a lot of inspiration when working with other art forms. It gave me the idea that she applied her technique and perception on the other art work and made it become another art work. What have we done? Yes we are doing the same work but we have to keep improving the technique and sensibility of anything which enables us to approach the masterpieces.

Further, Eunice interpreted the main functions and technique of music in films and the developments in Hollywood. The points were clarified, for what I comprehended that music has been existed for functional purpose. It draws audiences’ emotion, introduces the setting and culture and separates the scenes. Music is not only a technical existence but also an artistic accompaniment. From the footage she showed, there were four different style of background music. There’s no one that is only matched the plot, but it depends on how musicians and audiences feel about the plot. Filmmakers had done what they wanted audience to see, and musicians took charge of creating the atmosphere and even changed the type of the film based on the melody and rhythm. People all had similar feelings of these types, however, no matter if they preferred to be affected in terms of psychology or enjoy more natural effects, the music and sound effect did stimulate our sense.

In terms of < A man with a camera>, Eunice stated more about the composing work. She emphasized that it was better to watch the film in a big screen, because watching it in a small screen might make us think less. In other words, it feels like that how much we think depends on how much we see. I also believe that we will get more and new ideas as we watch the film many times. Unless we can say that we completely comprehend the context, we can’t stop digging stuff from movies. After all, movie is a multiple technical creation and creation is infinite. That is what I have learned.