MUS 1015W: Music and Movies

Music, Movies, Meanings, and Markets: Cinemajazzamatazz focuses on (macro)marketing-related aspects of film music in general and on the cinemusical role of jazz in particular. After a review of other work on music in motion pictures, the book explores and illustrates the ways in which on-screen jazz performances contribute to the development of dramatic meanings in various films, many of which address the art-versus-commerce theme as a central concern.

How did the introduction of recorded music affect the production, viewing experience, and global export of movies? In Movies, Songs, and Electric Sound, Charles O'Brien examines American and European musical films created circa 1930, when the world's sound-equipped theaters screened movies featuring recorded songs and filmmakers in the United States and Europe struggled to meet the artistic and technical challenges of sound production and distribution. The presence of singers in films exerted special pressures on film technique, lending a distinct look and sound to the films' musical sequences. Rather than advancing a film's plot, songs in these films were staged, filmed, and cut to facilitate the singer's engagement with her or his public.

In Hymns for the Fallen, Todd Decker listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to provoke reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies--such as Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper--as well as lesser-known films, Decker shows how the domain of sound, an experientially rich and culturally resonant aspect of cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience's engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation. Hymns for the Fallen explores all three elements of film sound--dialogue, sound effects, music--and considers how expressive and formal choices in the soundtrack have turned the serious war film into a patriotic ritual enacted in the commercial space of the cinema.

In Music in Disney's Animated Features James Bohn investigates how music functions in Disney animated films and identifies several vanguard techniques used in them. In addition, he also presents a history of music in Disney animated films, as well as biographical information on several of the Walt Disney Studios' seminal composers. The popularity and critical acclaim of Disney animated features truly is built as much on music as it is on animation. Beginning with Steamboat Willie and continuing through all of the animated features created under Disney's personal supervision, music was the organizing element of Disney's animation. Songs establish character, aid in narrative, and fashion the backbone of the Studios' movies from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through The Jungle Book and beyond. Bohn underscores these points while presenting a detailed history of music in Disney's animated films. The book includes research done at the Walt Disney Archives as well as materials gathered from numerous other facilities. In his research of the Studios' notable composers, Bohn includes perspectives from family members, thus lending a personal dimension to his presentation of the magical Studios' musical history. The volume's numerous musical examples demonstrate techniques used throughout the Studios' animated classics.