# Awkward scores



## cygnusdei (Jun 30, 2021)

Anyone have an example of awkward or unintentionally funny score? For me the one that comes to mind is The Untouchables (Morricone), I found myself amused by this scene below. Okay, you got string tremolos to build up tension, but after the first gunshot is fired instead of switching to something more exciting, it's .... more string tremolos, accompanying baby stroller all the way down the stairs! (It was nominated for Oscar, too )


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## pmcrockett (Jun 30, 2021)

cygnusdei said:


> Anyone have an example of awkward or unintentionally funny score? For me the one that comes to mind is The Untouchables (Morricone), I found myself amused by this scene below. Okay, you got string tremolos to build up tension, but after the first gunshot is fired instead of switching to something more exciting, it's .... more string tremolos, accompanying baby stroller all the way down the stairs! (It was nominated for Oscar, too )



Granted, I've not seen the movie so I don't know the full context, but it seems to me that the idea with this scene was that the dramatic tension comes not from the gunfight but from the question of what will happen to the baby, emphasized by the fact the the tension releases when the baby safely reaches the bottom of the stairs. We also get the music box bit then, which is maybe a little on-the-nose, but it does also support that reading of the scene.

I watched an intimate little indie time travel movie once that had a big, pretentious orchestral score that sounded like it belonged in a completely different movie. It felt like a situation where the director didn't really know what they wanted and wound up with the composer showboating instead of matching the picture. The composer probably had a blast writing it, though.


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## JJP (Jun 30, 2021)

cygnusdei said:


> but after the first gunshot is fired instead of switching to something more exciting, it's .... more string tremolos, accompanying baby stroller all the way down the stairs!


The thoughtless choice would have been to score the gunfight. However, the editing of the film doesn't work that way. The film goes into slow motion and focuses on the baby carriage amidst all the violence. The music is part of what makes that focus work.

Plus, this is the climactic moment of the film where everything for which the characters have worked and died hangs in the balance of split-second life and death decisions. As a film composer, you need to follow that element because that's where the story is.

The gun battle is just the fireworks framing the challenge for the characters. If you score to that, then you are merely highlighting the action that the audience can already see. The music doesn't add much more that way. The story is in the choices the characters make and some of the lucky breaks they get in those few seconds. That's what makes the gun battle significant. That's why people remember this scene 30 years later.


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## cygnusdei (Jun 30, 2021)

JJP said:


> The thoughtless choice would have been to score the gunfight. However, the editing of the film doesn't work that way. The film goes into slow motion and focuses on the baby carriage amidst all the violence. The music is part of what makes that focus work.
> 
> Plus, this is the climactic moment of the film where everything for which the characters have worked and died hangs in the balance of split-second life and death decisions. As a film composer, you need to follow that element because that's where the story is.
> 
> The gun battle is just the fireworks framing the challenge for the characters. If you score to that, then you are merely highlighting the action that the audience can already see. The music doesn't add much more that way. The story is in the choices the characters make and some of the lucky breaks they get in those few seconds. That's what makes the gun battle significant. That's why people remember this scene 30 years later.


Oh I realize Morricone had to follow de Palma's lead. But compare it with this similar scene in slow motion, in which the music enhances rather than distracts:


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## JJP (Jun 30, 2021)




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## givemenoughrope (Jun 30, 2021)

cygnusdei said:


> Anyone have an example of awkward or unintentionally funny score? For me the one that comes to mind is The Untouchables (Morricone), I found myself amused by this scene below. Okay, you got string tremolos to build up tension, but after the first gunshot is fired instead of switching to something more exciting, it's .... more string tremolos, accompanying baby stroller all the way down the stairs! (It was nominated for Oscar, too )



Marvel-brained


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## wilifordmusic (Jun 30, 2021)

Ladyhawke.


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## Gene Pool (Jun 30, 2021)

cygnusdei said:


> Anyone have an example of awkward or unintentionally funny score? For me the one that comes to mind is The Untouchables (Morricone), I found myself amused by this scene below. Okay, you got string tremolos to build up tension, but after the first gunshot is fired instead of switching to something more exciting, it's .... more string tremolos, accompanying baby stroller all the way down the stairs! (It was nominated for Oscar, too )


How in your view should this have been scored, to make this classic set piece—one of De Palma's two most talked about, and which is studied in film schools—not laughable?

The implied theme throughout the movie is the intrusion of psychopathic barbarity upon the innocence of family and child. This is established in the second scene of the film immediately after Capone's prologue.

After the child in that second scene is killed by Nitti's bomb, her mother intensifies Ness's motivation in her short meeting with him. It's no longer about him merely doing his job; it's personal.

Then at regular intervals throughout the film, the contrast and conflict between innocence and violence is reinforced—particularly by using Ness's own family—ultimately reaching its apex in this scene where Ness is simultaneously trying to (1) save the lone woman's child, (2) not get killed himself, (2) and kill the mobsters so he can do nos. 1 and 2 plus which arrest the account.

So, the set piece summarizes the theme perfectly.

Aping the action on screen is only one legitimate way to score a scene. Sometimes it's the obvious and best way to go, and sometimes it's the obvious _worse_ way to go.

The gunshots and foley are the literal element, a rhythmic counterpoint under which the tremolos and interspersed low brass clusters provide suspense and danger, respectively.

As a matter of interest, the _baby-in-the-stroller-going-downstairs_ device was famously De Palma's homage to Eisenstein's Odessa Steps sequence:




And for laughs, there is this homage to De Palma's homage:


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## sluggo (Jun 30, 2021)

The entire score to Lady in the Water is very awkward. It is an incredibly beautiful and haunting score to a an absolutely atrocious film.


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## cygnusdei (Jun 30, 2021)

Gene Pool said:


> How in your view should this have been scored, to make this classic set piece—one of De Palma's two most talked about, and which is studied in film schools—not laughable?
> 
> The implied theme throughout the movie is the intrusion of psychopathic barbarity upon the innocence of family and child. This is established in the second scene of the film immediately after Capone's prologue.
> 
> ...



Check out the Nancy Drew clip I posted above in which the music masterfully creates tension and _movement_ to the on-screen high action in slow motion.


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## Toecutter (Jun 30, 2021)

A lot of people thought this was awkward


but how about the audience being awkward themselves? Lesson to be learned: what may be awkward to you, might be awesome to the ppl hiring  Think outside the box whenever you can!


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## cygnusdei (Jun 30, 2021)

sluggo said:


> The entire score to Lady in the Water is very awkward. It is an incredibly beautiful and haunting score to a an absolutely atrocious film.


Tartutic gon' getchu!


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## givemenoughrope (Jun 30, 2021)

cygnusdei said:


> Check out the Nancy Drew clip I posted above in which the music masterfully creates tension and _movement_ to the on-screen high action in slow motion.


The two scenes aren't the same though. The De Palma/Morricone scene has 10x the tension to me bc of what the scene is trying to achieve within the overall arc of the story. Additionally, the music need not describe exactly what is happening on screen in the physical sense. That would be considered somewhat crude and frankly kind of boring. These two are masters of film and music and know what they're doing unlike most today.


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## iaink (Jun 30, 2021)

Some akward De Palma / Morricone moments in this film:



Best version I could see on youtube.


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## chillbot (Jun 30, 2021)

cygnusdei said:


> Check out the Nancy Drew clip I posted above


I suspected you were trolling to begin with but this is just doubling down.

I got zero issues with the Untouchable score, love it. 100% it would not be scored like this today, even in an indie film... maybe that's part of the issue.


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## CT (Jun 30, 2021)

iaink said:


> Some akward De Palma / Morricone moments in this film:
> 
> 
> 
> Best version I could see on youtube.



That's a great score!


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## Gene Pool (Jun 30, 2021)

cygnusdei said:


> Check out the Nancy Drew clip I posted above in which the music masterfully creates tension and _movement_ to the on-screen high action in slow motion.


Yeah, it's just a random scene that has no relationship to the Union Station scene. Different types of movies altogether.

Nancy Drew is never in any real danger and the audience knows it. It's a kid's adventure film, so the score narrates the visuals.

In _The Untouchables_, a girl gets blown up, a guy gets his head caved in with a baseball bat, Sean Connery is turned into Swiss cheese by Frank Nitti, and one of Ness's crew gets his brains blown out.

Can't really treat different types of movie the same way because it doesn't work for the tone and psychology of what different types of scene in different types of movie require.

Film Scoring 101.


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## cygnusdei (Jun 30, 2021)

I have stated my opinion and elaborated on it upon request. If you don't agree that's cool, I have long realized that music is highly subjective. Now excuse me while I addle my brain some more with Thor: The Dark World..


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## mikrokosmiko (Jul 2, 2021)

Everything in that scene is incredible. I really like how he used silences to highlight the first shot and the final dialogue, I think overscoring is a common problem nowadays


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## MA-Simon (Jul 3, 2021)

Toecutter said:


> but how about the audience being awkward themselves? Lesson to be learned: what may be awkward to you, might be awesome to the ppl hiring  Think outside the box whenever you can!


I liked the score. But my opinion on this is that no matter the score. That scene just was painfully, awfully, badly paced and filmed. It just did not work at all for this rather serious toned series. Following the brilliant two first seasons, this scene just was a series killer to me. Nail in the coffin bad.


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