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Trends in modern film scoring

What it has to do with music? Unfortunately, these days stories are written based upon marketing researches(btw, Terminator was considered as "madness" from marketing standpoint and as a huge risk back then); fortunately it has nothing to do with music.

Also, there's no "wisdom" in cynicism.
And I don’t know with what knowledge you’re coming at this, but JMS is not at all a cynic. The context is included in the image, as he is replying to a tweet which asks him—creator/writer/showrunner of one of the greatest auteur-driven science fiction shows of all time, and soon again to start a reimagination of it—how he likes to receive pitches.
 
Could it be an interesting part of this thread to hold less «trendy» soundtracks up against those that exhibit the visible trends? Not bad/good, but to allow more nuance? I thought about the «invicible man» ost, for example, which has many of the things here discussed, but, as i see it, weighs things in a way that you might not hear it as particularly concerned with trends…
 
I think a bigger problem in film scoring is predictability. There is not much in the area of people forcing an audience to change their understanding of what is musical accompaniment to film. Sort of a continuation of what Zimmer did 10+ years ago on Inception.

There used to be artists that push and force a listener to re-evaluate their understanding of what is music and what is acceptable structure in music. There isn't enough people trying to do the same thing today with the slew of tools at their disposal. Too afraid to challenge an audience.


 
There used to be artists that push and force a listener to re-evaluate their understanding of what is music and what is acceptable structure in music. There isn't enough people trying to do the same thing today with the slew of tools at their disposal. Too afraid to challenge an audience.
Directors and producers are probably to blame. It's their films after all.
 
Directors and producers are probably to blame. It's their films after all.
The last truly interesing score was Zimmer's Inception, which is now over 10 years old! The "Marvelization" and "Epicization" of film and TV music is on par with the originality of the Boston Pops. Need new blood to inject new life into entertainment.
 
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The last truly interesing score was Zimmer's Inception, which is now over 10 years old! The "Marvelization" and "Epicization" of film and TV music is on par with the originality of the Boston Pops. Need new blood to inject new life into entertainment.
Like in everything, there will always be a status quo and people that try to disrupt it. Some of these become new major trends. Rince and repeat.

Since Inception I've enjoyed other stuff like Blade Runner 2049, Tenet, and also the stuff from Johann Johannssonn and Hildur Guðnadóttir:

- Sicario
- Joker
- Chernobyl
- The Revenant (by Sakamoto and Alva Noto but Hildur played the cello)

In the end it all revolves around the work of great directors like Nolan, Villeneuve, Iñarritu, etc.

Have you listened to Dune? I haven't in detail, but from what little I've heard (to avoid spoiling the film) I think it's going to be the best Zimmer has ever made.
 
The last truly interesing score was Zimmer's Inception, which is now over 10 years old! The "Marvelization" and "Epicization" of film and TV music is on par with the originality of the Boston Pops. Need new blood to inject new life into entertainment.
Im not sure that can be true, if im to offer my opinion. And, please qualify your arguments, id like to hear why «interesting» - im sure you see the redundancy in a long list of myopic statements without context. Why would 10 years be concidered a long time, for example?
 
Like in everything, there will always be a status quo and people that try to disrupt it. Some of these become new major trends. Rince and repeat.

Since Inception I've enjoyed other stuff like Blade Runner 2049, Tenet, and also the stuff from Johann Johannssonn and Hildur Guðnadóttir:

- Sicario
- Joker
- Chernobyl
- The Revenant (by Sakamoto and Alva Noto but Hildur played the cello)

In the end it all revolves around the work of great directors like Nolan, Villeneuve, Iñarritu, etc.

Have you listened to Dune? I haven't in detail, but from what little I've heard (to avoid spoiling the film) I think it's going to be the best Zimmer has ever made.
Yes. i listened to the new Dune OST. I didn't find it particularly original. Sort of revisiting territory that has already been trodden. I agree. A lot does depend on the film maker and what they want to do.
 
One big reason for an overall decline in musical quality in any media...

...most music-editors, 'music-scouts', and many producers are all in their 20's or 30's.

They've grown up for the most part hearing some pretty lame, uncreative music; especially in the realm of pop music, which for better or worse, rules the global music scene.

They may be a few exceptions, but you have to call it like it is.
 
One big reason for an overall decline in musical quality in any media...

...most music-editors, 'music-scouts', and many producers are all in their 20's or 30's.

They've grown up for the most part hearing some pretty lame, uncreative music; especially in the realm of pop music, which for better or worse, rules the global music scene.

They may be a few exceptions, but you have to call it like it is.
I don't know if the claim that most are in their 20s and 30s is accurate. Also, quality I usually don't like to use to quantify music or art. Quality is subjective. My issue is lack of risk taking in an environment that allows for risks to be taken.Most of the music that has out lasted trends and fashions and continues to entice argument is music made by people that challenged an audience. The difference is, those composers lived at a time where experimentation was encouraged. They could have very easily just chosen to make Broadway tunes but Steve Reich's trumps "Hello Dolly" which has been long forgotten.

 
They've grown up for the most part hearing some pretty lame, uncreative music; especially in the realm of pop music, which for better or worse, rules the global music scene.
Hasn't this been always the case?
 
5 pages about "film music ain't what it used to be, no melodies, no themes" eh?

I get a little impatient at people bemoaning "the current state of film music" and nobody talks about Henry Jackman, John Powell, Joel McNeely, Harry & Rupert Gregson Williams, Alexandre Desplat...

Each of those guys is a real "composer's composer" who could be writing concert music and just happen to be doing film. You can instantly tell how much they have studied the masters outside film music & adapted their advanced harmonic techniques.

If you want "big themes" - look no further!



And after familiarizing yourself with the themes - check out the reharmonizations here!!! Chilling!



Literate harmony and literate orchestration never died. The orchestra never died.

What happened is that the borders of this style got pushed back, from "something like 70% of all movies" in the mid 1990s, back to children's animation and the 4 quadrant family adventure film.

In other words How To Train Your Dragon and Jumanji. Because those films are the most conservative and universalist in their aesthetic. This is a good thing... it made room for other approaches...

I don't have any curiosity to hear John Williams's version of TENET, or Inception or Skyfall or Gravity or Joker or SAW or The Social Network or John Wick or even Midsommar.

[okay... I'm a little curious what JW's Midsommar would sound like ;) ]

Overall the developments of the past 20 years are very positive. The conservative style of complex & nuanced tonality is alive and well, and other approaches are alive and well.

"The homogeneity is undeniable"? Film music has never been more creative & varied than today.

I think the open question now is whether the borders of the conservative style are now fixed or whether we hit one end of the pendulum swing and we're heading back a bit. Whether we will for instance see more adult-oriented action movies that start to sound more orchestral and less hybrid, while really-out-there genres like scifi remain unique soundworlds.

I think there is room for directors to rediscover what the conservative style can do for films of more varied genres. But whether or not that happens depends on a circumstance which is out of our hands as composers: how these movies are written and edited. And in between how they are directed too, I guess, but the balance of music vs dialogue & editing is key... It is interesting to compare Skyfall and Inception as an example... The story of Inception is told with 12,000 words of dialogue. Skyfall has the same runtime and uses under 6,500 words...



 
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I agree with @NoamL

There’s a lot of diversity, plenty of themes and orchestra, and plenty of creativity blending sounds and orchestra.

So Much Music

Nobody’s mentioned the huge number of minutes expected today in Western scores. The much-beloved “Out of Africa “ score has what? 40 minutes of music? 50 maybe? Today movies routinely have 70 minutes or more of score.

So Much Noise

And (again in Western films) the non-stop clutter of dialogue, wild lines, and source cues is I think the inevitable result of generating content for an ADHD audience that studios apparently think requires unbroken torrents of dopamine. Movies and shows packed with so much bric-a-brac force acres of innocuous, unintrusive background slush from the composers.

Art and Commerce

So part of our challenge now is meeting that environment with music that’s NOT just a warmed over mimic of some other composer. Apropos those carping at “dumbed down scoring,” complaints about Hans’ devices really ought to target his feeble imitators who copy and paste only the most superficial attributes of his scores. The Batman trilogy actually is almost never repetitious — it’s constantly evolving, morphing, weaving. It’s the ten thousand aping him whose work misses what’s really going on with him (and, in the case of Batman, James Newton Howard).

If you want art, find a director and a studio that aims for art. Failing that, we have to try a little harder to be original, sometimes under the radar.
 
The last truly interesing score was Zimmer's Inception, which is now over 10 years old! The "Marvelization" and "Epicization" of film and TV music is on par with the originality of the Boston Pops. Need new blood to inject new life into entertainment.
Midsommar, King Arthur: legend of the sword, it follows, oblivion, the martian...there are still great soundtracks being released.
 
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