Hugo

[mjmoody]

Over Thanksgiving Break my family went to see Hugo. Wow, what a nice movie - and it really got me thinking about how technology changes things. The Ben Kingsley character is frustrated because it seems that the art and concept of movie-making just kind of left him by. The movie recounts how his character meticulously built his sets, and even went so far as to hand-paint the thousands of individual frames in his movies, so the audience would see color. However, after the war, people weren't interested in his vision anymore, and movie-making more-or-less forgot him.

Well, I am reminded how much music has changed just since I have been writing it. I remember sitting in my living room/office with the velum, the pen and ink, the ruler, and the razor blade kept handy to scrape off the mistakes. The cat would invariably hop up on the table and sit down right on the score, and many hours would go by with just the task of writing the notes. This was back in the eighties! Of course, once the score was done it would still take weeks or months to copy out all the parts, depending on how large the piece was, and how many friends I could get to help out. Times sure have changed! I have to admit, I sometimes look back wistfully to those days - I know I so admired the calligraphy of one of my professors, and I hoped to gain that fluidity, but with the advent of the computer life really changed. It was fun to deal with the ink, the razor, the ruler, etc. - but it's more fun to hand out your parts the same day you're finished with the score!

I kind of feel like the Ben Kingsley character at this moment in regards to music. I'm sometimes even wondering what constitutes music, or what constitutes recording. I don't know anymore whether I'm listening to the efforts of people learning and mastering their instruments, or whether it is a good sample-library. Have the "artists" practiced and mastered their scales and their tone, or is everything quantized, spliced, and engineered to a certain degree?

My son wants to be a "DJ," and he thinks of this as being a musician. He shows me videos of young people getting in front of audiences with their computer - and somehow they are manipulating sounds in a way that other people, like my son, are calling them musicians.

I remember reading in THIS forum for the first time, that movie composers are now expected to present a "mock-up" of an orchestral cue to the director for their approval, and THEN, if it is approved, to make a score that sounds like the mock-up. This is hard for me to fathom, and yet it is evidently what is being done.

Hugo is a good an interesting movie. I wonder if has sparked the imagination of any other musicians or movie-makers in this forum? I know I could sure empathize with the main character when it seemed like the whole movie-making world just "passed him by."

John

P.S. Still willing to learn new tricks in DP, and try new musical ideas. . .

[Frodo]

I've been buried in production, but I think I may actually have an opportunity to see this film at some point over the next few days. (The last time I was even able to go to a movie theater was about 8 months ago.) It's sometimes easier to do such things while on tour than it is while at home.

Thanks for the reminder, mjmoody. I'm looking forward to it.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Hugo? That about some dead guy who made silent films? Ha! I wonder what those were like...

[Frodo]

Hugo? That about some dead guy who made silent films? Ha! I wonder what those were like...

Errrm.... Hugo trailer

Silent film- film for MLC: The Artist

I've gotten some uncommonly enthusiastic buzz about "The Artist" and want to see it before it goes away.