The Paper's reporter Xu Minghui
Watching movies is already a common form of entertainment today, people sit in the dimly lit theater, look at the picture, listen to the soundtrack, and feel the story of the movie. But did you know that the "shadow" and "sound" in the movie are separate contents? The earliest cameras did not have a recording function, how did people watch movies in the silent film era? How has technology changed film music? What does a dazzling-looking secret instrument look like? What is the posture of the independent kingdom of film music? The latest edition of the Xingzhi Reading Club opened the curtain of the "Colorful Light and Shadow Season", and Senior Classical Music Choreographer Bi Yu came to the book club to explore the "behind the light and shadow" with the audience and see what kind of mysteries are hidden in the film music.
Book club scene
"Early films were actually moving images, and the director was the cinematographer, and they took groups of photos, such as cars coming and going on the road, and after the photos were quickly played, the audience could see the dynamic scene of the cars coming and going. The screening is also very simple, that is, rent a larger venue, or even borrow a large living room of whose house, put up a poster to promote, everyone you dime, I pay five cents to maintain the photographer's creative costs, "Bi Yu first introduced the earliest people's viewing status to everyone, "the movie is completely silent, everyone can sit down while smoking, while chatting, while sniffing melon seeds, no one cares." At that time, there was also a more famous silent film "Baby Eating", which was to watch children eat. ”
Guest Bi Yu and host Yan Hua
As the public's demand for film appreciation increased, soundtracks began to appear. So when the movie is screened, a piano is placed in front of the big screen, and the pianist scores live. Later, people's aesthetic requirements became higher and higher, and film music also developed on a higher scale, from a piano to a band. A few bands are played in a movie, and the ticket price of the movie is almost equivalent to an expensive concert.
As the film's plot intensified, the soundtrack shifted from the initial dispensable to the plot. Bi Yu said: "At that time, some musicians made up a thick book, and countless small music fragments corresponded to the plot that might appear in the movie. To what extent? The music of the bad guys entering the door, the music of the good people entering the door, the music of going upstairs, the music of going downstairs, etc., all have different rules to show the distinction, and everyone knows what it means as soon as the music starts, which really liberates the musician. People also specially made the film musical instrument photoplayer, a complex and exquisite live soundtrack equipment, and the earliest automatic piano. ”
The maturity of synchronization technology has inserted the wings of an independent kingdom for film music. With recording technology, how to combine with imaging technology was a difficult problem until the invention of the synchronous projector. With a synchrodier, people can hear the recorded sound while watching the movie, but the loud noise of the machine will interfere with the audience's enjoyment of the movie, so people have to set up soundproof rooms.
"When film reached its extreme, film music had adopted professional symphony orchestras, and it was a large-scale professional symphony orchestra, and the film music we hear now was produced in this way. When you go to the theater to watch a movie in the future, you must not see the end credits and get up and leave, it is not cost-effective, oh, don't miss the works of the top orchestras, "Bi Yu played a number of movie clips for the audience at the event site, "The composer sometimes completely follows the movie picture when creating music." Sometimes, film music is also a hint to the plot, the composer will write the plot in it when composing music, and it is a plot that we can't see on the screen, and when we listen carefully to the music, we can feel more three-dimensional emotions, such as the clip of Rick and Ilsa reunited in "North African Spy". It would be a shame to watch a movie that only focuses on the plot and not the soundtrack, like eating a cake, just eating the cake embryo below, and scraping the cream off. ”
Biy also introduced the audience to the famous film musicians - Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Lalo Severin, Hans Zimmer and so on.
As film music progressed, a series of familiar tracks came out of the background and became a classic independent of the film. Bi Yu also told the audience about those well-known interludes and theme songs in the history of Chinese cinema, such as "I Love You, China", "Camel Bell" and so on. "At that time, the value of film songs was greater than the value of film communication, and you could condense a movie theme into a song so that you can know it immediately, maybe we don't necessarily know which movie they come from, but the familiar melody has become a common memory in each of our hearts." 」 Bi Yu said.
Editor-in-Charge: Liang Jia