"Shadow Music" id: soundtrackm
Join us in focusing on film music for a hundred years
Text / Sun Xinkai
French composer Alexandre desplat and American director Wes Anderson are perhaps the most acclaimed director-songwriter golden pairings in mainstream cinema in recent years.
Anderson's early compositions were scored by the lead singer and keyboardist Mark Mothersbaugh of the new wave band Dev. But from "The Great Fox Daddy" to this year's "Isle of Dogs", the composer's seat was delivered to Deppra. In these four works, the perfect sound and picture combination of the two men gradually pushed Anderson's fantastic ideas into new areas.
Stills from Isle ©️ of Dogs fox searchlight pictures
Color: the color on the painting, the timbre in the music
Every Wes Anderson film is an extremely colorful "color" view. Composer Deppra called this unique world of images "The World of Wess." Melancholy, boisterousness, fleeting joy, innocence, for Deppra, these are the colors of the "World of Wess.".
Color also refers to color rendering, which is the blue of "Crossing Darjeeling", the orange red of "The Great Fox Daddy", the light green of "Moonrise Kingdom", and the tender pink of "The Grand Budapest Hotel".
Color also refers to the outer color, which is an endless detail that we can recognize through the five senses. In his elaborate scene design, a pack of cigarettes, a box of juice, a military hat, a painting and even a bag of garbage are full of Anderson's thinking and interest.
In order to create this delicate color, Deppra has a fixed approach to creation that runs through every Anderson film.
Composer Alexandre desplat ©️ web source
First of all, in order to reflect the unique world in each work, an exclusive set of instruments is established for each work to present a consistent sound landscape. Anderson often uses ready-made music to provide inspiration for him, and it is not difficult to find that Deppra is very accurate every time.
In "The Great Fox Daddy," George Burns' "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," a 1950s song for Disney shows, established the American folk tone of the soundtrack, with banjos, guitars, double bass, and violins immediately presenting field life in Tennessee.
Stills ©️ from The Great Fox Daddy fox searchlight pictures
In the Grand Budapest Hotel, Vivaldi's Concerto of Rut and Plucked Instruments established the dominant position of plucked instruments in this work, and Deppra used a large number of strong folk tones such as mantolin, Hungarian dulcimer, and guitar to construct a musical landscape of Europe's decline.
The bass chants, bass saxophones, flutes, and taiko drums used by Fumio Hayasaka in the soundtrack of Black Samurai directly became the musical color blocks of Inuyasha.
Stills ©️ from "The Grand Budapest Hotel" fox searchlight pictures
In addition to coloring the film with instruments according to Wes Anderson's conception, Deppra also has a sophisticated design that is reflected in all four works - small orchestras. Anderson's subtle and delicate sets have never been compatible with the performance of the large orchestra, so Deppra tried to reduce the orchestra as much as possible, in line with this style of detail in sound.
In addition to the fact that the instruments mentioned above are all soloists, he will also try to remove the instruments in traditional symphony orchestras. In the closing song of Moonrise Kingdom, he and Anderson mimic Benjamin Britten's "Guide to the Teen Symphony Orchestra" used in the opening credits, and as the music is played, the narrator introduces each instrument that appears.
Stills ©️ from Moonrise Kingdom focus features
If you listen carefully, you will find that each tone is just a solo of an instrument. The string group in the traditional orchestra is the group that is most repeated in the amount of instruments, and there are more than ten violins, violas and cellos, which provide a large sense of orchestral thickness.
As a result, in all four deppra's scores for Anderson, he completely removed the orchestra's string group to maintain a small musical feel.
Qi: Space on painting, time in music
Wes Anderson's own lens language gives his films a very personal temperament. This temperament is reflected in his extreme pursuit of axis symmetry, as long as there is an opportunity to make the composition five or five in pairs; this temperament is also reflected in his panning mirror trajectory, so that the three-dimensional space presents a flat sense. This temperament is also reflected in his abandonment of anti-shooting and the use of frontal cameras to record the dialogue, as if breaking the fourth wall between the actor and the audience.
These techniques that run through Anderson's films reflect the director's strong mastery of structural work and rhythmic progression. And music undoubtedly plays a pivotal role in structural neatness and rhythmic progression.
The influence of composer Bernard Herrmann and Carl Stalling is ubiquitous in Anderson's films. The former created a classic suspense film soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock, while the latter immortalized the comedy animations of "The Looney Tunes" such as Bugs Bunny and Duffy Duck. Anderson has repeatedly said that the two composers were greatly inspired by the way he used music.
When Herman considers the big picture of film, he has a set of criteria for when to add a soundtrack. For example, try not to use music when the dialogue is going on, and let the music help when the content of the camera lacks sufficient kinetic energy. In Hitchcock's films, the amount of music used tends to be moderate, but when it appears, it shines brightly, making no secret of its beginnings and ends.
Unlike many modern films that try to fade the music in and out, When Deppra scored Anderson's films, he deliberately referred to Herman's way, which often captured the audience's attention at the beginning, and the abrupt stop technique often used also played a role in re-emphasizing the existence of music and immediately lifting the audience's appetite. This strong musical beginning and end, as well as the gap between the music sections, plays a role in controlling the rhythm of the film on a large span.
Alfred hitchcock with Bernard Herrmann ©️ web source
Another predecessor, Stalin, was one of the founders of the "Mickey-mousing", and his melodic writing, instrumentation, and rhythm can be consistent with the complex movements on the screen, sometimes depicted, sometimes onomatopoeia. This technique puts the music firmly in control of the rhythm of the film on the microscopic level between the minutes and seconds.
The definition of the rhythm itself can be said to be a specific separation point in time. However, physiologically speaking, people's eyes can better grasp the rhythm of space, but when they grasp the rhythm of time, they are not as sensitive as their ears. Therefore, the switching rhythm between the lens and the lens is often covered by a large number of contents on the screen. At this time, the music plays a role in highlighting the rhythm of the shot.
The classic image of "Music One Pass" and the music ©️ warner bro.
Looking back at Deppra's score for Anderson, it is not difficult to find that although the "Mickey Mouse" soundtrack is not directly copied, many of the tracks are indispensable to the rhythmic sound, if it is not percussion, it is a crisp instrument that provides a steady stream of beat points:
In "The Great Fox Daddy," jazz drums are laid everywhere, and in Moonrise Kingdom, a harp fixed pattern of eighth notes runs through the soundtrack like a metronome. In "The Grand Budapest Hotel", the presentation of rhythm is even more exciting, and the brushes of jazz drums, tambourines, snares, timpani, triangles, dulcimer fixed tones, double bass plucking strings and even clapping hands are meticulously providing a strong sense of rhythm for the camera. In the latest release of "Isle of Dogs", Deppra used the background of Japanese culture to use the taiko drum as the main body of the soundtrack to construct an auditory feast constructed by the rumbling drum sound.
Such a strong rhythmic core also plays another role. Anderson's side shots, forward shots, and panning shots largely compress the stereoscopic space into a stage-like plane. Groups of such shots are edited together to present a visual narrative that lacks the fluidity we are accustomed to, and the rhythmic music is like a glue, stringing them together to fill the gap of this flow.
Directed by Wes anderson ©️ Andrew Eccles
The mutually reinforcing collaboration between Deppra and Anderson is rare in today's director-composer partnership.
Without Anderson providing him with various interpretations of inspiration in each work, Deppra was afraid that it would be difficult to grasp the core of Anderson's images. Without Deppra's exquisite grasp of musical timbre and rhythm, Anderson's film would be three points darker.
However, in their creations, the two have achieved a perfect fit between music and pictures, creating a world of color that is eye-catching and unforgettable.