Sunday, April 1, 2007

The Good Shepherd

i just watched The Good Shepherd last night and I'm struck by the amount of music that accompany the film. I'd have to take a second look, but it felt like there were very few moments in De Niro's CIA flick that weren't accompanied by some kind of orchestral music. of the score also appear to be the product of a very fine sample library, similar to the current offerings by East-West and Vienna Instruments. I'm not saying that the score we hear is of an entirely of virtual nature (although that is certainly within the realm of possibilities with today's software), anyone who is familiar with these orchestral libraries will recognize the kinds of dynamics and articulation, or rather the absence of certain kinds dynamics and articulation. This isn't a criticism of the score, in fact I quite enjoyed the harmonic and timbrel variety of the soundtrack, I fear that it may be the beginning of a narrowing in the kinds of soundtracks one is likely hear in film. I suppose the trade-off is that even though a homogenization of orchestral scores may occur, more filmmakers will be able to afford these kind of soundtracks due to the cost associated with digital audio and music. Soundtrack aside, I thought The Good Shepard was a great movie and I highly recommended it for anyone interested in them American postwar politics.

1 comment:

Stephanie Conn said...

anyone who is familiar with these orchestral libraries will recognize the kinds of dynamics and articulation (...) I fear that it may be the beginning of a narrowing in the kinds of soundtracks one is likely hear in film.
True, this kind of score still seems to be prevalent. However, amidst all of that homogeneity, I'm also noticing that thanks to creative filmmakers, a lot of musicians are getting the opportunity to score films who wouldn't have had the chance to before.

Just off the top of my head I think of pop icon Mark Mothersbaugh, multi-instrumentalist-producer-genius Jon Brion, and Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine.