Film Composers Research Articles

Musical Design of the Film in the Structure of Film Composer’s Professional Competencies

The purpose of the article is to define the main components of the film music scoring process and the corresponding professional competencies of a film composer. The methodology of research is based on the integrated application of systemic and competency-based approaches, methods of theoretical analysis, specification, synthesis, and generalisation. The scientific novelty. Based on the analysis of art criticism and the author's own practical experience, the author of the article has determined: the main components of the film scoring process; the essence of compositional innovations in the best soundtracks of Ukrainian and foreign films; the main professional competencies of a film composer required to create a film soundtrack. The musical and creative competence of a film composer reflects the level of their compositional skill and the ability to creatively adapt musical material. Artistic and communicative competence characterises the ability to communicate creatively with the film's directing team, understanding the artistic intent of the film and the means of its implementation in musical images. Technical and technological competence is realised in the possession of modern technologies of sound recording and sound processing and the ability to work with studio equipment. Conclusions. Film scoring is a complex creative process that includes several stages (familiarisation with the general concept and dramaturgy of the film, creation of a score with a system of music themes and leitmotifs, studio recording of music, editing and synchronisation with the video sequence, sound design, creation of the final version of the soundtrack). The success of this process depends on the professional skill of the film composer, which is manifested in the formation of musical and creative, artistic and communicative, technical and technological competencies.
 Keywords: film music, soundtrack, musical design of the film, film composer, professional competencies.

Jester Hairston’s Film Music Career

This article aims to introduce the film music community to the life and career of Jester Hairston (1901–2000)—a multitalented Black entertainer who composed, arranged, and conducted choral ensembles for notable film composers throughout the mid-twentieth century. Hairston’s seven-decade Hollywood career began in 1936 as the assistant conductor of the Hall Johnson Choir. Following his tenure with the ensemble, Hairston worked extensively with composer Dimitri Tiomkin for over twenty years. Hairston’s most significant contribution to film music occurred in 1944 when he established the first integrated choir in Hollywood. Later in life, Hairston found success as an actor, appearing in film and television shows such as The Alamo (1960) and Amen (1986–1991), earning him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As an entertainer Hairston garnered 114 film and television credits (68 as a musician) and published 56 choral works.

영화 속 재즈 음악의 활용 양상에 관한 연구

This study aims to compare movies with distinct characteristics that utilize jazz to grasp the usage patterns of jazz in film music and to investigate the cinematic approach to the jazz genre in contemporary Hollywood films. For this research, Terence Blanchard's Malcolm X(1992), John Williams' Catch Me If You Can(2002), and Justin Hurwitz's La La Land(2016) were selected and researched; the conclusion was as follows. First, trumpeter Terence Blanchard faithfully served the cinematic function by utilizing jazz, a pillar of Black music. Second, Traditional Hollywood film composer John Williams fused symphonic sound with the jazz genre. Third, Justin Hurwitz crafted music by embracing the characteristics of the musical film. The music had a close relationship with the film's narrative structure and played a significant role throughout the film. As comparative analysis based on the research findings, the diverse cinematic approaches to the jazz genre were influenced by the film's structure and the composer's musical inclinations. According to this, distinctions appeared in the underscore, source music, and cinematic function of music depending on the film. However, they also coexisted with common elements, such as classical music's foundations and leitmotif techniques.

The Day the Earth Stood Still by Bernard Herrmann, and: Krull by James Horner (review)

Reviewed by: The Day the Earth Stood Still by Bernard Herrmann, and: Krull by James Horner James Buhler Bernard Herrmann. The Day the Earth Stood Still. Santa Rosa, CA: Neumation Music, 2021. [1 score (xxi, 89 p.) ISBN 9780578870489, $50] James Horner. Krull. Santa Rosa, CA: Neumation Music, 2021. [1 score (xxvii, 409 p.) ISBN 9780578967424, $80] The study of film music has long been hampered by the fact that printed scores were difficult to access. This situation left scholars, film composers, and the interested public needing to travel to research libraries and other archives to consult scores in manuscript, or relying on sources who had access to and were willing to share the socalled "grey" scores, xeroxed and now digitized copies of scores used during production that circulated among the working professionals in the industry, or creating personal transcriptions. Many main titles and occasional cues were available commercially as printed scores, but generally these were in a form that had been arranged for solo piano, standard orchestra, or concert band. Each of these solutions has significant drawbacks, especially for scholarly study. Recent years have seen a significant change in this situation. Three firms are now regularly publishing full film scores (or as close to complete as a printed film score can be): Chris Siddall Music (chrissiddallmusic.com) currently has six scores available in book form as well as over twenty cues from a variety of films available for digital download. Omni Music Publishing (omnimusicpublishing.com), the oldest of the firms, also has the most extensive [End Page 663] collection, with twenty scores and several cues currently available. (For a review of the score to Batman, see this journal March 2018 [74, 3] and How to Train Your Dragon, see March 2022 [78, 3].) Neumation Music (neumationmusic.com) is the newest of the firms and currently has three titles available, the first two of which are the subject of this review. Neumation Music has also announced on its website plans for publication of five new titles. All three firms follow a similar procedure, with scores printed on acid-free paper meeting library standards in a 9" × 12" format, usually sufficient for a full orchestra score, though sometimes making for tight fits in the case of film scores that use a larger than usual orchestra. Working with composers' sketches, the parts used for recording, and orchestrators' scores and then cross-referenced with the film and original soundtrack recording, the publishers have faced difficult editorial decisions. What appears in the written score delivered to the recording stage by the composer and the orchestrator team is frequently changed for the release version of the film, sometimes at the recording session, sometimes when the music is edited into the film (either because the composer, the director, or the producer requested a change or because the edit of the film changed). Some of these changes are incorporated into the soundtrack recording, but many of them are not. In addition, things like synthesizer settings are generally only vaguely specified (sometimes the model of synthesizer isn't even designated in the score), and if the composer is not using a factory preset what the synthesizer is actually playing can make for guesswork. (To complicate matters further, synth parts are also sometimes added outside the main recording session, and might not have ever had a fully written-out part.) The situation gets more complicated with recent so-called hybrid scores that rely much more on audio processing and mixing sampled instruments with the traditionally recorded studio orchestra. For instance, a Hans Zimmer score played on the scoring stage is often only material for a final mix that will incorporate many other layers, samples, and synthesizer, along with extensive audio processing. Rendering this music as a printed score will necessarily be incomplete. Often it will be inadequate enough that it is questionable whether a printed score is even a useful representation of what we hear on the film or on the soundtrack album (though it may still be a useful object for study). One of the challenges that Herrmann's score for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) poses to publication is that, like much contemporary film music...

Scoring the Hollywood Actor in the 1950s Gregory Camp

The 1950s were a pivotal decade in the history of Hollywood music. The great movie studios had dominated the early days of sound film production and distribution but were battered in 1948 by the Supreme Court’s antitrust Paramount Case, which forced them to divest from the theatres they had previously controlled and through which they had exerted an effective monopoly on the distribution of their product. As a result of the ruling, studio profits cratered over the next decade, leading to a crisis within the film industry. This crisis was compounded by the traumatic experience of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, which devastated Hollywood in the late 1940s and early 1950s as writers, directors, actors, and composers were forced to testify and inform on one another regarding any political activity deemed to be subversive. But the worst shock to Hollywood’s old order came from the advent of television. As the baby boom generation emerged in the wake of Second World War, TV presented a stay-at-home alternative that caused attendance at cinemas to drop precipitously. To lure viewers back to the cinema, Hollywood rolled out a succession of enticing attractions in the 1950s: spectacular new Widescreen formats such as Cinemascope or Cinerama that provided opportunities for sweeping vistas in historical epics like Ben Hur and thrilling genres such as science fiction and horror, which presented astonishing monsters and flying saucers. At the same time, a relaxing of the strict censorship code that Hollywood, fearing boycotts from the religious right, had imposed on itself since the early 1930s, led to increasingly frank depictions of sex and violence on the screen that reached a culmination with Hitchcock’s boundary-pushing Psycho in 1960. All of this provided new opportunities for musical expression: science fiction and horror films, with their emphasis on the strange and unfamiliar, inspired composers to experiment with modernist techniques such as atonality and electronic music, while movies dealing with contemporary topics such as addiction and teenage crime invited the dangerous and thrilling sounds of jazz and rock’n’roll into the heretofore rather sheltered late-Romantic musical universe of Hollywood film. A new generation of American composers, including Alex North, Leonard Rosenman, Elmer Bernstein, and Henry Mancini, entered the film-scoring scene during this period and proceeded to expand the stylistic palette available to film composers with elements of jazz and modernism. It is not surprising, then, that the 1950s has provided a particularly rich terrain for film-music scholars. An important early contribution to the analysis of pivotal scores by North and Rosenman, among others, was George Burt’s monograph The Art of Film Music (Boston, 1994). In recent years, a number of books, chapters, and articles have explored this turbulent and fascinating decade, including ‘Scoring East of Eden: The Division of the “One”: Leonard Rosenman and the Score for East of Eden’, in Graeme Harper, Ruth Doughty, and Jochen Eisentraut (eds.), Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: An Overview (New York, 2009); Stanley C. Pelkey II and Anthony Bushard (eds.), Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age (New York, 2015); and James Wierzbicki, Music in the Age of Anxiety: American Music in the Fifties (Chicago and Springfield, IL, 2016).

A Neglected Story: Observations on the Manuscript of Wu Dajiang's Film Score for Painted Skin (1993)

Abstract The manuscript of Wu Dajiang's score for Painted Skin is the only one of King Hu's film music scores known to exist today. The manuscript represents new and direct evidence of King Hu and his film composers’ working method. With the aim of investigating the presentational force of the film music, this article reviews several pivotal leitmotifs and their repetitions. Based on the interviewees’ testimonies, this study reveals that the production of the music could not be ascribed to Wu Dajiang alone, as credited in the film. Evidently, King Hu's artistic intentions carried considerable weight in the musical decision-making process, and the manuscript reflects the collaborative nature of the music production process. Music assistant Lu Lianghui's substantial contribution is of particular importance. His compositional devices, including his design of repetitive leitmotifs and a new type of operatic scoring, which features Nuo Opera, make the presentational force of the music self-explanatory. The effective integration of the visual and audio elements owes much to King Hu and Lu Lianghui's close collaboration.

Kinetic Cross-Modal Correspondences and Felt (e)Motion in a Novel Set of Musical Stimuli

Embodied music cognition predicts that our understanding of human-made sounds relates to our experience of making the same or similar movements and sounds, which involves imitation of the source of visual and auditory information. This embodiment of sound may lead to numerous kinetic cross-modal correspondences (CMCs). This article investigates music experience in participants with a non-professionally trained music background across three musical dimensions: Contour (Ascending, Descending, Flat), Vertical Density (Low, Medium, High), and Note Pattern (Binary, Ternary, Quaternary). In order that stimuli should reflect contemporary musical usage yet be subject to a high degree of experimental control, 27 ten-second digital piano tracks were created in collaboration with a film composer. In Study 1, participants were asked to rate the stimuli for perceived Direction, Rotation, Movement, and Emotional and Physical Involvement. We test the effects of these factors in terms of the following theories: general and vocal embodied responses to music, the Ecological Theory of Rotating Sounds, and the Shared Affective Motion Experience model of emotion induction. Results for Study 1 were consistent with theories of general and vocal embodied responses to music, as well as with theories of embodied emotional contagion in music. Study 1 also revealed potential confounds in the stimuli, which were further investigated in Study 2 with a new set of participants rating the stimuli for perceived Pitch, Loudness, and Speed. Results for Study 2 served to dissociate intrinsic features of the stimuli from CMCs. Taken together, the two studies reveal a range of embodied CMCs. Although there are limitations to a perceptual study such as this, these stimuli stand to benefit future research in further investigating the embodiment of musical motion.

Tugging at Heartstrings

The love theme is one of the central musicodramatic topics of classic Hollywood music but, thus far, little scholarly attention has been paid to the specific musical devices used by film composers to depict love. To the extent that musical analysis has entered the picture at all, it has tended to focus on the motivic level, despite the fact that much of the emotional alchemy of film music resides in its harmonic structure. This is particularly true for classic Hollywood love themes, which often draw on subtle chromatic inflections to weave their affective spells. In this article, we will address two particular harmonic schemas associated with romance during the studio era: (1) the Heartstring schema, which involves the inflection of a major tonic by a chromatic chord usually centered on b6^, and (2) the downstep modulation, a variant of the circle-of-fifths sequence. Both schemas rely on the bittersweet frisson between major and minor modes, a tension that contributes significantly to the emotional punch still packed by the great love themes of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Optimization of Multilayer Films Composed of Chitosan and Low-Methoxy Amidated Pectin as Multifunctional Biomaterials for Drug Delivery.

Polyelectrolyte multilayers (PEMs) based on polyelectrolyte complex (PEC) structures are recognized as interesting materials for manufacturing functionalized coatings or drug delivery platforms. Difficulties in homogeneous PEC system development generated the idea of chitosan (CS)/low-methoxy amidated pectin (LM PC) multilayer film optimization with regard to the selected variables: the polymer ratio, PC type, and order of polymer mixing. Films were formulated by solvent casting method and then tested to characterize CS/LM PC PECs, using thermal analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), turbidity, and zeta potential measurements. The internal structure of the films was visualized by using scanning electron microscopy. Analysis of the mechanical and swelling properties enabled us to select the most promising formulations with high uniformity and mechanical strength. Films with confirmed multilayer architecture were indicated as a promising material for the multifunctional systems development for buccal drug delivery. They were also characterized by improved thermal stability as compared to the single polymers and their physical mixtures, most probably as a result of the CS–LM PC interactions. This also might indicate the potential protective effect on the active substances being incorporated in the PEC-based films.

Killmonger: scoring modes and representation in Black Panther

Anticipated by many, and equally a site of contention or reverence, Black Panther and its accompanying original musical score as composed by Ludwig Gõrranson is rife for analysis and brings to fore the question: in what ways is a Hollywood practice used in a film with seemingly other aesthetic aims? A score which features few disparate and disconnected vague references to an "African sound" for the imagined country of Wakanda is undercut even more so by the insistent use of an otherwise purely western orchestral score. Firstly, through a brief overview of Goransson's production approaches to the score for Black Panther, and his collaboration with local experts, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of authorship arising from such collaborations between these expert improvising music and film composers who tend to be the sole credited composers. Furthermore, musical representations are complicated by the recurring theme of the "other" according to Classical Hollywood tropes through the integration of occasional African instruments. In section two, brief transcriptions of the music composed for the character Killmonger are provided, in the search for representation devices - how the music works to or fails to establish the character. Also provided are the authors' personal insights as to whether or not Gõransson's intentions with the music are in fact evident in the film.

Sound Design for Moving Image: From Concept to Realization by Kahra Scott-James

Reviewed by: Sound Design for Moving Image: From Concept to Realization by Kahra Scott-James Caitlan Truelove Sound Design for Moving Image: From Concept to Realization. By Kahra Scott-James. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. [vii, 192 p. ISBN 9781474235112 (paperback), $37.95; ISBN 9781474235143 (e-book), $190.] Illustrations, index. Claudia Gorbman, often referred to as the founder of film musicology, notes that film composers are participants in film music scholarship, since they "have a gift for explaining what they do," but that film music scholars find it difficult to apply analytical approaches on this music if the composer has already dictated what the music means ("Aesthetics and Rhetoric," American Music 22, no. 1 [Spring 2004]: 15). Yet musicologists have long studied film composers, their methods, and how these have changed since the advent of sound film. Even though it would appear as if researchers from many academic fields are producing film music scholarship using different methodologies, one of the main goals of current research is to bring these methodologies and different fields together. Most recently, musicologists and music theorists have used the phrase "theorists of the soundtrack" to describe their research in film music (see James Buhler and Hannah Lewis, eds., Voicing the Cinema: Film Music and the Integrated Soundtrack, [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020], jacket cover). Since the soundtrack consists of music, sound effects, and dialogue, these theorists choose to draw upon methodologies from many different areas. Perhaps it is no surprise then that a book emerged outlining the beginnings of how sound is worked incipiently but discreetly in the films of today. Although originally intended for sound-design practitioners, Kahra Scott-James's book—part historiography, part guidebook—offers a sound designer's perspective as a theorist of the soundtrack. This volume brings up more practical "behind-the-scenes" aspects of sound production, which may help to inform the current soundtrack discourse in musicology and music theory. The book is organized into six chapters: "Early Practice," "Sound as Design," "Contemporary Sound Design," "Preproduction," "Production," and "Postproduction." Scott-James's writing style is clear throughout the book, even when describing the more technical aspects of production. Additionally, she explores developments and innovations to sound design for screen and stage from locations across the globe, although her focus relates to more recent US film productions. In the first chapter, Scott-James explores sound production for the stage, talkies, and animation. She describes thunder, one of the first sound effects for stage, as an example of real, subconscious, and unreal representations of what audience members perceive: thunder exists in the physical world, but the sound can also suggest impending doom as well as an aural representation [End Page 573] of supernatural characters (p. 1). Early forms of sound design are also traced back to puppetry, slapstick, and vaudeville. Scott-James describes in detail the history of the slapstick, a device originally used in commedia dell'arte performances, and how it was a useful tool to recreate the sharp, snappy sounds of "a slap, thwack, whack, shot, or whip crack" (p. 3). Theatrical sound design continued to evolve when producers started to include audio-visual elements—such as projected photographs or scenes—to their stage shows. Scott-James does not touch on live film soundtracks until later in the chapter and cites Lyman Howe as potentially "the first person to use a phonograph and live sound effects in the presentation of movies" (p. 7). Developments in sound design are described in the same subsections as advances in technology, such as the use and production of sound effects in radio, television, and early forms of animation. Scott-James notes that as plots become more complex, audiences grow more attuned to noticing sounds heard in the media they consume. In chapter 2, "Sound as Design," Scott-James introduces sound theories. Although this topic may be more familiar to professional sound designers, this chapter provides insightful information to those studying the soundtrack. Scott-James focuses mainly on sound work and sound techniques in the early to mid-twentieth century, arguing that many of these established processes are still in use in contemporary films. This period is also a time of filmmakers experimenting with sounds, and...

Preparation of Microporous Film Composed of Polypropylene Containing β-Form Nucleating Agent

Preparation of Microporous Film Composed of Polypropylene Containing β-Form Nucleating Agent

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema

Cranes, Drones and Eisenstein

In this article, a neurohumanistic, “third culture” approach to “gesture” is delineated. Grounded in an exegesis of Eisenstein’s sensorimotor theory and extending to both contemporary and historical thinkers, a “constellation” of the notion of both visual and musical gestures is triangulated and operationalized into empirical research. An overlap between Eisenstein’s model of audio/visual gestures and the contemporary frameworks of embodied simulation theory and embodied music cognition is revealed. Through artistic collaborations with a filmmaker and a film composer, custom-made, naturalistic video clips (filmed with a drone) and musical tracks were created using the film The Cranes Are Flying (Kalatozov 1957) as an aesthetic model. Empirical results demonstrate an increased sense of movement and involvement in the perception of both visual and musical “ascent.”

The Musical Arrangement of a Live-Action Film

The purpose of the study is to analyze the characteristics of a live-action film’s musical arrangement; to identify the impact of musical arrangement on the audience’s perception, on the example of the film composer Eric Serra’s works. The research methodology is to apply the following methods: theoretical – analysis of the music functions in making a film and the implementation of the director’s vision, generalizing the influence of musical arrangement on the viewer. Scientific novelty. The functions of film music that help in creating a live-action film were analyzed for the first time, a detailed analysis of the interdependence of music and visuals was made, by theoretical analysis of music functions; it has been found out how it affects the perception of the audience. Conclusions. In the article, we analyzed the functions of musical arrangement in a live-action film. Through the analysis of the influence of music on the audience’s perception, it has been established how the musical arrangement helps to realize the author’s vision. The role of music in making a live-action film has been researched. Through theoretical and practical research of various cinematography aspects that are relevant at the moment (in particular, the problem of the sound space in a movie), it becomes possible to reach a new aesthetic level of design, creation, perception and understanding of cinematic works.

Giving Voice to a Foxtrot from Auschwitz-Birkenau

The Collections Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum preserves a number of manuscripts of popular songs arranged by members of the Auschwitz I Men’s Orchestra. These songs, written with great care in black ink on Beethoven Papier brand music paper, often bear highly ironic, but also tragically relevant titles, such as “Letters That Never Arrived,” “Hours That One Can Never Forget,” “Sing a Song When You’re Sad.” In this article I describe the complex process of realizing a 2018 concert performance and recording of one of these songs, “Die schönste Zeit des Lebens” (The Most Beautiful Time of Life), based on a manuscript deposited in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 1975. Originally a 1941 popular song composed by the German film composer Franz Grothe with a text by Willi Dehmel, and scored for a jazz ensemble, it was arranged by the Auschwitz I prisoners for four first violins, five second violins, a viola, two clarinets, a trombone and a tuba. Through this dramatic change in orchestration, errors were occasionally introduced; in this article, I detail the analytical processes involved in correcting these errors and making “micro-interventions” in the score.

Rethinking Nollywood Film Music: The Case for a Persistent Identity System

Rethinking Nollywood Film Music: The Case for a Persistent Identity System Emaeyak Peter Sylvanus (bio) Introduction If we consider discussions on the ambiguity of film music as the “new classical music” within and outside of the dominant North American and European traditions, then a study of Nollywood film music makes for both an interesting and original contribution to the debate.1 Accordingly, this article considers mainstream Nollywood, which, in addition to being “the most visible form of cultural machine on the African continent,”2 has been overlooked by film music scholars. The current article is a synthesis of the most important arguments to date on film music in Nollywood (Nigerian cinema). It specifically outlines, integrates, discusses, and summarizes three central outcomes: (1) the Nollywood film music identity formations and their interconnectedness, (2) the three contexts through which the identity formations are performed, and (3) the Nollywood film music persistent identity system (NoPIS), which is modeled following a systematic integration [End Page 173] of the first two outcomes. The NoPIS reveals how Nollywood film music speaks to culture, its practitioners and consumers, and even scholars. Indeed, practitioners’ perceptions of identity and its articulation in their own words and works have been critical to the discourse, structure, and theoretical outcome of both the NoPIS and this text. This article adds to an emerging body of film music publications on African cinema.3 Elsewhere, I have argued that within notions of localization and representation, Nollywood film music-making processes bear important expectations for both the filmmakers and consumers with whom its composers deal. Such expectations include the ability to: (1) generate a culturally relevant (Nigerian) piece of work; (2) appeal to the filmmakers and target audience; and (3) create a sense of authenticity by ensuring that the music prefigures (i.e., communicates and predicts) the storyline(s).4 Such publications have equally shown that there is an enabling sociocultural and informal fiscal environment that supports the business of film music production in Nigeria.5 Granted these enabling conditions, the composer’s ideologies and intentions are then carried through in the genre, style, and manner of application, which give it meaning and socio-musical symbolism. All these are complemented by the social action, interaction, and mediation between such groups as fellow film composers, sound editors and engineers, producers, filmmakers and marketers, and promoters. The social actions emanating from such a chain of interactions add new meanings to the film music––meanings situated between the word, sound, and screen: a subtle reconfiguration of orality and viewership that has persisted with some refinement since inception in the 1990s. Consequently, specific developing trends on and around identity issues and processes in composing music for Nollywood films have emerged, including analyses that highlight areas of interest and frustration relating to the filmmaker–composer collaboration dynamics, which consciously exclude the film director;6 the social-organizational framework and the barriers to entry for film music projects in Nollywood;7 the problems and prospects of the industry’s genre categorization and labeling;8 the merits and demerits of a Nollycentric film music approach that its three schools of thought promote and sustain;9 the dynamics of power, money, gender relations, and ethics of the conceptualization, negotiation, and articulation of identity;10 and the forces of ethnicity, language, and cross-cultural and transnational film music influences.11 Additionally, I have attempted to explain the connection between the film music industry, individualism, the marketers’ cinematic intentions, the composers’ responsibilities and independence, and the audience’s consumption behavior.12 Lastly, I have shown how much [End Page 174] Nigerian TV music shaped aspects of Nollywood soundtrack practice.13 All these suggest that Nollywood may have transformed film music via the process of localization. Yet, film music itself has transformed its host culture (Nigeria), particularly regarding the reading and discussion of identity. What remains is the modeling of practitioners’ artistic results to arrive at what might be called a persistent identity system for Nollywood soundtracks. As far as Nigeria is concerned, film and film music are borrowed art forms. In other words, they are popular (multimedia) texts that have not originated from Nigeria, yet their successful appropriation and reinvention have made them...

A Low-Cost and High-Efficiency Electrothermal Composite Film Composed of Hybrid Conductivity Fillers and Polymer Blends Matrix for High-Performance Plate Heater

Owing to easy processability, ultralight weight, and low cost, carbon- and polymer-based composite materials are among emerging and promising electrothermal materials for high-performance flexible electric heaters. In this work, a sandwich-like structured electrothermal film composed of hybrid conductive fillers [Super-P (SP) and graphite], polymer blends matrix [thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and polyethersulfone (PES)], and alumina oxide (Al2O3) as a non-conductive filler has been fabricated by a facile slurry coating method. Hybrid conductive fillers of graphite and SP particles have a uniform spatial distribution in a TPU/PES polymer matrix, which construct a highly stable and continuous conductive network with a low percolation threshold of conductive filler content (14.8 wt.%) that allows electrothermal films to operate at a low applied dc voltage. As for the electrothermal film with 15 wt.% hybrid conductive fillers (SP/G-15 sample), it exhibits a superior response feature, high electrothermal conversion efficiency, stable structural stability and remarkable electrothermal reproducibility. More impressively, SP/G-15 composite electrothermal film as an integrated electric heater for heating water demonstrates a high potential in practical application scenarios.

Soundtrack design: The impact of music on visual attention and affective responses

Through music, film composers attempt to affect the audience's emotions and visual attention; however, little empirical evidence exists characterizing the mechanisms whereby music affects viewers. We conducted a mixed-design experiment with 60 participants to explore the effect of music on viewers' visual attention and affective responses to a film. Music led to quicker first fixations on film objects and supplied emotional content, increasing positive sentiment for the film's story. However, music did not influence viewers' attitudes to filmed events. Within this context, music has limited impact on attitudes toward filmed events but can accentuate the saliency of film objects and supply emotional information altering viewers' sentiment towards the film. Understanding the mechanisms of music's physiological and behavioral effects can inform content delivery strategies. This study offers insights for composition and production of musical soundtracks for feature-length films, advertising videos, educational videos, and video games.

Victoria o muerte: Música para los últimos momentos de El Álamo en el cine

La defensa y batalla de El Álamo en 1836 supone uno de los grandes acontecimientos de la Historia americana, hito fundacional sobre el que el cine se interesó desde sus primeros momentos, y que ha conocido diversas interpretaciones a lo largo de un siglo (1911-2004). Los momentos más dramáticos fueron las horas previas a la batalla final, tras trece días de asedio de las tropas del general Santa Anna a los texanos, y la propia batalla. El tratamiento musical que los diferentes compositores de la partitura de cada película han dado a estos momentos ha variado en función de diversos factores. En este artículo analizamos la música de las escenas relativas al día previo a la batalla y al asalto final, abordando especialmente el toque de degüello empleado por cada uno, su importancia en el conjunto de la partitura, sus posibles referentes, su estructura y el carácter del tema. Para ello diseñamos unas tablas de análisis de contenido categorial, que nos permiten comparar las seis películas estudiadas y llegar a las conclusiones. The defense and the battle of The Alamo in 1836 is one of the greatest events of American History. Film writers, directors and producers were interested in it since the early days, so there are several adaptations from 1911 to 2004. The most dramatic moments were the hours before the battle after thirteen days of siege of the Santa Anna’s troops, and the final assault. According to different factors, each film composer has written a personal version of the music for these scenes. In this paper we analyze the musical treatment applied to the scenes of the previous day and of final assault, highlighting the different versions of the deguello, its importance inside the score, its sources, structure and character. For to do this, we use tables of categorical content which let us to compare the six films we studied and to reach the conclusions.