Practice Small Emotions

One thing that can often be observed in student or amateur movies is a heavy emotional overscoring. Scenes that are sad are scored in a desperate way, slightly tenseful moments sound like horror scores etc. So while the general direction of the music might be right it often just goes way too far down that road. 

Often this has to do with the composer lacking the experience or the musical vocabulary to create the emotion in a more subtle way. Of course, everybody who starts out and tries to get a hang of how film scores work study and try to imitate iconic moments from the film history that are so strong from an emotional standpoint that they remain in their memories. However they are very often paired with very emotional images that justify such big gestures by the music.

In the real world of "usual" film scoring you are way more often confronted with scenes that need just a slight hint of an emotional push by the music. Falling back to musical vocabulary that you have accumulated from imitating iconic scenes as mentioned before will very often not help in such cases and you feel either lost without finding a proper access to the scene or you plow your way through the scene with that 110% emotion you know how to create.

So in order to avoid that, one of my favourite excercises is to try and write pieces that imply a certain emotion but just very subtly. Try to write a piece that is slightly frightening, mildly aggressive, a bit enthusiastic or any other emotion in a subtle way. If you want to challenge you even more, try to write different pieces for the same emotion at different intensities. 

Also, consciously pay attention to lesser impactful yet emotionally charged scenes when watching movies.

Here's a great example from JURASSIC PARK.

The score sneaks in very subtly into that scene. The "held back" enthusiasm shown by the two protagonists when Hammond offers to pay for their dig for the next years is translated perfectly in the music. It doesn't open up to a big triumphant moment but still portrays the emotion and helps to understand the relevance of this offer for the protagonists as well as explains their change of mind.

Trying to distill the essence out of such scenes and how and why they work is part of expanding your musical vocabulary to allow you to find the right tone and intensity when you need it. And the most effective way is to practice this by trying to apply it to a piece.