The Recent Evolution of Film Music - Part 1

Every few weeks, on any of the online communities for media composers there pops up a discussion that essentially boils down to "John Williams vs. Hans Zimmer" with both sides argueing for the approach, craftmanship and execution of musical ideas by their preferred composer.

And depending on perspective, both sides are correct. But just reducing this seemingly endless conflict to these two sides is too short sighted and effectively this "battle" is just a symptom of a way larger development.

Film and media music has always been an ever evolving art form, sometimes fueled through radical shifts (e.g. John Williams re-introducing the symphonic sound to film music in Star Wars), sometimes as a gradual development (e.g. the introduction of "epic percussion" to media music since the late 90s/early 2000s). It has always been a big advantage for film composers who understood the stylistic development of the industry and being able to adapt to it.

Remember the times when "Braams" were hip? And also remember the times when "Braams" were so overused that people were annoyed? And remember the rather recent times when still some productions use them and people are either annoyed or amused by them? All that happened within a couple of years and as a composer not being on your toes regarding the developments really might become quite problematic. Similarly we saw the coming and going of ethnic vocals in almost any media music and other similar evolutions. 

The essential thing to understand is that film and similarly film music hardly ever remains the same for a longer period of time. Before the symphonic renaissance in the late 70s, many movies were scored with a quite popular approach, targeting a jazzy/pop style that was popular in these times (e.g. Henry Mancini) and often feel incredibly outdated to our ears now. And even the "Symphonic Era" of the 80s and 90s saw very different stylistic developments over time.

And yet it seems that the shift that has gradually happened over the 2000s and 2010s in film music is much more disruptive than the "stylistic pendulum swings" from the decades before that.

In my opinion, one of the essential factors that has influenced film music in a way that it lead to such a dramatic shift is the way how it is conceived nowadays. 

The prototypical film composer these days has a studio at home or at their office where they "produce" film music. They work mostly in a DAW and are often a one man show executing or at least overseeing all steps between first ideas, production, mixing etc. They are expected to deliver polished mockups to directors even before recordig any of the elements with real musicians and this demand in a technical approach has brought up a new generation of composers who are often well versed in the technical side of things and very often rely on external help when it comes to the more "traditonal" parts of the job like orchestration, notation etc.

Being a film composer nowadays doesn't require you to study music for years as it did just a few decades ago. There is no more threshold of needing to achieve a certain degree of professionalism to get your first ideas to be heard (e.g. learning how to write for real instruments and then getting someone to pay for a recording) but with a laptop and a little bit of curiosity, you can create music without any sort of educational barrier that you need to overcome. This of course has sparked a myriad of creative approaches and concepts that have not be seen or heard before. Particularly how some composers developed ways to think completely outside of academic paths has lead to mind blowing conceptual approaches and in many cases the creative compensation of their own (educational) limits has lead to extremely creative solutions.

Similar shifts have happened in other fields of film making with the digitalization of the industry making the entrance into it generally less elitist.

This development has created a new generation of film composers whose skill sets often differ radically from the generations before, just by the fact that they don't necessarily have a formal traditional musical education and found their way to music through the "digital development".

This new generation has revolutionized film music in a way never seen before and the implications of this shift of generations are probably as big as the shift from silent movies to "talkies".

Consequentially, the reduction of musical vocabulary and the focus on sound has become a style defining trait of current film music. Even the real orchestral approach nowadays follows the "production esthetics". In the next part, we will try to dig deeper into how this switch has changed film music.