A great lesson in film music

Tony Carnevale participates in the important initiative of ColonneSonore.net, edited by Massimo Privitera. It consists of episodic Film Music interview-lectures, based on six questions to which composers from all over the world answer, providing anecdotes and professional information for future colleagues, today promising young people, perhaps still students of film-music courses or self-taught with non-academic formations, all equally with a deep desire to become composers of music applied to images. It is also a way to gain a deeper understanding of various composers’ approaches to soundtrack making.

Below is the full lecture/interview:

1. What methodology do you use in approaching the creation of a soundtrack?

While it is clear that each work proposes a different situation, both from a creative and a realization point of view, I would like to propose a comment by film critic Riccardo Tavani about the soundtrack of the film VAKHIM, by Francesca Pirani, which I made, which summarizes my approach: “the music of this film is not a sound commentary, but it is the image said with the sound; therefore, it is part of the iconographic fabric of the film.” Here, my approach, then, is not to work “for” the images, but “with” the images. I try to explain myself better. Having researched musical language for many years, exploring, among other topics, the relationship between expressive and representational languages, I try to propose a certain vision of the sound-image relationship. Without elaborating too much (perhaps I refer to my eighth book Beyond the Notes – a non-rational approach to music) I would like us to dwell for a moment on the experience of dreaming: all of us, at least once in our lives, have dreamed of “hearing” music (or even voices, sounds, etc.) even though, almost always, there is no sensory perception of sound. Or try to think about when we imagine music “in our head,” even remembering something heard, without any conscious perception. These two small examples should suggest to us that human thought is able to “feel” music, at the mental level, even without the physical perception of vibration. So music, at the mental, better yet, psychic level, is “image.”

It is clear that we are not talking about an image as a figure, as something delineated, but an image as a psychic state, between memory and imagination, both conscious, when we are aware of it, and unconscious, when it manifests as “sensation.” When we associate music with images, we are thus, in my view, “adding” invisible images to visible images. It is the viewer’s creativity that then intervenes by making these invisible images arise in his mind, in a nonconscious way: sensations, precisely, emotions, images in a broad sense, that is, psychic states related to imagination. So I work by following the non-rational flow of images, the unfolding of expressive, emotional dynamics.

In this sense, I try to create a movement of sounds in harmony with the movements of the images, as if it were a symphony of sounds and images, a kind of “emotional orchestration” of the images proposed by the film, looking for “spaces” in which to insert sounds in relation to the rest. So the actors, the stage movements, the dialogues, are “instruments” that are already “playing” something: it is enough to know how to “listen” to find ways to add other sounds consistent with the scene, to create a kind of sound-image composition, not a background or a sound backdrop. This is because my goal is to reach the “sensibility,” the “feeling” of others, to make them immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the film, not to “wow” them with rhetorical “catchy” effects. Maybe then we can “let loose” a bit in the end credits. In case the film is already on view, of course I ask to have a copy in order to seek stimulation from an emotional point of view, that is, to understand my own reaction to the flow of the images, the narrative and the atmosphere that the images somehow suggest, before talking with the director about the soundtrack project.

This forms the first ideas/images, which almost always result in a thematic, or rhythmic, or timbral idea. Maybe I’m a bit “ancient,” but I still like to find at least one main theme to vary; then I add secondary themes, or even simple cues, or timbres, or textures, that are coherent, so that they can be developed and varied as the film progresses.

Later this will result in a kind of Concept, a design guide for confrontation with the director. I prefer, if possible, to treat the music as a karst river, emerging at times and then disappearing, trying to give the flow of musical events, where possible and in very close relation to the narrative, a sense of continuity, to avoid those typical effects that we can see in several cinematic works in which the music seems to be disconnected from each other, as if they were all autonomous scenes.

In other cases I read the script, especially if it is necessary to write music that is part of the script itself and is needed to shoot one or more scenes, perhaps where there is a concert or people playing something that is part of the narrative fabric. In this case, of course, the music will be made before shooting.

Then when there are more open spaces, that is, scenes where there is no dialogue or no sound at all, then there you can also move a little more freely with the music.

2. In the event that you do not have the ability, for budget reasons or simply your own creative ones, to use an orchestral ensemble, how do you go about it and what technologies are most helpful in bringing an entire soundtrack to fruition?

If necessary, I also move easily with sampled sounds, which often offer advantages, both in synchronizing the music with the images and because they sometimes provide a quality of pitch that an orchestra, if not of a certain level, might not even have…

For many years I have been making my own works independently, including mixing, so I have, fortunately for me, good experience in the use of technologies.

Clearly, if I were offered, say, the London Symphony, I would certainly not say no! I have often recorded with musicians, when, precisely, the budget allowed: I certainly prefer it, but unfortunately it is not always possible.

However, there are situations in which the choice of instruments to be used becomes conditional: for example, if you want to use particular ethnic instruments, it is not so easy to find reliable performers as well. In those cases, it is probably better to use samples. Hybrid situations, that is, real instruments together with samples, also often work quite well.

3. Describe to us the process that takes you from the script to the final score, especially going through the direct relationship with the director and editor who sometimes use the infamous temp track on the pre-edit of their film, before listening to your original music?

In part I have already anticipated something earlier. I can add that the relationship with the director is not always easy: on the one hand it is necessary to “make oneself available” to the film, then to dialogue in order to find the meeting point of the respective creativities. On the other hand, I don’t want anyone to, it can happen that the director is not then so able to have a coherent vision of the music to be made, and it becomes complicated to get things understood that for us musicians are taken for granted, but for others are not; like, just to give an example, the cuts on the music that sometimes they would like to make, even the editors, because maybe they cut in editing something after we have already made the music. I think we will all agree-we musicians almost certainly-that the music should begin and end in a “natural” way, just as the composer intended it.

Then there is a serious problem, what I call the “DJ effect”: we often have to deal with it in the film mix, because maybe at a certain point the director or the editor decides to turn the music down. Help-you waste a lot of time composing and mixing in a certain way to prevent this drama from happening to the film mix. Almost always, fortunately, it works out for me. Another drama is the inordinate use of provisional music: it is common for the director–and the editor–to get used to that music and then be conditioned by it, to such an extent that they do not make the best use of the musician’s skills, trying to lead them toward those obviously less original choices that they like so much. However, I repeat, it is always necessary to keep in mind that the film is a collective work that should realize the “vision” of the director, albeit with the problems and limitations that this may, in some cases, entail.

4. Do you have a score of your own that has created particular compositional difficulties for you?

If so, what is it and how did you solve the glitch?

From a relational point of view, I had difficulties with a great Italian director, because in his vision, already well-known music had to be used for important scenes. In this way there was a risk of losing coherence with, or heavily conditioning, the original soundtrack. But apart from this episode, the most complicated work I had to deal with was that of the soundtrack for Una bellezza che non lascia scampo. The screenplay was built on the relationship between a man and a woman, both musicians: this obviously necessitated a lot of incidental music, which had to be composed before shooting. Then came the problem of the extradiegetic music, which, in my intentions, had to be in harmony with the other, very present in the film. The work was most interesting though difficult, because I worked on the two planes in such a way as to make them stand in close relation, using for the soundtrack elements that were part of the incidental music. I tried to make the protagonists “speak” through the expression of their music, using it as if it were a wordless discourse between them, a non-rational way of being in relationship, then elaborating some cues from this music to build the actual soundtrack.

5. How did you become film music composers and why?

Although I am a member of the ACMF, I don’t know if I can call myself a film music composer in my own right, since I have not written as many film scores as other colleagues have. I have done several soundtracks in other fields, especially in dance or audiovisual, or for television and advertising. My main activity has probably been recording. In cinema I got into it almost by chance in 1986, with a film by Alessandro De Robilant(Anche lei fumava il sigaro). I would very much like to be able to do more soundtracks, because I am comfortable in this transition from one story to another, and I like to totally immerse myself in the atmosphere of the film, trying to work on it, possibly, without other professional distractions.

It is undoubtedly fascinating and rewarding work, since discography is a field more conditioned by the mainstream. In film, as in dance, I’ve always felt a bit freer.

6. How important is it for you to see one of your soundtracks released on a physical CD now that more and more people are thinking directly about digital downloads?

I confess that I am a lover of media in general: I have also recently released a record work of mine, Tu Che Mi puoi Capire, on vinyl + CD, and there is another one coming out soon. As for soundtracks, unfortunately, they are not always projects that can be released on CD without further processing; often in films there are musical interventions of even a few seconds that, although they make sense with the images, may not make as much sense listening to them without the support of the images with which they were composed, especially if you work in the way I have tried to tell in this interview. It seems important to me, however, to conclude this topic with an observation that goes a little beyond the question: I always try to offer – sweating the proverbial seven shirts – the highest quality in my works, so I would be very happy to know that they will then be heard in good systems, whether in movie theaters or in home screenings. The same is true, of course, for music on physical CDs. Unfortunately, music is often heard on poor-quality systems that do not do justice to the production work, in which an effort has perhaps also been made to offer a surround sound listening experience.

Digital downloading is a reality to which we have all become somewhat accustomed by now, although I, still, like to hold in my hand an object that also has a cover, maybe a nice booklet, in short something “concrete” to touch, look at and read.

Maybe it’s just a silly “romance” that serves to make me recreate the feelings of adolescence…”