FESTIVALS/CONFERENCE
Cliché or Emerging Language?
Conference "Music/Image In Film & Multimedia", New York, June 2001
The conference ’Music/Image
In Film & Multimedia held in New York, June 9-11, 2001
opened with a number of lectures dealing with the necessity
of cliché in film and continued with the American vision
of oriental and national in film music (African, Quasiafrican,
Indian and Asian) with an occasional mention of animated
film, American movies of the 60’s and the 90’s. The second
and third day of the conference offered a much more versatile
programme. Participants tried to encompass the subject
of film music and its connection with cliché in the widest
possible way so that beside the lectures on the role of
classical music in film and its influence on films, we
could also hear a lecture on classical film-musical stereotype
by James Horner, music in documentaries, and music in early
musicals.
Conference was not limited with film music
but it also observed music in media, for example, on the
Internet, in videos or in experimental animated film. Putting
the emphasis on the marketing approach to film music, especially
the soundtrack, the last day of the conference offered
a very interesting presentation of Philip Johnston’s composing
technique who took an experimental approach to the score
for silent movies (Cops by Buster Keaton). He composed
something completely opposite of the expected and usual,
and the effect produced was quite interesting.
Apart from presentations, another interesting
moment of the conference were three round tables that started
each day of the conference with a presentation of an author’s
work and a discussion. On the first day two computer-oriented
musicians-presenters (one dealt with the problems of composing
computer music /Rowe/, the other with music on the Internet
and the way it is ’composed’ /Curtis/) served as a framework
for an extremely interesting visual-musical-film project
by Lidija Bagnoli and Gillian Anderson. Round table on
Sunday, 10 July 2001 welcomed former ’Walt Disney’ studio
composer, Buddy Baker, sound editor and score writer Lyle
Greenfield, founder of the producing company ’Bang Music’
(creative adds). Their presence prompted a discussion about
temporary music in film (temp tracks), film music
on CD (soundtrack),
and the originality of the contemporary film music in general.
On June 11, 2001 round table gathered producers: Edward
Pinder, news producer on ABC, Cathy Lewis, producer, writer,
and journalist on the CBS, and Judith Dwan Hallet, representative
of documentary film, director and producer with her own
company (Judith Dwan Hallet Productions, Inc.) The third
round table offered a view of music from the perspective
of TV producers.
They strongly supported the use of well-known
clichés, and although their view provoked a long discussion,
it represented yet another contribution to the understanding
of cliché. Approaching cliché from different perspectives
was also an attempt to give a broad answer to the question
from the title of the conference.
Irena Paulus |
