Society of Motion Picture Engineers : incorporation and by-laws (1926)

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SCORING A MOTION PICTURE Victor Wagner* IT TAKES years to accumulate a fund of musical knowledge before one is able to synchronize the music with the picture. A musician who through ignorance or whim chooses music which burlesques a serious scene commits an offence, he destroys the science and art of musical presentation of motion pictures. One has to have at his command a musical library of a thousand different numbers and a sensitive feeling for their different moods to be able to classify the numbers properly. The well known operatic melodies are not very useful, as they fit only the scene for which they were written and which scene the public visualizes on hearing the music. It is therefore important to consider the key in which each number is written to make a smooth musical bridge from one selection to another. In selecting the most appropriate music, one has to be careful not to anticipate the development of character so as not to stamp immediately the man with the cigarette as a villain; or, when a particularly beautiful girl enters, not to draw too hastily the third line of the triangle. Again, if one sees a man walk into a room wearing a derby and having a cigar in his mouth, one does not play mysterious music at once, because he may not be a detective after all. Not only is a knowledge of high-class music necessary but also a knowledge of most of the popular and national music with their characteristics of practically all the civilized and uncivilized nations. There is one task laid on the musical director who arranges a musical program of accompaniment for motion pictures which is seldom appreciated. This is the task of making music supply in a measure the spoken word — the missing dialoguie — the play on the speaking stage — where this is not provided in action and in subtitles. The musical adapter has thirty, forty, or more scenes instead of a series of three or four acts. This I mention, because it must be remem})ered that no scene of any great length will maintain the same emotional key throughout. In the spoken play, there is a constant shift of emotional apj)eal as the incidents of the scene progress. I^ut in the motion picture the play breaks up, not into acts, but into scenes, and scenes so arranged that a much closer sympathy of emo • Mu.sical Director, Eastman Theatre, Rochester, New York. 40