I just came across this most beautiful of albums: Yasujiro Ozu – Hitokomakura and I shall quote from the record labels description….

“This is the second of a series of label projects pertaining to film directors… This release turns its focus upon Yasujiro Ozu’s use of “pillow shots” (i.e. short poetic pauses that appear between the acting segments of his films. The term “pillow shot” was not coined by Ozu himself, but several years after his passing in the early 1960s by a Japanese journalist who was trying to draw a comparison of the intermediate scenes to “pillow words” found in traditional Japanese poetry.

Each artist who appears on this release was asked to choose one or more “pillow shots” to use as inspiration for their pieces. A link to web pages containing a large assortment of pillow shots” was provided, and accordingly, the pillow shots were reserved on a first come, first served basis. The artists also watched the films from which the pillow shots came from in order to get a sense of how their chosen pillow shots were employed by Ozu.”

“The sound work featured represents a wide range of artistic approaches, but as always with these projects, the artists were chosen specifically, based on their previous work and on how it might contribute to the collective whole of each project.”

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Ozu-san’s films have had a major influence on audiences & directors alike, often sited by people such as Jim Jarmusch & Wim Wenders, this album is well worthy of investigation.. available worldwide via forced exposure

Yasujiro Ozu’s site, imdb filmography, wikipedia page and selected filsm by Midnight Eye

“The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise.
Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire – we hold history’s record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas.
And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ear, through the realms of phantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego’s core of wish and desire. Spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has but one purpose — to prevent the will from ever achieving silence.
Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination. The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and its Divine Ground.”

from Silence, Liberty, and Peace (1946)

‘Film Music’ – what a generic term! Please excuse me, i’ve been out in the sun too much lately & after six intense weeks in a loud dark room filled with vampires I feel like my senses have been reborn, or at least defragmented & newly focused…
One of the joys of final mixing a film, for me, is finally getting to hear the score. I always aim to collaborate as much as possible with the composer on each film, but there inevitably comes a point in the final preperation for the mix where we each have to just conform, do the final pass on our respective elements & go into the final mix with our faith in the the ability of the director & the mixers to find the perfect balance….
and god bless them, they always do!
But what really intrigues me with respect to the score for a film is, despite knowing the film intimately (having sweated over every single frame in its entire duration & considered & provided input on every element of sound, ambience, foley, sound effects & design) I suddenly get to see/hear how the composer has interpreted & contributed to the film, scene by scene. While sound (as in ambeince/foley/sound effects/design) contributes (or is at least available) for every frame of the film, the score choose its moments… And it is a disease of ‘modern’ film making where music also fills every second of the film soundtrack – it is constantly there, informing us how to react & feel, as though we are idiots, unable to interpret a narrative on our own. I am not going to point the finger at anyone (directors or films) but suffice for me to say film is not television – in a cinema the audience is a captive audience, they arent about to switch channels just because theres a quiet moment or because they got bored. Quite the contrary, I believe those quiet moments are crucial for an audience to fully engage…

So it begs the question, what drives a composer to provide ‘some’ (& not all) of the films soundtrack? Where do they start & where do they end the multitude of music cues that go into the final mix? To help consider this incredibly deep philosophical question I am going to quote from a recent interview with music editor Ken Karman; “Music should start for a specific reason, play a point of view or an emotion, and then get the hell out, not drawing the audience’s attention.” Amen to that sentiment, brother!
Its true of designing complex sound effects too, that it is valuable to think about the soundtrack relative to the envelope of generating a sound on an analogue synth – ADSR where A=Attack, D=Decay, S=Sustain, R=Release
A moment happens, and in sync, pre-emptive or delayed the sound starts = its attack, instant liek a gun shot or slow, like a wave breaking… the initial moment resonates (decay) & then sustains, until it slowly dissolves (releases) back into the ongoing paradigm of the soundtrack… ADSR!
Now moment by moment I fully appeciate the ADSR approach with sound, but how does it apply to the score? Well I sure dont have any universal answers but I am a permanent student of such things & as a starting point would like to suggest you read this excellent article:
In defense of Mickey Mousing

Not coincidentally the list he provides of composers who tend to underscore (rather than ‘Mickey Mouse’) pretty much equates to a list of my favourite film composers… but then the ‘right’ score for any film is that which best suits the film & most effectively helps tell the story, so damn the idea of trying to answer a very broad question with a specific answer… its all good if it works!
& God bless that little rat… by the way i laughed out loud at the Mickey Mouse/Disney jokes in the recent The Simpsons movie – did you see it? did you get the injokes? Bart in the train was funny/obvious (i’m a mascot of an evil empire!) but the score for the moment in the cabin when Homer & Marge get it on, witnessed by the local animals was hilarious!!!!

no i’m not confused… thanks to Matrixsynth & youtube I just thoroughly enjoyed Ryuichi Sakmoto playing the theme to Merry Christmas Mr Lawerence live, have a listen:

I shot some video of Mike Hedges & Gethin Creagh mixing a scene from 30 Days of Night & sped it up 5000% – I left the clip intentionally mute as figured no one wants to listen to the whine of audio playing 5000% faster than normal!

For what its worth Mike is closest to the camera & mixed Sound Effects, Foley, Ambiences, Sound Design & Vampire Vocals while Gethin mixed Dialogue/ADR & Music. The film was mixed at Park Road Post on a Euphonix Series 5 desk setup with 276 inputs – we only had two spare channels by the end of the mix… I can’t show you a shot of the room with an image on the screen without getting in trouble, so heres a photo from another movie mixed there: