From building characters to defining the feel, we look the important role music plays in Tarantino films.
Terrence Malick is as much known for his unconventional process as his unconventional style. Whether handing out reading lists instead of scripts, improvising scenes, or changing the entire direction of a film on the cutting room floor, Malick’s approach is anything but ordinary. When it comes to music, Malick could be considered more conventional. His films feature a blend of classical and contemporary music with original scores. But the way he weaves music through his ideas, characters, movement, editing, and subtext, brings a completely new dimension to these films.
Watch any movie, and you’d agree that music carries an incredible amount of weight in storytelling. So often, you walk away from the experience not thinking twice about a score. But every so often, there’s a score that stands out. Not only has it created an essential background for the film, but it’s set the standard for other films within its genre. That’s what makes the films on this list so special. There’s magic when a great scene meets the perfect score. Magic that continues long past the release of a film.
In a film, music can either be a life raft or the tip of the iceberg: something that sits on the surface, staying afloat, or something that hints at a greater narrative depth. One is a missed opportunity and one is art, and for directors like Phil Wall, behind Hulu’s The Standard, he’s not using his sound as a way to bail out. He’s using it to crack the door to something underneath the surface.
It’s easy to think of an ad’s soundtrack as something that enhances the emotional moments or simply fills out the rest of the edit, and sometimes that’s true. But, there are also times when the script is flipped, when music becomes the starting point, not the finish line.
At Musicbed, we preach the importance of music every day, but sometimes we don’t have to preach at all. There are filmmakers who just get it. The creatives at Blue Ox Films know the weight and importance of music as much as we do, and we had the chance to talk with them about their work on The CW’s All American Stories.
In her now 21-year career as a film director, Sophia Coppola—the daughter of Hollywood mogul Francis Ford Coppola—has staked her claim as one of the great visionary filmmakers of our time. Though often compared to the likes of Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson, Coppola has carved out a distinct style of her own.
When you’re relaunching a brand as iconic as the Ford Bronco, there’s more than a little bit of pressure. It’s almost like remaking The Godfather. In other words, you better not screw it up or you’re going to have an army of angry fans at your door. Wieden+Kennedy’s team was facing this pressure head-on, and so much of their brand reveal hinged on the creative—specifically the director’s vision and the music.