{"title":"A Neglected Story: Observations on the Manuscript of Wu Dajiang’s Film Score for Painted Skin (1993)","authors":"Shuang Wang","doi":"10.5406/19407610.16.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.16.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The manuscript of Wu Dajiang’s score for Painted Skin is the only one of King Hu’s film music scores known to exist today. The manuscript represents new and direct evidence of King Hu and his film composers’ working method. With the aim of investigating the presentational force of the film music, this article reviews several pivotal leitmotifs and their repetitions. Based on the interviewees’ testimonies, this study reveals that the production of the music could not be ascribed to Wu Dajiang alone, as credited in the film. Evidently, King Hu’s artistic intentions carried considerable weight in the musical decision-making process, and the manuscript reflects the collaborative nature of the music production process. Music assistant Lu Lianghui’s substantial contribution is of particular importance. His compositional devices, including his design of repetitive leitmotifs and a new type of operatic scoring, which features Nuo Opera, make the presentational force of the music self-explanatory. The effective integration of the visual and audio elements owes much to King Hu and Lu Lianghui’s close collaboration.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"4 1","pages":"51 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84214851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Criticality and Film Music","authors":"R. Stopford","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2022.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2022.10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43097634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews","authors":"Ron Rodman, E. Mazierska","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2022.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2022.11","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45322145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Everything About Being Indie Is All Tied to Not Being Black': Indie Music, Race, and Identity in Medicine for Melancholy and Pariah","authors":"J. Sexton","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2022.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2022.9","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this article I will explore the use of indie music within two African American independent films, Medicine for Melancholy (2008) and Pariah (2011). These two films are rare examples of African American films featuring an extensive employment of indie music, despite a huge growth in such music appearing within feature films over the past twenty years. I investigate some of the racial contours of indie music and examine how it is utilised within the two films under analysis. Both these films employ indie music to explore individuals who do not conform to some of the more stereotypical characteristics of black identities. I frame these analyses within a broader discussion of the links between indie music–particularly indie rock– and whiteness, exploring prejudices against, and marginalisation of, many black music artists within indie music cultures.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"16 1","pages":"129 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44515310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tape Recording Hollywood","authors":"Eric Dienstfrey","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2022.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2022.8","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article details the historical factors that shaped Hollywood's adoption of magnetic recording during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It draws upon economic theories of technological change, archival correspondence, technical records, analyses of postproduction workflows, and delineations of the structural constraints that limited how the film industry initially wired magnetic media into its production and postproduction stages. In so doing, I explain why the adoption of such a revolutionary recording technolog y did not initially usher in changes to the industry's modes of acoustical representation and why these changes instead took place several decades later.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48110612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Music, Noise, and Nature: Energetic Ambiguities in Benedikt Erlingsson's Woman at War","authors":"Heidi Hart, B. Schirrmacher","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Unlike most films dealing with the challenges of climate change or globalization, Benedikt Erlingsson's film Woman at War (2018) is full of energetic humor and contradictions. The protagonist's conflicting roles as choir director, eco-warrior, and future adoptive mother undermine expected binaries, as do onscreen musicians in this communication of complexity. In our intermedial and ecocritical analysis, we demonstrate how the film's sound design exploits ambiguities of diegesis, nature and culture, music and noise, and order and revolt to generate a more empowering than merely entertaining plot.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"25 1","pages":"19 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76567369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Soundtrack of The Killing, its Orientalist Features, and the Implicit Other","authors":"Kaapo Huttunen","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.3.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.3.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This study focuses on the soundtrack of the Danish television series The Killing, and especially on its stylistic features that point to the Middle East. Moreover, it takes a critical look at the strategies used in the music and sound design of the series that relate to immigration and Islamic culture in particular.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"115 7","pages":"45 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72386659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sounding the Middle Ages: A Cinematic Chronotope","authors":"Vasco Zara","doi":"10.5406/19407610.15.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores the strategies used in movies to recreate the sound of the Middle Ages. The musical elements that our culture chooses for identifying the past and their reasons for those choices are an interesting point to start this investigation. Bakhtin's notion of \"chronotope\" is useful for discovering the musical signs of \"medievalness\"; indeed, the sources for authenticity are not the \"historical\" sources but the musical paradigm defined before the Second World War.","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"55 1","pages":"20 - 44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76478044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Searching for Soul, Reframing the Pursuit of Capital: A Comparison of Kahlil Joseph’s and Derek Pike’s ‘I Need A Dollar’ Music Videos","authors":"J. O. Jackson","doi":"10.3828/msmi.2022.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/msmi.2022.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Two music videos were commissioned for Aloe Blacc’s breakthrough song ‘I Need A Dollar’ (2010). The Harlem, New York version directed by Kahlil Joseph adopts a split-screen technique, depicting an unnamed man negotiating the city’s busy streets while, at the same time, framing Blacc as a directionless musician singing wistfully at the window of a dilapidated flat. Derek Pike’s Las Vegas, Nevada version, on the other hand, portrays the singer as a struggling musician traversing the desert before – unexpectedly – winning the jackpot at a casino. This article explores two main lines of argument. Firstly, I explore how institutional and industrial contexts result in two distinguishable music videos, suggesting that although both versions are created in similarly professional and commercialised settings one video is produced within a more ‘independent’ environment. Secondly, I explore how two different music videos can emphasise or de-emphasise certain elements of a song’s content and meaning, drawing from Emily J. Lordi’s theorisation of ‘soul’ to suggest that the ‘soul music’ qualities of Blacc’s ‘I Need A Dollar’ record are emphasised when practitioners adopt a more ‘soulful’ approach to music video creation (Lordi, 2020).","PeriodicalId":41714,"journal":{"name":"Music Sound and the Moving Image","volume":"16 1","pages":"53 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42899961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}