Chapter 10 Reaction

Archie Odenyo

Chapter 10 Review

        I’m glad I read this chapter about sound in movies. For the longest time, I assumed that movies used music previously recorded by artists. I never thought about the music that’s used during certain situations in a film.

For example, in scary movies, whenever something is going to happen, faster paced music is playing. This piece of music was composed by someone, and I soon realized the majority of the time, it is an original score. This had me thinking about some of my favorite pieces of music from films. First one I thought about was Axel F. It is the instrumental theme song that is the stable for the BEVERLY HILL COP series. The song was named after the movie’s main character, Axel Foley. When you think of BEVERLY HILLS COP, the Axel F instrumental is one of the first things you think of. Whenever Axel Foley is in a scene by himself and he is investigating, the instrumental is playing in the background. It is as important to the three films in the series as it was for Eddie Murphy to play the role of Axel Foley. The point I’m getting at is: moves scores are extremely important to films. It adds to the experience and helps mold how you view the film. When a serial killer is about to kill his next victim, the last thing you expect to hear is a bed-time melody. Heart racing, fast paced music adds to the level of suspense. With this music, it prepares us so to speak, to what is happening or is about to happen next.

Lumet touched on this fact in the beginning of the chapter. He stated that “movie music has developed so many clichés of its own that the audience immediately absorbs the intention of the moment.” (170) In my personal opinion, this is one cliché that I don’t mind about movies. Like I said previously, the last thing you expect is for a violent scene to be happening and a nursery rhymes is playing in the background. The music needs to match the mood of the movie as well as the specific scene. Yes, this does something give away the fact that something is going to happen in a scene. But the mystery still lies in us not knowing exactly what will happen next.