Blog 2

1. This week we watched the movies Top Hat, King Kong, Robin Hood, and The Best Days of Our Lives. My favorite movie out of the four was The Best Days of our Lives. I liked this movie because, like The Jazz Singer, I got caught up in the drama and emotion in the film. I thought the acting was very heartfelt and realistic for being made so long ago. Of course the music also made the film enjoyable. The Americana music in the film was catchy and not as conventional as the pervious films. I also enjoyed watching King Kong, the music in this film really set the mood in certain scenes. For example, whenever King Kong or the Dinosaur creatures started to come near the human characters in the film the music became more dramatic and dark. The was also not a lot of source music, which meant the composer had a lot of work to do. The only time I remember there being source music in the film was when the native people of the island were playing the drums. 

2. In class we talked about Aaron Copland, a composer who is well known for his Americana style. I enjoyed listening to music in films from composers like Max Steiner, but I think I liked listening to Aaron Copland's music more. The samples of music that I heard in class on Thursday were very different from what I was use to listening to in pervious films. Dr. Berry said that the music is more folky and I liked that. It is also interesting that Aaron Copland was gay and he was still excepted in Hollywood. For the time period that he lived in, I would think that people would be too closed minded and not respect him because of the way he lived his personal life. 

3.In the reading I read about the movie Frankenstein which was pretty interesting. While reading about Frankenstein, I was introduced to different terms, for example, String Tremolos, Woodwind Trills, and Flutter-tonguing. All of theses music terms make a movie and the movie's characters have a certain style. The techniques help identify what type of a person the characters is suppose to be in a film. For example String Tremolos are used most commonly in horror films which needs to have music that is dramatic.  Theses techniques are very similar to the techniques used in Jaws that made the movie so scary for the viewers.