Musical Perspectives

One of the most essential, yet most underestimated decisions when scoring any scene is to question whose perspective the music is taking. In most cases it is possible to take several perspectives but very often some of these perspectives don't make a lot of sense for the music to take so a conscious decision about this is essential.

The ideal film score adds something to a scene that is not yet transported through the images so simply taking the perspective of scoring what is seen on the screen often feels redundant even though we also see it alot in high profile movies.

Generally, we usually have at least 4 possible perspectives:

1. The character(s) on screen (with multiple characters each of course having their own perspective)

2. The audience's perspective - basically an observer's perspective

3. The perspective of an omniscient narrator - scoring it with more knowledge than what the audience or characters know at this point (e.g. hinting a thematic connection that will play an important role later)

4. Scoring the action on screen

Let's imagine a scene to talk through these different perspectives and what they mean for the scoring approach: Imagine a battle scene, it's close to the end of a great war, a few soldiers are holding the last position, fighting off an overwhelming enemy. They are heavily outnumbered and still keep fighting.

The most obvious perspective here would be to score the action. The music would score the battle, probably with quite fast paced action music, possibly accenting specific turns in the battle or large explosions etc. It would double what we see on screen and barely create any new layer to the images.

We could however also take the perspective of these last few soldiers who are fighting and either give them a glimpse of hope with heroism or score their desparation. The music in this case might detach from the battle action and get into the heads of the characters, it could be a slow string driven elegic score for the despair or a slow heroic fanfaric idea for the heroism.

We could also take the perspective of the audience who observes this scene and sees the looming doom for the last few soldiers because they are massively outnumbered, we even could create a feeling of "Get out of there, you have no chance" with the music by scoring the danger and inevitable defeat.

Or we could take the perspective of an omnscient observer, who knows that eventually they will win or be rescued or who knows already that some unforseen turn will happen and telegraph this through the music.

Depending on the scene we could also take other perspectives, like for example we could take the perspective of the enemies or we could theoretically even detach completely from the action and score the location or the time.

These possible perspectives are highly theoretical of course as the storytelling, imagery and editing should already give a strong hint of what to tell. If we have continuous quick cuts of the battle scene, wide angle shots of grenades exploding etc. there is no real point of the music closing in on the characters. But if however we have close up shots of their faces, with the camera staying on them for longer, the sound effects fading away and the scene making space for an introspective music, this of course invites the music to take the character's perspective.

Good film makers know what they want the music to do and set the scene accordingly so the music has the best possible chance of the desired storytelling impact. Unfortunately, there are a lot of film makers who don't understand the power of music and tell a story in a way that the music is only "additional material and emotional amplifier". In these cases the decision is often left to the composer of chosing the perspective or at least making a suggestion of how to score that scene.

One thing that one should be aware of is that this perspective approach doesn't only work in a macroscopic approach of an entire scene but could also work in a small sequence, including perspective switches in the same scene. Very often, especially when you have the feeling of not knowing how to score a specific moment, it can be extremely effective to step back and consider other possible perspectives to find an approach to it that gives something to tell for the music.