Friday

I have a problem with synthetic music in films. It seems to have become a trend lately. Watching Gladiator last night it occured to me that perhaps this film was where it originated - or where it's viability in a blockbuster originated. What I mean is the use of a synthetic orchestra instead of getting a real one to practice and perform for you. Obviously the latter is quite a chore, both in time and in money, but I think it pays off for the audience. The sound from a live orchestra is, naturally, unique. In Gladiator you can quite clearly hear the synthetic nature of the music. But it worked, or it works, and the film was a huge success. On the back of this, then, did studios start to use this method more and more? Immediately my thoughts turned to Pirates of the Caribbean. This was in fact initially prompted by parts of the Gladiator soundtrack sounding almost identical to the later film. Pirates too succeeds with synthetic music, but I cannot get away from it sounding cheap, from it sounding like a TV movie at times. Considering how much money studios spend on a movie, couldn't they just add a little more for real, live music? It makes a lot of difference, to me.