If participants fill this thread with bands they listen to anyway, I have every reason to be more direct. The art and craft of film composition require tremendous musical knowledge and enormous versatility. Almost all composers have formal training in composition. Jerry Goldsmith, for example. From the gospel-inspired theme of “The Waltons” to the twelve-tone and serial dissonances of “Alien.” Or Bear McCreary's soundtrack for “Battlestar Galactica,” which moves from string quartet to Irish folklore and Hindi bombast to Japanese taiko. Or John Williams, who, like Goldsmith, has his own “sound,” but also had to compose, for example, what the protagonists watch on television in “Close Encounters,” from Bible epics to 1950s cartoons—which was cheaper for the producers than acquiring the music rights in addition to the image rights.
However, the bands listed here are simply attitudes—music.
What we hear in the cinema or streaming is the tip of the iceberg in terms of drafts, rejections, new compositions, and changes. And film composers are practically always working on parallel projects. No metal or rock band can do that, and even a Miles Davis, Peter Gabriel or Vangelis “only” improvised to the final cut or reused material. I myself have "fed" musicians with temp tracks on film projects I was editing so that they could get an idea of where the journey was going. The good ones maintain the mood and compose something of their own. With the bad ones, I can hear in the finished film what the template was.
A long time ago, I accompanied the promotion of “The 13th Floor” while the film was in post-production. A box office bomb, released at the same time and with a similar theme to “The Matrix,” but based on “World on a Wire/Simulacron3” originating 1973/1964. There is a world of difference between Harald Kloser's first draft and the finished music. And both the draft and the finished soundtrack were recorded with an orchestra so that the arrangement could be better assessed.
Concerning "already composed music", even the music in films such as “2001,” “American Graffiti,” or the Scorsese films contains more brainpower because the music here promotes the narrative and does not promote the film.
For American Graffiti, Walter Murch and George Lucas walked around the garden next to the editing with speakers and microphones to recreate the spatial effect of how music is reproduced in car radios and on nighttime streets. Six years later, this experience led to the use of “The End” in Apocalypse Now. It hits like if it was composed for this
Art and craftsmanship. And not “Yeah, yeah, if in doubt, we'll re-record the song and then get our next fix.”
However, the bands listed here are simply attitudes—music.
Not the slightest hint that "Big Gun" was written for the film, even in the quoted "Allmusic" article. The lyrics could fit any action movie. So not unlikely shelved/reused/altered material until you give me a source. What tramples on the skills of film musicians with such examples is the fact that these bands were not even involved in the lengthy process of composing for a film. From the finished script to the first rough cuts to the final film. Did AC/DC do that?
What we hear in the cinema or streaming is the tip of the iceberg in terms of drafts, rejections, new compositions, and changes. And film composers are practically always working on parallel projects. No metal or rock band can do that, and even a Miles Davis, Peter Gabriel or Vangelis “only” improvised to the final cut or reused material. I myself have "fed" musicians with temp tracks on film projects I was editing so that they could get an idea of where the journey was going. The good ones maintain the mood and compose something of their own. With the bad ones, I can hear in the finished film what the template was.
A long time ago, I accompanied the promotion of “The 13th Floor” while the film was in post-production. A box office bomb, released at the same time and with a similar theme to “The Matrix,” but based on “World on a Wire/Simulacron3” originating 1973/1964. There is a world of difference between Harald Kloser's first draft and the finished music. And both the draft and the finished soundtrack were recorded with an orchestra so that the arrangement could be better assessed.
Concerning "already composed music", even the music in films such as “2001,” “American Graffiti,” or the Scorsese films contains more brainpower because the music here promotes the narrative and does not promote the film.
For American Graffiti, Walter Murch and George Lucas walked around the garden next to the editing with speakers and microphones to recreate the spatial effect of how music is reproduced in car radios and on nighttime streets. Six years later, this experience led to the use of “The End” in Apocalypse Now. It hits like if it was composed for this
Art and craftsmanship. And not “Yeah, yeah, if in doubt, we'll re-record the song and then get our next fix.”
