How Music Elevates Story.
A Video Essay
This week in the blog I present to you the first in a series of video essays, this week we will take a look at the leitmotifs of Howard Shore and the Lord of the Rings, I will be discussing how he brings these musical scores to film and also taking a look at the Hobbit, interviews with Howard Shore and his engineers on the movie.
He uses these leifmotifs with the visuals to transcend his pieces and bring momentum musically but will also deconstructs them throughout the movie to add light and shade and create musical tension from his leitmotifs and scores. Its this clever use of leitmotif’s which have elevated the story.
It was integral to Howard Shore, Director Peter Jackson and his colleagues from the film that the work was done well and to be as truthful and expressive as possible to the books heritage and there vision
They knew they had a hard task ahead, bringing the book to film and at the core of this success was how they was able to interweave the themes and music into a films story, which is an important foundation stone to the trilogies success and later Hobbit trilogy!!
Howard Shore uses these four major leitmotifs within his musical score, The Lothlorian theme, the ring theme, the shire theme, and the fellowship theme.
This is how he builds momentum, and creates tension musically, a leitmotif is a musical phrase linked with a character, place, object and concept.
The leifmotifs origns come from opera, most notably Wagnerian opera created by classical composser Richard Wagner.
Shore’s ability to bring these skills and techniques to all his leitmotifs throughout the trilogy is awe inspiringly beautiful, showing his ability and skills, its clear he is one of the greatest composers of our time.
The origins of this movie come from a heritage that was created by Tolkien’s books called The Hobbit.
It was important to Peter Jackson that the purity was kept when translating this to the big screen. Howard Shore was able to bring new dimensions to this story through his musical score and its his interpretation that is the reason behind its critically acclaimed success!!
Its important to understand this Trilogy was voted ‘best book of the century’, the fan base is already huge and outspoken and the books have been labelled unfilmable so the task at hand was one of epic proportions.
It was always going to take a committed ‘fan’ to make these films and New Zealander Peter Jackson stepped up to the plate with the audacious plan not only to make them in New Zealand but also to make all three at once.
For the rest of us, the story doesn’t have to be inclusive because what we have here is the cinema’s favourite scenario.
Good against evil. Everything else is setting the scene. The task for the sound crew was, like always, to present an experience for the viewer and to help the story unfold.
There will be many comparisons between The Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars.
When they arrived and not a lot else. The music was being scored on the other side of the world and they were dealing with a production environment, in New Zealand that still had to prove itself.
The scoring happened in four places, initially in Wellington, and then in three different studios in London.
The soundtrack CD was to be released a month before the film so the schedule was incredibly tight – tight enough for mixing to be carried on simultaneously with the scoring. Abbey Road mix engineer Peter Cobbin explained the system: “John Kurlander who was the recording engineer, on a daily basis, was sending tapes down to Abbey Road where we were mixing again on a daily basis.
By the end of recording the entire score which happened to be at Abbey Road the mixing was also near enough finished. If the mixing had happened after the recording we wouldn’t be seeing the film at Christmas time. When John and Howard Shore, who wrote the score, realised it would be possible to mix at the same time as recording.
Howard Shore’s choice for recording engineer was Brit John Kurlander who is based in LA. He recorded all the sessions .
The music mixes would later be sent via the Internet to the dubbing stage to help the mixers get the feeling for what they were doing, and especially as the music was all through the movie.
Most of the time, sound effects don’t have a choice ‘where’ to put sound, but music does.
For example, if we see the Balrog pounding on the wall, then we have to put a pounding sound in sync with the action. If that sound effect is something we want to hear, then music should play before or after it, but not hit it in exact sync.
It was on that whole action/reaction theory, with the sound effects being the action, and the music being the reaction, that the soundtrack was built.
This leaves room for both sound effects and music to play together, each one filling a different emotion. Sonically, this also allows more detail to be heard in both as well.
“Storytelling with sound is often deciding where not to put sound. Some things are much more mysterious if left alone.”
Check out the references here for more information about the making of the music and Lord of The Rings!!
‘The Making of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ – (documentary) – at imDb
‘The Lord of The Rings – Fellowship of the Rings Extras’ – (documentary) – on YouTube
‘The Real Middle Earth‘ – (documentary) – The Tolkien Gateway
If you have the time I recommend getting the book and CD!!
‘The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films’
Hope you enjoy the vlog!! Tune in next week!!
We will be looking at one of my most recent recording projects for 2019, where I am starting to look at how sound and music effect water, I will be introducing the concept and talking to Carol from the Emoto Peace Project about how this amazing research subject will change the world!!
“Take It To The Limit One More Time”
Cities of Gold Studios 