very now and then I am asked the question, "Cassutt, what is the difference between writing prose and writing a script?" Sage that I am, I say something like this:
When you write prose, you are not only the words, you are the actors, the director, the lighting and the music.
In scripts, you are the story and the words, but you are dependent on an entire team of human beings and their machines to provide action, direction, lighting and music.
A few weeks back, we talked about the visual artists who contribute to a sci-fi film or television project ("Intelligent Design").
What about those who provide the music?
As the ads used to say, music is the soundtrack of our lives. It's also the soundtrack of our future or fantasy lives. In a film, it's an incredibly versatile tool.
Sounds make a scene sing
Imagine a shot of a night sky and a looming planet. If the music is stately and classical, you expect a serious examination of future technology. If it's country-western, you might anticipate the appearance of a tramp spaceship piloted by a guy with a patch over one eye. If it's frightening, you know big bad aliens can't be far away.
Sci-fi films and television have created their own special moments in the larger world of scoring: Think back to the "electronic tonalities" of Louis and Bebe Barron for Forbidden Planet (1956) and how they influenced SF that followed.
No one can forget the opening sequence of 2001 (1968), with a hominid smashing bones to the music of Also Sprach Zarathustra, followed by docking between the Pan Am space shuttle and the rotating space station to a stately Strauss waltz. Thanks to Stanley Kubrick's vision, it was acceptable to use classical music instead of electronic tonalities ... and also to jettison a composer's work (Alex North) in favor of what were originally temporary existing musical choices.
Then you have the "tones" from Close Encounters (1977), which were actually a key part of the story.
And to this day, people suggest weird events by humming the first bars of the main theme to the original Twilight Zone series, by Marius Constant.
(In an ideal world, of course, there would be a link here that would allow you to play a fair-use bit of these. But we are limited to words and pictures.)
There are three types of movie and television music, which can roughly be categorized as main theme, underscore and incidental songs. Constant's Twilight Zone is a theme. So is Alexander Courage's soaring main title for the original Star Trek. Or John Williams' many, many signature themes: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Superman, Jurassic Park, the original Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants series.
(Well, maybe the last two weren't especially memorable, though I would recognize Time Tunnel in a matter of seconds.)
Williams, in fact, is the most influential sci-fi composer of the past generation. His blend of—well, sci-fi pomp is the phrase that comes to mind—has influenced every composer working in the field. If they weren't trying to ape Williams, they were reacting against him.
The other major voice in sci-fi music is Jerry Goldsmith, whose many credits included Alien, several Star Trek movies and the themes for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. For years it seemed that Williams or Goldsmith scored every other sci-fi, fantasy or horror film. Lately it seems that Danny Elfman (The Simpsons on television, Batman, Men in Black, Planet of the Apes in theaters) is catching up.
TV dances to new music
Sci-fi music isn't just main themes—the real work is the underscore, the unobtrusive (if done properly) music that suggests menace or wonder or tedium or romance. This is the real soundtrack of your life.
Composers aren't often acclaimed for underscore, but I will note the solid professionalism of the long late Leith Stevens, who worked with director George Pal on The War of the Worlds—a film that is so marvelously effective that it keeps inspiring remakes. I commend the original—replaying every month, it seems, on Turner Classic Movies.
Years ago George R.R. Martin and I were kicking around an idea for a series (still available, by the way) that would use American country and folk music. We even wound up naming a spaceship after one song—the City of New Orleans.
Which is why I liked the theme for Enterprise by Diane Warren. Space flight, especially in its early, pioneering days, has definite links to the imagery of Texas and the American West. (The first word spoken by Neil Armstrong from the surface of the moon was "Houston".)
Of course, Warren's theme is actually a song, complete with lyrics and a vocal. I can't think of too many sci-fi songs, beyond the odd David Bowie or Jefferson Starship track.
The veteran pop music songwriter Jimmy Webb ("By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "MacArthur Park" and others) has drawn inspiration from Robert A. Heinlein for a song called—what else?—"The Moon's a Harsh Mistress." Webb worked with Ray Bradbury on a musical based on Dandelion Wine, and titled his autobiography and songwriting handbook Tunesmith after a Lloyd Biggle short story.
The art of finding an existing song for use in a television series is fairly new: In former times, studios were loath to pay the sometimes-steep fees required by artists and record companies. If I'm not mistaken, it was Miami Vice that really pioneered the use of existing music. Now you see it—er, hear it—everywhere, from The O.C. to Joan of Arcadia. You even find real recordings used in promos, as for the recent "Sisters" episode of Alias.
ABC's fabulous Lost recently demonstrated two very creative approaches to the practice:
First, it built a whole mysterious message out of the classic French song "La Mer" (best known to Americans as "Beyond the Sea," as recorded by Bobby Darin). "La Mer" fit wonderfully with the mood, character and story.
Second, during the coda of the "In Translation" episode, we heard the song "Delicate," by Damien Rice playing over beauty shots of the island's beach—
—only to sputter and stop. The camera found Hurley, one of the castaways, angrily considering his Walkman, whose batteries had finally died. "Son of a bitch," he said.
A great moment for sci-fi music.
Michael Cassutt's musical training is limited to five years of piano lessons and occasional singing along with the radio while stuck in L.A. traffic. He is currently developing scripts for Promark and for the SCI FI Channel. His most recent novel, Tango Midnight, is available in paperback from Tor.
