Music and Cinema: a Never-Ending Love Affair

Even if some great filmmakers, such as the Dardenne brothers, choose to use no soundtrack at all in their films, music is still one of the most important things in cinema. A soundtrack can either save or ruin a film, which makes its concept a crucial moment for both directors and composers. Such is the importance of music for filmmaking that the Berlinale, together with Volkswagen, created a competition for young composers and sound designers as part of the Berlinale Talent Campus.

“Steering Emotions”, the panel that took place on the last day of activities at the Talent Campus dealt exactly with the importance of music in films and the works done by the three participants of this year’s Volkswagen Score Competition.

Moderated by film critic Peter Cowie. Canadian director Guy Maddin (whose THE BRAND UPON THE BRAIN is being screened in the Berlinale Forum) and Polish Oscar-winner composer Jan Kaczmarek (FINDING NEVERLAND) discussed the process of composing a soundtrack for a feature film, the importance of music to set the emotional tone of a scene and how directors and composers should work together since the beginning of production so as to get the best of this partnership (or as Maddin puts it, “marriage”).

Guy Maddin, for example, talked about his fondness for music as a way to approach viewers’ emotions, saying that he is not afraid of melodramatic ups and downs. Kaczmarek, in turn, emphasised the importance of close communication between the director and the composer, not necessarily in technical terms, but talking about the emotions and messages one would like to have pass through the film.

Afterwards, the three participants of this year’s competition – Titas Petrikis (Lithuania), Ilja Coric (Germany) and Costas Fotopoulos (England) – where called on stage and the public could see (and hear) for the first time the music they composed for the three different short films (an extract of an animation film, a short documentary and a 3-minute-sequence from FINDING NEVERLAND), a rare opportunity to see how three young composers have such different approaches to the same scenes.

I’ve had the opportunity to visit Talents during their works and to talk to them about the Score Competition. Even if there is a final prize (the winner of this competition will be invited by Dolby on a trip to Los Angeles to visit one of the best sound studios in the world), all of them consider themselves winners just to be able to work with Jan Kaczmarek as a mentor and to have the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg performing the music they wrote.

As for the outcome of this experience, they would all like to compose music for feature films in the near future. For now, the winner of this year’s Score Competition will be announced at the Closing Party of the Berlinale Talent Campus.

Leonardo Mecchi

© Berlinale Talent Campus 2007