Score: A Film Music Documentary (2023 Review)

The Best and only Documentary about film score brings Hollywood’s premier composers together to give viewers a privileged look inside the musical challenges and creative secrecy of the world’s most widely known music genre: the film score. Read all about it here!

What’s about

Score: A Film Music Documentary is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Matt Schrader about film scores, featuring Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, John Williams, Quincy Jones, Rachel Portman, Trent Reznor, and others.

The film was released theatrically by Gravitas Ventures on June 16, 2017, and on Blu-ray and downloaded on September 5, 2017.

The film inspired Score: The Podcast, a weekly show on Apple Podcasts hosted by the producers and featuring prominent Hollywood composers as guests, launched on April 3, 2018. The documentary is available to stream on TUBI TV, in Canada.

For a predominately visual medium like cinema, its musical component also plays a vital role, especially its score.

The film’s soul is expressed in that essential musical accompaniment, whether it be sweepingly majestic fanfare or delicate lyrical pieces.

This documentary explores the artistic role of this special musical discipline that completes the cinematic artistic creation process and the artists who have devoted their careers to this contribution.

They explore the form’s history and examine the masters who defined it with their own distinctive artistic vision. In doing so, the various components of this delicate creative process are revealed as they create a musical compositional work that has inspired a popular appreciation of music in all its forms, which gave some old musical ways their own new lease on life.

Because Hollywood films are released around the world, film scores are the world’s most international music genre. Billions of people from Hong Kong to Brazil can hum the Star Wars theme as well as any American. And perhaps it’s no wonder.

The combination of music and image is the world’s most expressive medium, opening up a deep, emotional connection that inspires us, gives us goosebumps, and can make even the manliest men cry like a baby.

Writing a symphony is hard, but few musicians can craft symphonies around visuals, weaving new ideas and feelings into a film. Composers must be psychologists, able to identify and manipulate the emotions that make for powerful moments — much like a great writer uses words to communicate a brilliant idea.

The film will explain the tricks composers use to make a powerful moment stick in our hearts — and how well-timed melodies and unconventional sounds turn heroes into villains and tension into triumph.

Tracking the progress of modern-day film score development, SCORE l illustrates how the first few notes on a piano keyboard end up in the most dramatic moments of a film’s emotional climax.

Turning the spotlight on the creative struggles that make up a major motion picture score, this documentary also showcases the way the world’s top sound smiths solve musical challenges — like scores being so effective that a film is rated R instead of PG-13.

SCORE breaks down scores for their memorable constructions and explores the anatomy of a compelling score and what it takes to write a score that echoes in moviegoers’ heads for decades.

My Thoughts

I’ve always been a film music lover since the first time I heard the Oscar Winning Scores of Alan Menken, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. From now on, I pay much attention to the film score—the piano, Legends of the Fall, Forrest Gump, The English Patient, and so on.

Never stop till this day. My rockstars aren’t Harry Styles or Drake; are Hans Zimmer, James Horner or John Williams.

Looking for documentaries to stream, I came upon Score: A film Musico Documentary, and I must say I devoured the 1:30 min film. I wanted more.

I want a whole 10 hrs docuseries. That’s how in love with this show I am. Thanks to TUBI TV, you can stream it for free now in Canada. It is a must-watch.

Read the post about the beautiful Legends of the Fall by James Horner.
GO TO THIS LINK AND LISTEN TO THEIR PODCAST, IS FANTASTIC. CLICK HERE

TRAILER, SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY