Some of you may have watched the sunday horror on tv2 last weekend, it was Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' (1980). It had been a good 10 years or so since I last saw it so decided to watch it again and enjoyed it even more this time around. Anyway while browsing Shining-related stuff online in order to read some explanations of the ending I came across a spoof trailer on youtube which re-edits the film in order to make it look like a disney family movie:
I thought it made a great example of how essential music is to an audiences perception of a film, and how we automatically associate certain music with particular genres of film which can then shape how we interpret the images. I think if you knew nothing about the Shining this trailer would be completely believable as a family film even though essentially all they have done is change the music and narration.
For comparitive purposes here is the actual trailer, which interestingly uses no dialogue or narration at all but relies solely on the music and images to give the audience an idea of what kind of film it is:
Another shining-related point in relation to 'popular music' is the influence of the film on an old favorite music video of mine, Massive Attack's 'Karmacoma' (from around 1994 I think):
If you haven't seen the film it may not be so apparent just from watching the trailer but the long tracking shots in the hallway and interior style of the hotel rooms are very reminiscent of The Shining's setting, while other elements such as the twin girls, and the typing of 'karmacoma' over and over again in the closeup shot on the typewriter are the more obvious references to the film.
5 comments:
Great post and brilliant mash up of the video. To me it also brings up two very important points I'm no sure we are covering in class.
1) The ability a trailer has to make even the most rubbish of movies look good (Superman)
2) The question of whether this should be considered 'illegal' against copyright laws and subsequently taken off youtube for using some one elses movie and music.
Just interesting thoughts.
Ben
Thanks for your comments Ben. If you are referring to the spoof trailer i'm pretty sure the fact that it dosen't reproduce the complete work and isn't used for any commercial purposes means there are no legal issues around it. I'm no copyright lawyer though...
The re-shot trailer for The Shining was superb.
It's examples like that, and how severe the emotional context for Psycho shifted with no sound, that shows how vital the music is to getting across the tone.
- Kevin.
Way back in 2001 I saw a neat doco video on horror films and the use of sound. I remember it had John Carpenter in it, he talked about how he came up with the theme for Halloween. I think that's another one that relies more on sound than image for suspense. I should fish it out again.
Stella
I was just reading about The Shining in KJ Donnelly's book Spectres of Sound. The Shining is a compilation score of classical classics, so to speak. I'd forgotten that.
John Carpenter's quite influenced by Bernard Herrmann's work. I love his soundtrack for Assault on Precinct 13 . He was pretty cutting edge and minimal with some of his synthesiser stuff for his films. There's an Afrika Bambaata electronic track which pays homage to the theme from this great riff on the B-movie.
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