Gareth Crook Okay so a documentary about film scores sounds a bit dry and boring right? Well you'd be very wrong, it's fantastic! A real insight into a world that moves us, toys with us, helps us experience films in a way that we simply couldn't do without music. Hans Zimmer is a revelation. Talking about the excitement of creating and the fear of getting started, what am I doing? Can I do this? It's fun too though, The Pink Panther, James Bond, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, music that makes you smile, that transports you. Bernard Herrmann's work with Hitchcock, moving away from tunes into something so much more. The way music can enhance and even be a character in itself or simply provide a skeleton for the visuals to flesh out. There are some downsides, James Cameron proving once again what an uncultured moron he is, but really it's a celebration of musicians, of composers, of studios, the technicians, of film and emotion. There's a wonderful feel of play to the whole thing. That music needs wiggle room and shouldn't, can't be perfect, it needs space. "If everyone in the orchestra hit the same note on the page, it would sound terrible. It would be like putting auto-tune on Etta James. It would take all the soul out of it". Yes there's a lot of the expected Williams, Zimmer, Elfman, Newman, but most of this is narrated by the non superstar composers working today and there's definitely the suggestion that things are once again changing with people like Reznor, Greenwood, Mansell working today. Making the whole thing very positive, not just a golden age nostalgia fest, the future is just as exciting. Oh and needless to say, watch this with the volume way up... it sounds incredible!

Red-125 Score: A Film Music Documentary (2016) was written and directed by Matt Schrader. The film featured dozens of people who have written, directed, and played music for movies. These included Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman, but there were many, many more. Often, we don't even notice the music playing during a film. Or else we somehow believe that the music just arrived in the movie. There it is--we listen or not depending on how loud it is or how beautiful it is. Of course, some film music has become popular in its own right. Figure skaters still perform to Tara's Theme, or the 007 theme, or the music from Dr. Zhivago, years after the films have somewhat faded from our mind.Still, cinema is a visual medium, and we don't think much about the music when we're watching the movie. The music is "just there." Except that it isn't. Score documents the immense effort and cost involved in bringing music into the films.I recommend this movie because I think that you'll learn quite a bit, as I did. Also, the film made me more conscious of the music we hear every time we go to the movies, or watch a film on the small screen. Also, it will work very well on the small screen.

jdziubek-78104 Great entertaining detail on the technology that goes into movie music. I liked the attention to the musicians and agents as well. Introducing us to the studios, large and small, was appreciated. I would like to see a companion piece by the director on the earlier film composers. Then he can include Rota, Korngold, Elmer Bernstein, and more of Herrmann, Alfred Newman, Raksin, Steiner, and Waxman.

winstonnc "Score" is not a bad overview of film music history and craft, albeit somewhat simplistic ... and some folks here, perhaps inadvertently, say things that are obvious or pretty stupid. Is there a single reference here to Erich Wolfgang Korngold? I think not. Instead Steiner and Newman get too much credit that symphonic sound in films forged in the 1930s. But what mostly irritated me was the film's way of equating of today's film composers with the masters of yesteryear. Most of them aren't worthy to shine their shoes.