Fei Wang
CHI 321
Paper 1
In the film "the killer," the theme song appeared for several times when the plots became important, which left me a deep impression. The conflicts between the scene of Gang firing and the soft voice of theme song is quite shocking. So my topic is about the power of the background music.
In Oxford dictionary, the meaning of background music is that "music intended as an unobtrusive accompaniment to an activity or to provide atmosphere in a film."(Oxford Dictionary) In the films we saw, there are basically three kinds of background music in general, the Chinese opera, pure music, and theme music.
The Peking Opera in the film, as we heard in " Human Women Demon," is like another way to explain the character's feeling; the Shaoxing Opera in the film" Stage sisters" is the story line, which helps the movement of the destiny of the sisters; the Cantonese Opera in "Rouge" opened and finished the film. In the films, the different kinds of music represented the different using of music, but in general the operas, especially the lyrics, reflected the feeling of the characters, formed the story line of the film. Actually, the traditional Chinese Opera has a large number of forms in general. There are mainly 8 forms of the Chinese Opera, the Beijing Opera, known also as Peking Opera (Jingju); Cantonese Opera (Yueju); Sichuan Opera (Chuanju); Ping Opera (Pingju); Henan Opera (Yuju); Qinqiang Opera; Kunqu Opera; Huangmei Song, originally "Caicha Opera." Different forms of Opera has different methods to perform. For example, the Sichuan Opera, " It is delivered in Mandarin and takes face painting to an extreme that is highly colourful and entertaining. One of the greatest arts is what is known as 'Changing Faces', where the actor by some hidden means instantly changes his current face mask for something completely different. This is a top secret skill that very few people know." (Automatic, 2013, p.1) In the history of the Chinese Film, the Chinese Opera is frequently be used in the story. Except for the ones we saw, there are also several famous film which deeply touched me, like "Farewell My Concubine." The story happened in the period of the Republic of China and went through the Cultural Revolution. The actors of main characters, Xiangyu(Xiaolou) and Yuji (Cheng Dieyi), acted their own life as the recorded history in the ancient, is a good case in point of the combination of the Peking Opera and the story in the film. The saying about "life is like a stage" shows the importance of the Chinese Opera in the Chinese film history.
Another kind of background music is pure music. There is an interesting point that more and more contemporary film directors would like to use the foreigners to take in charge of the background music. For example, Jou Hisaishi, one of the most famous composer in Japanese films, especially for Miyazaki Hayao's cartons. He also write the theme songs for "The Sun Also Rises" by Jiangwen, "The Aunt's Postmodern Life" by Xu Anhua. Also, we do have some good Chinese composers. Like Li Xiaotian, who won the 8th Hong Kong Film Award for Best Composer by the film "Rouge," Jay Chou, a most famous pop singer in China, is a composer for his own self directed and acted movie, "Secret," which also won the best composer in 44th Taiwan Golden Horse Award. Unlike the theme songs, the pure music do need a high concentration on the rhythm, pitch, instrument to explain the atmosphere. And there is another kind of pure, it is silence. Like the opening in "Rouge," the silence may represented the empty mind of Ruhua, which is totally different from the ending.
The last kind of background music is the theme songs. As I referred in the former paragraph, the theme music is different from the pure music because of the lyrics. In this case, the songwriters seem important for the film. For example, "Tall in the saddle" written in the film "Once Upon a Time in China," is the most representative song for the series of Wong Fei-Hung. The lyrics,"Face waves million arrogance/ Blood as the red sun/Iron gall bone, such as stainless steel may/ Zhangting minded vision of thousands of miles long/I work hard to do a good job Han/ A day to be a good man to self improvement/Han blood man more light than the sun/ Let the sea and the sky for me Poly energy/ See blue high-Zhuang/ To see clear blue sky and bright young noble spirit/ I am the Strength of Men/ We do strong pillars of our step-by -step to do a good job chest Han/ I heat with 100 points out of 1000 by Edward/ To be a good man/ Intestinal blood hot hot/ More light than the sun" match the melody perfectly, which give people a sensitive inspiring. Sometimes, the theme songs last longer than the film, but when listening to the song, we can easily think of the famous scenes.
In conclusion, as the time developed, the film went through the silent film, sound film, 2D film and 3D film, the technology made amazing steps to help express the story. But the music, which cannot be instead, no matter the silent, sound, 2-D or 3-D. It is because that the when people enjoying the movie, the background music can easily lead people into a certain situation of the feeling. For the case to touch the audience, the 3-D experience cannot do it, the high resolution ratio cannot do it, but music can do it. The moving melody never be lost in the history of the film.
References,
Oxford University Press. Oxford dictionary, Retrieved October 6, 2013, from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/background-music
Automatic, Chinese Opera in General, Retrieved October 6, 2013, from http://www.china-expats.com/ChineseOpera.htm
