Blog Post #7 International Soundtrack: Studio Ghibli Animated Feature Films

The seventh post is introducing the international soundtrack, which emphasized Studio Ghibli's Animated feature films. The reason for introducing those films is,  as I was raised and grew up in Japan, my family or most of my friends know some of these films. When we talk about those films, we remember the story and also the music.  In Studio Ghibli, Animated films director Hayao Miyazaki is known as the best director in Japan. In 2003, his film Spirited Away(2001) won the Oscar of best animated feature film. Since his films and Studio Ghibli are also known in the world, here is the video introducing director Miyazaki and differences between his animated films and other animated films.

To describe Miyazaki's film, composer Joe Hisaishi who is one of Miyazaki's coworkers, is willing to make his films what Miyzaki's think his movies follow nature and recognition of people. One of Hisai's scores is from Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro (1988).

The score above can be interpreted as an ethnic score or animated film's score. But, for me, I have listened to the score many times, and alway felt the score makes me calm and bring me back to when I was around at age of five.

As I said, soundtrack could be filled more than half of making film process to make memorable for the audience so that the audience might enjoy watching by choosing preferred films. Eventually films are made in the world. If you had time to watch foreign films, such as I introduced on this post, you may get the sense of what movie fans are like in the country and could gain an an idea of the culture.

Here are more links if you are interested in this.
Oscar in 2003
Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi

Blog Post #6 Horor Movie with Soundtrack

The sixth post is introducing horror films with soundtrack. Some movie fans like to watch horror films. Those give the audience a  huge scared or fearful impression. I prefer to watch them with someone to prevent too many frighting feelings. According to a psychological study, once people watched horror films, their feelings got from horror films might be misattributed to love relationship. If you're interested in this psychological study, I put the link below.

Psychological Study Horror film with love relationship

I did not have enough information about horror films. I also searched and found the link that lists of the best horror movies. One of the films on lists is Jaws (1975) director by Steven Spielberg. As I've mentioned the composer many times in my blog, John Williams composed the main theme of Jaws. 
The 100 best horror films

Another film on the list is Psycho (1960) directed by Alfredo Hitchcock. He was known for powerful, complex psychological thrillers. The film Psycho broke the standardization of horror films and created a new aspect of horror film. Here is the soundtrack of the film.

Not only those two films but any horror film needed powerful soundtrack as well as the other kinds of movies. Furthermore, horror films have more demands of using soundtrack for adding extreme feelings. This is just my thought that just listening to a horror film soundtrack is also to feel scared without watching the films. 

Here is another link I used 

Psycho (1960)

Blog post #5 Animation with Soundtrack

The fifth post is showing soundtrack relevant to animated films . The story of animation films would able to be recognized for kids. The primal example film come from Walt Disney. In 1928, Walt Disney created short cartoon Steamboat Willie. Mickey was depicted controlling steamboat with happy emotional in black and white film. As technology has been developing, Toy Story (1995) was animation feature film created by computer graphic. A little boy Andy likes to be in room and could play in room and play with his toys. When Andy was not in room, his toys comes to live. Here is a theme song of Toy Story. 

Back to my first thought of animated films, the purpose of creating is for kids. In the theme song of Toy Story, "You've got a friend in me," its' lyrics emphasizes "friend, and have connections to other friends. Friendship has strength but sometimes gets weak. Eventually it gets strong again. This is the message I got when I first saw the film at around seven years old. Since watching the movie, I have been told about connection to people and how to have the balance between conduction to my family and making my future plans. When Toy Story 3 (2010) was released, I changed my impression. Here is the last scene of the film.

After watching last scene, the film ended. The soundtrack is like an emotional harmony, which led me to notice that,  like I was grown by those films, my impression of the animated film was converted to animation characters who were resembled to our current society connections with people around me. As I've mentioned several times in previous posts, soundtrack puts meanings into movies. The audience may not notice it. But film directors want their audience to think about the  film's message. That meaning could especially  be seen in film series. For animation features films, one may think only kids can enjoy watching then. But once figuring out the message from those movies, adults and of course younger generation who had watched same film enjoyed watching again or could find another aspect of film.

Here are links if you are more interested in this post
Steamboat Wille
The Toy Story Series

Blog Post#4 The Trip to United Kingdom & Alexandre Desplat

The fourth post is presenting the trip to United Kingdom and another composer Alexandre Desplat. In 2011, I went to the UK to experience foreign culture. The trip was my first trip abroad. Unfortunately, I could not go to London. Instead, York, Manchester was the place I visited. It may be recognizable with a soccer team Manchester United. The location is shown on Google Maps and I made the slideshow containing some pictures from my trip. 

Speaking of the UK, The King's Speech (2010) is one of my favorite films. The story is based on the story of King George VI in UK. He met one speech therapist to improve his weakness of being in front of an audience and practicing speech will be worth while for his life. Alexandre Desplat composed for the movie. He was born in France and started to learn piano when he was five. My impression of the soundtrack of The King's Speech is kind of sad but gives me some encouragement. Here is the examples of score: 

Besides the film, his work has been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Original Music Score. In 2015, he got the Oscar for his score for The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) in 2015. Here is one of the scores: I have not watched this film yet. The impression of score could be different by watching or not watching the film. 

The whole point of this post is that films sometimes remind me what I have done in the past and the story of the film. I hope you enjoy listening to the two example scores. 

The links  for the fourth blog: 

Biography of Alexandre Despiat

Oscars in 2015