Eli Messaros

Professor Hughes

English Composition II

17 March 2019

Annotated Bibliography

In a movie the music plays a huge role in how popular, successful, and memorable the

movie becomes. If the Star Wars theme started playing right now you would immediately know

what it was from. Many popular movies would not have been nearly as successful in the box

office if they did not have their soundtrack.

AFI, and Entertainment Weekly. “Best Film Scores and Movie Soundtracks.” Most Influential,

Significant and Important Films in American Cinema - The 1960s, 2005,

www.filmsite.org/100soundtracks.html.

Best Film Scores and Movie Soundtracks, by AFI and Entertainment Weekly, appearing

on AMC’s FilmSite, shows AFI’s top 25 film scores and Entertainment Weekly’s top 100 film

soundtracks.

This article starts off with AFI’s information on how they gathered the top 25 films. It

states that AFI had a vote in 2005 to determine the best scores. Then they give Entertainment

Weekly’s top 100 films. Under the top 15 of these films there is a small excerpt about each of

them. The next 75 are just listed with the title of the film and the author.

I believe that the purpose of this article is to inform and entertain. They provide links for

each of the movies in the list so you can read more about them and potentially go watch one if

you are interested in it. The intended audience for this article would be anyone who wants to see
movies with some of the best soundtracks. AFI’s vote took place in 2005 so it is a little bit dated

but the movies they chose for the top 25 are all 20 years old or more, so I don’t think that the

movies they voted for would change much if they included movies from the past 10 years. The

authors are the American Film Institute, Entertainment Weekly, and their information was then

cited by AMC. These are all big names when it comes to movies so they should be fairly

reputable. I intend to compare this list with the “100 Greatest Films of All Time” to show how

many of the top film scores are also from the top movies.

FilmFour. “100 Greatest Films of All Time .” 100 Greatest Films of All Time,

www.filmsite.org/filmfour.html.

100 Greatest Films of All Time, by FilmFour, appearing on AMC’s FilmSite, gives

FilmFour’s top 100 films.

The article starts off with some facts about the list. It talks about how the films are scored

and what types of films that the list consists of. For each listing they provide the title of the

film, the date it was released and a short excerpt about the film.

I believe that this intent of this article is also to inform and entertain. Since this is a

different article from the same source as the previous one, it is formatted in a very similar way.

They provide a link to most of the films so you can learn more about them. I was unable to find

the date that this article was written, but it includes movies from the 2000’s so it not terribly out

of date. Depending on how old the article is there might have been some really good movies

released that they would not have included. Although most of the movies in the list are quite old.

I don’t believe the list would have changed much. The author is the FilmFour Corporation and

their work was cited by AMC. This information is credible because FilmFour is a very well
know source in Britain and AMC is an extremely well know source for film in the U.S. As I said

before I intend to compare this list with the “Best Film Scores and Movie Soundtracks” to show

that film scores very frequently contribute to a movie’s success.

Boltz, Marilyn G. “The Cognitive Processing of Film and Musical Soundtracks.” Springer, 2004,

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758%2FBF03196892.pdf.

The cognitive processing of film and musical soundtracks, by Marilyn G. Boltz from

Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania in 2004 is trying to examine how music can

influence interpretation, emotional impact, and remembrance of the film.

The first section of this article talks about how music can be correctly paired with the

mood of the film or incorrectly paired. They say that this causes the viewers perception of the

film to change. If a scene from a movie is played with music that has a similar mood people will

remember it as either happy or sad, depending on what the mood was. If that same clip were

played with music with an opposing mood people would interpret the clip oppositely from the

people who watch the first clip. The second section of this article discusses how music affects

how memorable a movie is. It then goes on to detail two experiments that were performed. In the

first experiment the participants were asked to try and remember the film, the music, or both.

Afterwards they were asked to recall what they remembered. In the second experiment they had

participants view a film with either a congruent or incongruent soundtrack. After the film they

would replay scenes and try to have the participants remember what music was playing during

that scene, or vice versa. They also provide lots of data and the conclusions for both experiments.

The intent of this article is to teach. The audience of this article would be anyone who is

interested in the mental effects of music or someone who wants to know how to write an
effective soundtrack. The article was written in 2004 but the methods and effects of music has

not changed for a long time, so the information they supplied is still true. The age of this article

does not change its reliability or its intent. The author is a professor of psychology at Haverford

College. This alone makes the source credible but the vast number of sources used solidifies its

credibility. I intend to use this source to show what makes an effective movie score and to show

that movie music has more of an impact on the film than most people realize.

Cohen, Annabel J. “Music As A Source Of Emotion In Film.” Virtual Lab, 2001,

https://rhythmcoglab.coursepress.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/10/Music-as-a-

Source-of-Emotion-In-Film.pdf.

MUSIC AS A SOURCE OF EMOTION IN FILM, by Annabel J. Cohen, from the book

Music and Emotion published in 2001, discusses how music affects emotion and in turn how

emotion affects the experience of the film.

This chapter tells how music in a movie affects the overall experience and how music

makes you feel different emotions throughout the film. In the first section of this article the

author describes what they define as emotion. They say what the differences between emotion

and mood are. The next section of the article goes on to explain the history of films. They first

talk about the “silent film” and then the “talking/sound film”. In the third section diegesis and

non-diegesis are described as being fictional and non-fictional. The article states that the

characters and the “fictional narrative” in the film are diegesis, while the music the screens and

projectors are non-diegesis because they are physical reality. The rest of the article goes on to

explain how music is used in film and what musical techniques are used. Then it explains how
the brain processes music and how the composer writes their music. Finally, they give their

conclusion on how music and film affect emotion.

The purpose of this article is to educate the reader. They intend to tell the reader how

music in film can cause you to experience different emotions. The book this article comes from

was published in 2001. The effects that they say music has on a person and methods used in

musical composition has not changed since the book was published so the age of the book does

not affect its relevance. The author of this article is also a professor of psychology and is a

member of the American Psychological Association. This means she is a credible author. The

book was also written at Oxford and was later cited as a source by Yale. This shows that the

article is also credible. I intend to use this article to find information on what composers do with

their music to make the audience feel certain ways during a film. This source will help me find

out what aspects music brings to a movie experience.

Epicleff. “SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY.” SCORE: A FILM MUSIC

DOCUMENTARY, SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY, 16 June 2017, www.score-

movie.com/.

Score, an Epicleff production, released on June 16, 2017, shows the audience how

important music is to a movie.

This documentary on film scores gets information on film music straight from the source.

They interviewed many of the famous film composers on how they write their music. They

talked about how silent films were anything from silent. The projectors in those days were

extremely loud so there would usually be a piano or an organ playing along with the movie to

drown out the projector noise. As the movie progressed through time it talked about how the
original “King Kong” was a rather stupid movie but the music made it more suspenseful. Next,

they talked about the shower scene from “Psycho” and played it once with the music and once

without. The music made the scene significantly more terrifying. They also played an old clip of

John Williams talking about “Jaws”. He said that the jaws theme would play louder and faster

when the shark was approaching. When they were done talking about John Williams films, they

talked with many other composers about movie they had done or were currently working on.

Throughout the film they talked out how certain sounds or rhythms affect different parts of the

brain.

The purpose of this documentary is mainly to entertain but it also educates the viewer.

The audience of this film would be anyone who is interested in movie music or someone who

wants to know more about the composers of the music. The documentary was released in 2017

so it is very up to date, so its meaning or intent has not changed. The documentary was written

and directed by Matt Schrader, who has won three Emmy awards and has previously worked for

CBS and NBC, so he is a fairly credible author. The information presented in this film is

completely trustworthy. Most of the information was given directly from the composers during

interviews. I will use this resource to find quotes from composers and to get information on what

they do to write a film score.

Maremaa, Thomas. “The Sound of Movie Music.” The New York Times, The New York Times,

28 Mar. 1976,

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/28/archives/the-sound-of-movie-music-audiences-have-

changedthey-want-the-music.html
 The sound of movie music, by Thomas Maremaa, from The New York Times in 1976,

tells how film music has changed over time.

This article talks about how film composers write their music. It gives examples of

famous composers and films, such as John Williams and his score for “Jaws”. For his score he

used an 80-part orchestra whereas some film composers of the time were using 15-part bands.

The author also provides quotes from Williams about what methods he used to make the music

for “Jaws”. The rest of the article tells what other composers of the time do while writing music.

The purpose of this article is to inform the reader on how music for films has been used.

This article is quite old, but a lot of what it says is fact while what it said of “Jaws” is still true.

This article is still relevant today. Due to the age of the article there is not much information on

the author but I will continue to look. This article was written for The New York Times which is

a well-known and reliable newspaper. It also provides quotes from John Williams and some

others. I will use this article to find information on John Williams and some other film

composers. This article talks about what music can provide to the overall experience of a film.

Palmer, Erica. “How John Williams Changed the Relationship between Movies, Music.”

DeseretNews.com, Deseret News, 10 July 2014, www.deseretnews.com/article/865606674/How-

John-Williams-changed-the-relationship-between-movies-music.html.

"How John Williams changed the relationship between movies, music", by Erica Palmer,

for the Deseret News published July 10, 2014, talks about the successes of John Williams and

how he changed movie music.

This article starts of by saying why John Williams is such a famous film score composer.

It uses a quote from the Utah orchestra conductor who said that over a billion people are familiar
with John Williams work. The author then lists some of Williams best works, such as Superman

(1978), E.T. (1982), Schindler’s List (1992), and most of all the Star Wars films. The article then

tells about how you hear music from one of his movies and would instantly recognize it. The

author also states that Williams has composed music for a few Olympic events. Lastly the article

talks about the awards that Williams has received for his work. According to the article he holds

the world record for most Oscar nominations with over 40.

The purpose of this article is to tell the reader about the accomplishments of John

Williams. The audience for this article is anyone who is interested in the works of John

Williams. The article is a few years old but the majority of the article is facts about Williams or

quotes so these things won’t change with time. This article is still relevant. The author is a

graduate of Brigham Young University. This author has adequate information because they are

able to get information from the Utah orchestra director, Jeff Tyzik. The information in this

article is credible due to the number of quotes used. I will use this article to gain information on

John Williams and his methods. This article contains quotes from Williams talking about why

music is needed for the success of a movie.