IFMCA Award nominations 2011

Can't agree about CONTAGION. Haven't heard it off film, but it was a very solid score in the film.

I think it was meant to be disturbing. (Super virus conquers the world...)

I think it's meant to introduce a sense of chaos into the film... as though something uncontrollable and unattractive has been sent loose.

Yes, I know I'm in the minority when it comes to appreciating music that isn't only lush and symphonic (sarcasm, guys!), but I still like to hope that film music critics -- of all people -- would be able to have greater overview and better insight into all kinds of film music produced a given year, even those that move beyond the traditional styles. And to appreciate them on their own terms.

Examples of scores I'd like to see mentioned in the list:

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO (Reznor/Ross)
HANNA (Chemical Brothers)....strange that they were nominated as newcomers (sic) but not the score itself
CONTAGION (Cliff Martinez)....but DRIVE was mentioned, thank God
SOURCE CODE (Bacon)
SANCTUM (Hirschfelder)
BIUTIFUL (Santaolalla)
MEEK'S CUTOFF (Danna)

Although beside the point of original music, it would be great to have a category for films that had powerful marriages of existing music and film, like:

THE TREE OF LIFE (various)
MELANCHOLIA (Wagner)

...and maybe also a category for films that effectively used NO non-diegetic music, like:

NADIR AND SIMIN
LA QUATTRO VOLTE (technically a 2010 film, I guess)
TOMBOY

More picks from outside the US would also be nice.

Finally, you see that even the 'unknown' films and composers mentioned still have a fairly traditional, orchestral style, so just because they're largely unknown, doesn't mean that they depart from the bias.

Even the 'reissue' category contain the classical symphonics. No mention of the superb 80's scores like Colombier's THE GOLDEN CHILD (a long-desired and brilliant effort) or Zimmer's THELMA & LOUISE.

Maybe so, but a little more stylistic diversity within the categories you already have would be nice.

Never once did I consider whether or not the score was electronic or not. I'm only sorry that I wasn't able to see more of the films as sometimes it could sway your vote for or against.
Tom

The issue I had with Source Code is that while the bookends are fantastic the majority of the score is rather weak and doesn't live up to what was presented in the main title or what Bacon creating during the fantastic climax. The Artist, on the other hand, is quality from start to finish with not one dull note written.

Again, Thor, we can't nominate everything!

-Erik-

And again, that wasn't my point.

You can't nominate everything, but you should have everything as the basis for nomination.

I think the bias is rather more obviously towards popular and especially american movies. It's a given that an obscure korean movie about hamsters would never get nominated on a list like that no matter how good the score was. That's not a criticism though. When people vote for their favourites, it's obvious that the top results will consist of movies most people have heard of.

That said, I think the list has a nice variety of styles. Traditional or not, there are huge differences between Kung-fu panda 2, Hugo, Rango, Jig, Doctor Who, Tintin, Soul surfer and Jane Eyre. If that's how widely you define traditional scores, I think 95% of scores to popular movies today are of the traditional kind. Given this, 2 non-traditional nominations wouldn't reflect a bias of the IFMCA, but rather a bias for popular movies to have traditional scores.

Peter

It's not even that people are voting for their favorites. We give specific guidelines to people to try to decide what is the *best* from a technical, dramatic and compositional standpoint. A score you don't actually *like* listening to can be excellent from a technical and compositional point of view, and can support the dramatic narrative perfectly - it's *that* aspect that we try to emphasize, not just ones we actually enjoy listening to.

But what tends to happen, like in any group consensus, like Peter said, is that the scores which more people have heard stand more chance of being nominated than those who have only been heard by a few. We do make a lot of effort - real, focused effort - to try to bring smaller scores from smaller films to the attention of the membership, but at the end of the day the group is a democracy. Simple mathematics and statistics win out!

I'm not going to vote for something just because it's different.

-Erik-

I agree to a point. If the John Williams sound-a-like is a better score than the experimental-never-heard-before score then I'm going with the Williams sound-a-like... not because it's a Williams sound-a-like but because it's the better score. And if the experimental-never-before-heard-score is better than the Williams sound-a-like then I will vote for Reznor and... errr... the experimental score. Pretty simple.

-Erik-

I'd suggest it's more a set of awards devoted to a group of albums than scores as they work in films. Most of the categories cover contemporary albums according to film genre (not music genre), and there's a category for specific repackagings of older scores. And that's fine, the roots of the group are in people who are very attracted to soundtrack albums. Of course some of the key films will be watched, but I remember as a member of the group I found it frustrating that it mostly seemed to be about whether people liked the music than whether it was a particularly novel choice for a film. Even the system of promos is geared more to assessing albums than film scores. It's a practical issue also --it's easier to listen to half a dozen new albums a day in theory, but unlikely there'd be a chance to cover an equivalent number of films. (Obviously the group can't say outright that this is the case, because to appear to be award season relevant, it's got to look like it's more about the films than the albums.) A way to address this would be to streamline categories and more clearly delineate 'most enjoyable music' and 'most interesting score', but in the end it's a hard thing to really rate with a numbers-based system. They'd end up looking the same, I think, with minor differences.

It's not a criterion at all. We don't steer members in one way or the other in terms of the stylistics of one score over another - we allow them to make their own value judgments based on nothing more than their taste, their experience in evaluating film music, and their critical analysis of the art. Seeking out scores which "try to go alternative ways and that don't adhere strictly to convention" would be dishonest, because then we would be trying to look all cool and arty for the sake of being different, rather than trying to come to a consensus of what is actually the best score, irrespective of genre or style.

If enough people genuinely thought that Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or Hanna or Drive or Source Code or Meek's Cutoff was the best score of the year, then we would give it the Score of the Year award. But, not enough people did - hence they were not nominated for the main award.

Also, your comment about "if it's different and it heightens the experience of the film immeasurably, it should be a contender more than the umpteenth variation of the John Williams 'soundalike'", exposes a bias on your part with an insinuation that John Williams 'soundalike' scores do not heighten the experience of the film immeasurably simply because of what they sound like. That's not what we're about.

Well, that's the impression I get from reading your list.

As I said, one shouldn't set out to nominate the different' scores just for their 'differentness', but one should have guidelines that allowed for a wider set of criteria, a more open attitude and an effort to avoid biases like this. It's really about widescale attitude change, and I realize that's a difficult thing to have overnight. But that's also why it is a lifelong project of mine. I think it limits the potential of what film music is and should be.