My Love of Movie Soundtracks and Their Importance in Films

During my early teen years, a career option that I considered was to be a music supervisor. I remember googling, “Who make the soundtracks for films?” and that is just what came up.

Music Supervisor: the head of the music department on a film or television show.

A bit unconventional, especially considering I have no musical talent. I believe this interest came from the strong emotional attachments I would have with movie soundtracks. When the perfect song would play at a scene in a movie, whether I knew it or had heard it for the first time and it just worked, I would get so excited. Music has a crucial role in my film and television watching experience, as I believe it does for mostly everyone. Imagine if your job was to compile a collection of music from different artists to help convey the perfect emotions in a film? Sounded like a dream to me. It is like making Spotify playlists for specific moods but on a much grander scale.

Soundtrack vs. Film Score

Now a film soundtrack is not to be confused with a film score. Both are crucial, but a film score is the original music created by a film composer. It’s the instrumental and orchestral music that plays throughout a film. I could equally enjoy listening to a film score of a movie I love. Some of the most notable film scores come from popular film franchises: Lord of The Rings, composed by Howard Shore; Harry Potter by John Williams, Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper and Alexandre Desplat; even Twilight by composer Carter Burwell.

Palo Alto (2013)

One of the first soundtracks that piqued my interest was Palo Alto (2013), a film by Gia Coppola based on the book of short stories written by James Franco. It is a visually appealing artistic film centred around teens living in Palo Alto, California. This film has the dreamiest soundtrack and film score.

The film’s music is by Devonté Hynes and Robert Schwartzman. This was my first introduction to Devonté Hynes' work (a.k.a. Blood Orange on his personal music projects) who is an artist that I have grown to love over the years. My favourite songs from the Palo Alto soundtrack are "Champagne Coast", "Graveyard" and "It’s You". Hynes has created many more musical scores for both television (We Are Who We Are [2020]) and film (Queen and Slim [2019], Passing [2021]).

Even now, when I hear the Palo Alto score and soundtrack, they just hit deeper than the songs that I listen to every day. I think that's what I love so much about the music chosen or created for films. It impacts the listeners' emotions on an even higher scale than stand-alone music already does. Now, I’m not sure whether this is because when we listen to these songs we are reminded of the emotions from the film. Or perhaps musical scores and soundtracks are made to convey a stronger emotional response whether accompanied by a film or not. In these pieces of music, I don’t believe that lyrics are as important. It is all about feeling, mood and sound to accompany the visuals and on the screen.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Another of my favourite film soundtracks would be from Baz Luhrmann’s film The Great Gatsby (2013). Although this film is based in the 1920s, telling the classic story originally written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the soundtrack includes an array of modern music from hip hop to indie. The variety of musicians includes JAY-Z, Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey, Fergie, Kanye West, Florence and the Machine, The xx, Frank Ocean and Sia. This was an album that I could listen to again and again after seeing the film. The incorporation of modern-day music helped emphasize the party scenes during the Roaring Twenties, especially for the then modern-day viewers.

All in all, music has an important place in television and film and the collaboration of these two mediums create the most amazing works of art.

Grace Elizabeth

Grace is a Professional Writing student at Algonquin College who has a love for film and television.