ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with some of the tricks we can use to cut music around without producing a crime scene. The first film to use a musical underscore was King Kong, directed by Ernest Schoedsack. Up to then, incidental music was generally only used to start and finish a film. The music for King Kong was composed by Max Steiner, who used a symphony orchestra in a somewhat romantic and operatic way to enhance dialogue and action, especially the thoughts and feelings of the obviously wordless Kong, and convey them to the audience through music. Scoring a musical soundtrack is still very much done today, but what has changed is the range of musical styles that are commonly used by composers and directors. The rest of the original music was composed by Thomas Newman, paying regular homage to John Barry and Monty Norman, the originators of the Bond theme.
