audiot

Image by _ES via Flickr

i’m serious. we have all sorts of things that are supposed to define us, show off or create some kind of aura for us. we have a certain look (wanted or not), made out of clothes, hairdo, fragrance – combined with accessories like business cards, stylish eyeglasses, design-cellphones, briefcases or handbags and so forth… there is even such a thing as image-designers, no kidding – i once knew one. some people actually practice their handshake, overall motions and/or the way they talk to materialize their desired style.

so it’s mostly about seeing.

where do people get the idea to have a certain look or image? my guess would be movies and tv-shows because that’s what usually influences us the most. an example: when the seatbelt was invented, nobody used it. even when every car had them, still no one strapped him/herself in. then politicians (first in the US, then other countries followed) achieved, that in movies and on tv everyone used the seatbelt and – drumroll, please – within a rather short period of time, almost everybody followed this example. we usually don’t notice things like that and make up other reasons to justify, but we are strongly influenced by our surroundings – like it or not. another one: almost every time there’s problems in movies, you see someone pour him/herself a drink. so what do people at home do when things get tough? exactly. and without any real reason by the way. but i’m drifting off once again :-)

so what puzzles me is, why don’t we have themes? it would be the perfect completion to our designed style and, to connect the dots, it’s a common thing for a movie or tv-role to have a theme. but even the most obsessed stylefreaks don’t have one, right?

but why? maybe a reason is that it’s kind of hard to realize. imagine people walking around you or sitting next to you in the bus constantly emitting their theme through their cellphone or mp3-player. one huge mire of sound, what a terrible thou…..wait a minute, that’s exactly where we are today. only it’s not everybody’s specific theme, but even more random stuff. when i was younger (sheesh…) i had a walkman and used it all the time WITH my headphones on. today i see teenagers listening (not really) to music WITHOUT headphones, but through their crappy few-millimeters-almost-exclusively-midrange-cellphone-take-that-neighborhood-speaker, how lame is that? anyway, today an own theme would be easy to realize. lots of people have the possibility to do a simple tune themselves, even my 10 year old cellphone (back then a true masterpiece in design ;-) ) has a function for that and there could be websites to do that. and for the well-heeled people, appropriate services could be offered. new cars should have their own theme that plays when you put the key in. i want the ‘streets of san francisco’-theme in my next car. and garage doors could play something like the 20th-century-fox-fanfare when you open them (imagine how your neighbor would get crazy jealous) and even better, the doors in appartments could be equipped with sensors that recognize the inhabitants and play the tune of each one when she/he enters the room – should be something short though…. sounds ridiculous? think about it, the possibilities are there already – and we are not that far away at all. cellphones allow us to assign specific ringtones to certain persons (imperial march for the boss, jaws-theme for the girlfriend…), ain’t that kind of a theme-thing already? but way too random for my taste.

i say go get your personal theme and include it in your look – it’s about time…

do you like old movies? i do, most of my favourites are somewhere around 1970. almost any new movie i have seen doesn’t really catch me. now why’s that, you ask. i’m not exactly sure because lame stories existed back then as well. i’m coming out of the closet right now by telling you the name of one of my all time favourites (and i seem to be the only person who can stand this flick). it’s called Mr. Majestyk and features Charles Bronson as a melon farmer. although the story is quite lame (see?) this movie is very cool and i do believe it’s because of the music. Charles Bernstein did a great job with this one – i love the opening title tune. to me there’s film composers like the great Lalo Schifrin for instance who can make a movie (or a tv-show for that matter) thrilling, even if the story sucks. there might be a lot of reasons why Star Trek is the most successful science fiction show ever but in my opinion the music is one of the most important. in a dvd-special-features-documentary from either ‘the next generation’ or ‘deep space nine’ (can’t remember), they show this in some detail. did you know that those shows have scores for each single episode? so they recorded a soundtrack for everyone of those episodes with an orchestra in a studio. i always thought tv-shows were given one soundtrack, recorded in a few different ways, and used all over the whole series and most of the times (if not every time) that is how it’s done. and if you really concentrate on that, you can hear (or feel) a difference between this show and any other science fiction series…

but back to soundtracks in general. what bothers me about more recent movies is, that they don’t seem to have real soundtracks anymore. there’s some loud-and-compressed-to-death-more-soundeffects-than-music-crap for action sequences and some sweet-violin-and-other-string-stuff for the more relaxed scenes. then they have a song from the charts plastered all over the film and that’s it. ptui!

do yourself a favor and watch, or better: listen Bullitt or Dirty Harry or M Squad or Two Mules for Sister Sara or anything similar and you’ll see what i’m talking about: perfectly tailor-made music for that very movie/show that not only gives it its own feel and character but also makes it kind of timeless. having a top-ten-hit sticked to a movie because of monetary reasons on the other hand might ruin the movie and it surely will be ridiculous in a few years or even less…