Part 9

(continued from Part 8)
The students saunter slowly out of the college campus, with a few proceeding towards a tea stall nearby. The local ruffian finishes his tea as he waits patiently for his prey. When he spots his victim, the goon and his cronies coolly pull out a variety of weaponry and walk towards him. Scuffle ensues, and the thug beats the student and his friends to pulp, leaving the main one sprawled out on the road, unconscious. And then it happens. As the guy and his cohorts walk toward the car, the rattle begins in the background, as though some heartbeat somewhere, that has till then held back, starting beating full speed again. And it does not let it up. The drum beat continues (matching exactly the spliced frame editing effect on the screen). As the car pulls out blowing plumes of thick dark smoke into the camera, the drumbeat changes into a complicated stringed arrangement of guitar and violin. The transition is truly astounding. The confusion and the tension that has been built up to the moment, thanks to the unrelenting percussion, is released into an equally confounding violin bit, except here, the emphasis is more on the inexplicable nature of the gruesomeness that just transpired on the screen. Welcome to the great art of re-recording (also known, as background scoring), which is indeed the unsung portion in a music director's career - quite literally. So what is re-recording? After the film has been shot, processed and edited, the music director takes the stage and comments on it. To put it simply, it is nothing more than that. Re-recording is merely the music director's observation of the proceedings on the screen, and just like the editor, who can change the pacing of a certain sequence (refer to aforementioned example), the music director can change the tempo of the scene with his (wise) choice of instruments and his style of orchestration.

The hero who has just finished his graduation, goes out with his gang to celebrate the occasion. On their heady trip, captured in a pounding foot-tapping number, tragedy strikes as the hero meets with an accident. The next few minutes throws a gauntlet at the music director. The moment has to capture the melancholy of the situation without sounding overly dramatic. As the gurney moves through the hospital corridors passing the overhead lights, symbolizing the constant interplay of light and dark, the moment calls for a reflection of the confusion of the character - whether his life is going to be cut short or not, whether he would come out with all his faculties in tact or not. The predominant emotion of the moment is confusion. Rising to the challenge, the music director shuns his trusted accompaniments of the trade - violin, guitar and the cliched 'sannaayi'. Instead, grand piano takes the stage. As the fingers run over the keys, producing a rich deep sound reverberating the gravity, and yet reflecting the graveness of the situation, the audience is subconsciously made aware of the seriousness of the moment. The notes could have been the same, but the choice of the instrument, sometimes, leaves a greater impact.

If 'sannaayi' is usually avoided like the plague nowadays, reducing the instrument to nothing more than a cliche, observe how he takes the same instrument and turns to his advantage. The heroine, a widowed single parent, befriends the hero, a mentally under-developed character. What starts as a friendship turns into a relationship of mutual comfort. At some point, she stands by him, takes his side (and his hand), when the hero's grandmother recognizes this as the passing of the torch, in terms of looking after the hero. She urges the heroine to never let go of the hand, and in the background, the 'sannaayi' starts. This is not a cliched moment, and this is not a trademark instrument. The moment signifies the true union of the man and the woman, and the instrument, simply serenades the point. At that moment, the instrument is not merely a regular 'sannaayi', it is a 'mangaLa vaadyam'. The hand-holding is not merely for support. It represents 'paaNi grahaNam'. The wise choice rightly adds a lot of subtext to the scene.

Background scores depend a lot on the gravity on the situation. It is a delicate balancing act, that has the power of either soaring a scene or sinking it. Which seems to be the reason why background scores of serious important movies tend to leave a lasting/haunting effect, than the regular ones, as they offer a chance for the music director to add his own contribution to elevate/heighten the emotion. Take into account the small duration of a scene, typically never lasting for more than a couple of minutes. Take into consideration, the gaps or the moments of silence between the dialogues. So in a narrow window of opportunity that lasts for less than a minute, the music director has to fill in the gaps, with what he thinks is implicit commentary. Consider the situation where the hero and heroine are at the beginning of a budding relationship, after graduating from a more comfortable friendship. The scene is about the heroine trying to get a picture with both of them in it. She sets the camera timer, adjusts the framing, and stands in position, asking the hero to push the button, rush to her side, just in time for the snap. As the hero looks into the viewfinder, he finds the heroine occupying majority of the frame space, and says "kaasta mee pakkana naaku kooDaa chOTu ivvanDi". The dialogue catches her completely off-guard, as it attains a different meaning altogether, considering their context of their relationship. The heroine, who already has a soft-corner for the hero, starts reading between the lines, and aiding her cause, is the chorus that joins in the background, whose notes take off upwards, signifying the sudden urge of her emotions. The beauty of that little score doesn't just end there. At a later stage in the heroine's life, whenever she is reminded of those moments, and the person that caught her fancy and captured her thoughts, the same chorus chimes in with the same notes, allowing her to relive that fascinating period and recollect to her, her then state of mind. The ability for a few seconds of score to hook on to a moment, and get identified with it speaks volumes about the longevity of its little life.

The next step in the challenge is when the filmmaker takes out the talking parts and gives wide berth to the music director to move the scene along. This becomes a litmus test to both the director and the music director as they try to replace the textual narration with their visual and aural interpretation. The pre-requisite for such a situation is the creativity and the aesthetics of the maker (sRjanaatmakata, bhaavukata). The hero finds himself in a fix. According to his astrologer, his career would take off only if he marries a woman who has a birthmark on her thigh. Not an easy thing to find out without getting married, but cannot get married without finding about it first. The first thing the director does is throw the dialogues out of the window, and takes on the onus of presenting his trouble situation and the hero's brilliant solution visually. The hero gets into action, as he furiously pedals the sewing machine and down drops a wear, with an little opening at the desired position. He immediately runs to his prospect, makes her wear it, and finds out he met his match. He then proceeds to check the remaining two prospects in his list, and finds himself confronted with similar results. He is now in another bind - which one to choose. The whole 10 minute segment is completely wordless. After the sequence is shot and masterfully edited, the director passes the baton to the music director. Even though it is comic situation, it cannot be scored as a broad comedy, as it throws, the furious pacing of the scene, completely off and the unintended effect would be quite jarring. Hence the scene is treated on its own merit - the idea is to represent the mental situation of the hero, as one who is anxious, excited, worrisome and very tense. Consequently the score follows the same rhythmic pattern of the hurried heart beat. Note that there is no usage of strings here, only the percussion, only the constant drum beat. And the end result achieves the intended effect.

Here is another scenario. What if the scene does not any extra commentary? What if silence is the perfect statement, stating the obvious? It calls for great restraint on the part of the music director to leave certain sequences alone, as they cannot bear the extra weight of the word or the note. A mentally retarded child comes back into a happily family, upsetting the rhythm of their lives. The mother, who thought her child was dead at birth, comes face to face with the child for the first time, and tries to maker her call her "amma". As the mother gets closer, the child backs away with unfounded fear. The mother becomes a mixed bag of emotions - delighted at the discovery, crushed at the handicap, frustrated with her inability, and agitated at the whole situation. And the genius of the music director comes to fore, as he lets the scene play without any background intrusion, as the mother begs, pleads, urges the child to come to her.

While a song lasting for a few minutes announces its agenda openly, the background score lasting for far less than that achieves an even greater effect by remaining entirely behind the scenes. And kudos to the music director who exercises the right judgment in deciding how each scene should play out, all in a matter of few seconds.

continued in the next part

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