The Film Music Industry

    A new haven for musical adventures has been the motion-picture industry. Many composers have been renowned for their skillful wisdom in choosing the sounds that would harmonize or contrast the screen. Many of the tools and figures in the classical European music have been employed and many creative users have found a space to experiment with.
    Cinema, at its core is altogether a new form of art. Considered elementally it is a fusion, and only a fusion of various classical art forms - drama, literature, music, dance etc. and some recent art forms like digital photography. Thus a wise producer must have all of this in comfortable chairs to produce a good movie.
    Hollywood is mainly focused on drama and literature. The essential elements driving a typical Hollywood movie are its story, and the enactment. Music here, serves the purpose of a smooth river (sometimes rash, though) on which these things can flow. The prime focus is almost never on music, but its sudden absence usually causes the audience to search for the sound.
    Bollywood, on the other hand, has a lot of 'visible' music. There is not only the background music that runs through almost the entire length of the film, but there are video songs, where the actors are usually shown to be singing the verses , and (sometimes, though) even playing an instrument. They are less 'rational' as it seems really strange how a police inspector could suddenly get such a lovely voice, or how any random person can suddenly get such good words.
    But it does not really matter, since people do not mind attaching good sounds to good faces. It is unfortunate with the music industry in India that most of their work is with the tag of a film and not independent artist labels. Musicians here are like 'secondary' stars to the film actors.
    It is absurd to think that the film industry is going to end some day soon. This is a serious business and occassionaly it covers areas even outside the scope of 'entertainment' in classical sense. And films will always need the music. An evolving world is the safest world. The emergence of new film forms will call for new musical forms. But, those musical forms will be in the background. Always.