Contemporary Film Score Composers & Conscious Music

This post will discuss the relationship between audio and visuals.

In film, I've always considered the music (and the absence of it) the driving force. Still, there are exceptions, and this may not even ring true with others. I've accepted that I'm musically-driven, so the score/soundtrack are really what drive the films I watch. Regardless, when we look at any classic achievement in film, we can clearly confirm that the music is important to the movie.

There are multiple ways that music can be implemented in a film. The first difference we must recognize is that of conscious music and unconscious music. In a film, the music can either be:
-A background score that doesn't interfere with the characters (unconscious).
or:
-Music that is literally playing from a source inside the story of the movie; the characters can therefore hear it (conscious).

The other big difference is between soundtrack and score:
Soundtrack: Music that is pre-recorded for non-film purposes; primarily for the song itself
Score: Music that is meant to accompany a film; made for the visuals

One more thing I'd like to point out:
Music should always come first. In making film, one will find it much easier to edit TO music, not find music to fit perfectly later....

I watched David Lynch's Blue Velvet this weekend. And he -- now finally a member of my list of favorite filmmakers -- uses in-film music brilliantly. The main songs in the film (Blue Velvet & In Dreams) strangely coalesce with the actual score of the film. There's one scene where two characters sit in a car and have a strikingly normal conversation -- but there is extremely poignant church music in the background. I don't know why, but it works.

The over-emotional score in Blue Velvet makes the listener question its presence in the film.

I want to make the music in my movies evoke surrealism. This method, used by David Lynch in BV and by Paul Thomas Anderson (to probably the biggest extreme) in Magnolia, expands film in a direction that's extremely under-used.