AD- I was kindly gifted tickets to this event by Harrogate Festivals for social media coverage and this blog post. The name's Sunshine, Agent Sunshine and I like my Gins with a heavy twist of Gin!
Last week I was kindly invited down to the Harrogate Convention Centre to enjoy Casino Royale with the Halle Orchestra playing the soundtrack live. This definitely sounded like my cup of tea so I put on my snazziest Bond-esque outfit and headed on down!
To complement the evening, the team over at Harrogate Festivals had arranged for some typical Bond cars to be on display, there were DB9s, a couple of brand new Aston Matins and a Rolls Royce, so me being me just had to pose in front of them to get some photos for the 'gram!
This evening was going to be like no other, a theatre full of avid Bond fans all eager to once again watch Daniel Craig become a fully fledged 007.
We all know and love the Bond soundtracks which are just about as synonymous with any Bond film as his Martini's are to any bar order so to be able to hear it being played live with a full orchestra promised much and was wonderfully over delivered.
Having studied Media at college and being fascinated by all things film ever since, I was intrigued to see just how the Halle would incorporate into the film itself, given that music plays such an important part in both film and TV.
Even parts of films where not much is happening on screen- you can tell it's a tense scene because you can read the actor's body language- if the screen was turned around or blacked out you wouldn't necessarily be able to because all your visual clues had gone.
This is where music comes in, get the orchestra instruments lined up just right and you can give the audience the exact emotions you are wanting to convey without them ever seeing a single second of film.
This is what I find so clever about the whole visual Media world and why I believe film scores and musical directors should always be rewarded at award ceremonies. It takes a lot to put music to a particular scene in any film and have those shots taken exactly the way the writer and director wanted them to be.
Can you imagine that infamous Jaws scene if the da-dum-da-dum was something different entirely? No, because the director wanted audiences to gasp, scream and be frightened by just a few bars of the opening score.
I'm sure we can all think films whereby the first few sequences or the first big car chase are all paired with an incredible score or big orchestral movement- they simply wouldn't be the same without them.
It's the same with all the tiny movements within films, the times when the actors aren't necessarily talking, the small scenes, the ones where the films which wouldn't make sense without.
The drumroll when Bond is eyeing up the baddie, ready to pounce, or the moment where Daniel Craig is desperately trying to fix the defibrillator to his chest after he's been poisoned.
The music here may be subtle, but it all carries within the scene itself allowing the audience to be both anxious and nervous all at the same time.
It was an entirely different feeling watching this film with a live orchestra, I got chills when they started playing 'You Know My Name' when the opening titles started.
This again is where the music comes into its own and allows the audience to be swept up into the world of James Bond. Just a few bars of this title music and we all know the film we're about to watch.
I'm sure musical directors do this deliberately so their music becomes synonymous with that particular film, again I link back the the Jaws music- those three simple da-dum-da-dums at the beginning have audiences the world over come out in goosebumps because everyone knows that the shark is about to appear. It makes us remember the film and therefore the musical score as a whole throughout it.
Even Disney films have this effect because they have the same title music to every single film, even though the score itself will be completely different for each one.
It's a clever marketing tool and one which has been put to use ever since the talkies way back in 1927- The Jazz Singer was the first feature film to include music and talking and was also the first film to prove that the technology used was worth investing in.
So, you see music really has been working in harmony with film ever since they were both invented. Without it you'd just be back to watching silent films and having to rely on the actor's movements and word written on screen to provide with a sense of imminent danger or threat.
You just need to look at the best film scores of the past 25 years to see this in action - this list includes Jurassic Park 1993, Schindler's List 1993, Apollo 13 1995, Titanic 1997, Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace 1999, Amelie 2001, Wall-E 2008 and Interstellar 2014.
So many amazing films whose scores are so well ingrained within us that even if we only ever catch the first few notes we know instantly which film we think it is or could be.
Basically, as you can probably tell, I am passionate about film and its associated music. I strongly believe that the two are so intrinsically linked that they couldn't be without each other and should not be dismissed. The Halle Orchestra, conducted by Ben Palmer carried this off with aplomb and I never want to see a Bond film again until they play the score. It was absolutely fantastic and such an amazing way to kick off the Summer festival season with Harrogate Festivals.
I thoroughly enjoyed my night out with Bond and I am still waiting for him to come pick me up in this gorgeous red Aston Martin!
Love, Sarah
xoxoxoxoxo
