The Musical Genre

     The Musical genre in films often have a much broader target audience than one would think. Musicals that are composed by musicians such as Alan Menken or Stephen Sondheim tend to be much more well known by the average person rather than one by Bob Fosse or Galt MacDermot. This is because Menken and Sondheim musicals are often based off of already well known stories and produced by companies like Disney. These movies will have their target audience be children, and often are the types of movies that are continuously shown as the viewer gets older, and then are shown to the viewers children and gets passed down for generations.

    Movies like Les Misérables directed by Tom Hooper grossed over $442 million at box office, and Chicago grossed about $306 million. These movie-musicals target older audiences to understand the plot and are often favored by Musical-Theatre fans rather than the average 11-year-old-kid.

    Often, movie-musicals include very specific numbers to keep the audience engaged. For example, Little Shop of Horrors is a movie-musical from 1986 that is still very popular today. The opening number (Little Shop of Horrors) is a showstopping classic number that everyone that knows the movie is familiar with. The main characters (Seymore and Audrey) work at a flower shop. They sing the classic "I want song" (Skid Row & Grow for Me) where every character hopes to get out of the downtown slums. Typically, there is one antagonist of every show, but sometimes there will be multiple. In Little Shop there is the main antagonist (Audrey II) and the supporting antagonist (Orin). There is also often a love story between the lead characters, followed by a love song (Suddenly Seymore). To keep continuity and musical storytelling, there are also often reprises and repeats. Along with this is a showstopping number (Skid Row) and a finale (Don't Feed the Plants).

    A Musicals genre narrative can really go anywhere, since the only rule is there must be multiple numbers sung by the cast. This range can go from horror (Sweeney Todd), romance (The Last Five Years), and historical (Hamilton).

    Productions following the Musical genre will always need a composer and/or lyricist, unless they decide to make a jukebox musical (Mamma Mia, Moulin Rouge). All sorts of different lighting and shot techniques are used for musicals, too. Often, if there is a large dance number, long shots and extreme long shots are used to get all dancers in the frame (Seize the Day, Newsies). The sound in Musicals is always very important, since there needs to be seamless transitions from dialogue to song. Lighting and Closeups are often used to focus on whoever is singing in a particular song (The Other Side, The Greatest Showman).

    

    Rent, A modern rock musical, is known for taking a step away from the classic musical look. It takes place in New York City. It follows Mark, a filmmaker who is documenting a year, starting at Christmas. This story has many ups and downs and shows a realistic life of a New Yorker who isn't incredibly wealthy. Marks friends Roger, Benny, Collins, Angel, Mimi, Maureen, and Joanne, all have crucial roles in his life. Everything shown on screen is meant to be everything Mark captures on his camera at some point. This was a game changer for the musical world since it took such a different approach to not only the plotline, but the music itself too. The rock musical style started with Hair: The Musical, and was made popular by Rent.

    Marketing for Musicals often utilize the opening number, or showstopping number. For posters, the main characters are often used to create a design to best represent the basis of the whole show while using basic graphics and the main characters that keep the show memorable and easily recognizable.

Chicago: The Musical

In The Heights

13 : The Musical

Representation in the Media

    Representation in the Media is very important since it can change the entire portrayal of the reality created in the work. In the Hunchback of Notre Dame, representation is greatly used with two of their characters, Quasimodo and Esmerelda. 

    Quasimodo, a Hunchback, is the main character of the movie. He is the son of a Roma woman and has an Unknown father. Dom Claude Frollo (Archdeacon of Notre Dame) had reluctantly taken in Quasimodo to give him "salvation" although there was never an issue with him to begin with. Esmerelda, on the other hand, is a Roma woman who travels from city to city with Clopin and the rest of the Roma. Frollo's mission is to teach Quasimodo everything about Catholicism there is to know in order to give him sanctuary. He keeps him hidden in the bell tower to hide the fact that he is a "monster"' from the rest of Notre Dame.

    This movie uses othering to make Esmerelda and Quasimodo not only different from the audience, but from everyone else in the movie. The whole theme of the movie is to not judge others by their appearance, which doesn't only include how Quasimodo is a hunchback, but also speaks for the racism against Esmerelda throughout the movie. The opening song from this movie translated from Latin means "Someday, someday ...God speed this bright millennium. Let it come someday" which is sung to tell the listener that there is the hope that someday peace will come. That is said right before telling the story of  how Frollo found Quasimodo and singing the words "Who was the monster and who was the man?" Which is asked to tell that Quasimodo, despite his looks and being known as a monster, was the protagonist of this story who had done nothing wrong. Quasimodo is also a hard of hearing character, since the bells ring so loud in his ears all the time.

   

    Esmerelda faces a similar problem to Quasimodo. Frollo targets her since he dislikes how "impure" she is while she is just very involved in her culture. He tries to get Phoebus, who is in love with Esmerelda, to capture her so he can give her the option of salvation or death. These events later lead for Phoebus to also be discriminated against due to his involvement with Esmerelda, which had got him kicked off of the guard.

    Overall, the movie Hunchback of Notre Dame uses othering to represent disabilities, body types, POC, and women. The use of Dom Claude Frollo as the villain showed that ignorance can only get you so far and the powerful story of Quasimodo and Esmerelda had communicated that no matter who you are an how you look, it is what's on the inside that matters.

Soundscapes Project

In this project, we were directed to tell a story using only sounds with a partner. We were also assigned to use 4 foley sounds within the 1-2 minute time frame.

Approaching this project, me and my partner had decided we would make our project based off of a soccer game. To do this we would've needed to not only focus on what noise would be going on within the game itself, but also in the background too. We used our outline to highlight every single noise that could both normally be recognized in a soccer game, and also when you're just outside so we could layer the two to make it more believable. We had gone scene by scene in order to get every possible sound noticeable in the soccer game included in our project. To complete the project itself, me and my partner had utilized both Adobe Premier Pro and iMovie.

For the next time I use sound in a project, I would definitely like to use more believable sound effects. We had used many running sounds where the layering was not as strong as I had hoped it would be, so I would also like to get better at layering to make it sound more believable. I think our foley was done very well too, but I wish I had a better "foley stage" to record it in since the room I had used had a lot uncontrollable of background noise.

Soundscapes Project