There is something irrevocably human about film music. Amine Bouhafa, 39, of Tunisian origin, demonstrated this brilliantly during the traditional Cannes Film Festival music section, making him the youngest composer ever invited to this event. Starting piano at three, studying engineering before returning to music for film, he sees himself as an author who leads the director to see their own film differently. This idea of music as a “revelation” has guided his work since Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Timbuktu” (2014), a film with 7 César awards, including Best Music.
Days later, composer and singer Camille, accompanying Marie Kreutzer’s “Gentle Monster,” talked about the “creative intimacy” with films and their creators. “I really enjoy reading the script, and the music comes from the emotions the story evokes, sometimes even before the casting.” Initial intuitions arise with closed eyes, from a character, a scene, a cross-cutting message, which may not always remain, but provide a musical entry point into the film.
“A light, to make the invisible audible in the film.”
For Camille, film music is not a subordinate stylistic exercise; it is “a light, to make the invisible audible in the film.” However, the soundtrack sometimes takes flight. Her tracks for Jacques Audiard’s musical comedy “Emilia Perez” showed that a good film song should be able to stand alone without images: “It serves a film and obviously is connected to it. But it also needs to make sense without the images.”
Cécile Rap-Veber, director general of Sacem, believes the film composer should maintain their voice while adapting to the director’s vision. She advocates for film music to be fully integrated from the early stages of production, rather than relegated to the final weeks of post-production. “There are three authors in a film: the director, the screenwriter, and the composer. When they are involved from the beginning, the result is even stronger.”
“Reducing production costs by using AI.”
Yet, the Cannes celebration of composers is under unprecedented concern, as artificial intelligence, trained on existing repertoires without authorization or compensation, poses a direct threat. “We find ourselves with American and Chinese AIs that have plundered the entirety of cultural content,” denounces Cécile Rap-Veber, “to regurgitate synthetic content that directly competes with original creations like original music.”
While renowned composers maintain their close bond with directors who specifically request them, the economic temptation for producers to reduce film production costs using AI is significant. “For a new generation of composers, they will have to really stand out.”
Context: The article highlights the importance of film music composers in enhancing cinematic storytelling and the challenges posed by artificial intelligence in the industry.
Fact Check: The referenced individuals such as Amine Bouhafa, Camille, and Cécile Rap-Veber are real personalities in the field of music composition for film.
