MultiHub Forum

I'm a film student working on a thesis about the emotional manipulation in modern cinema, and I've chosen to focus specifically on film score analysis, comparing the minimalist, atmospheric approach of composers like Johannsson in 'Arrival' to the more traditional, thematic leitmotif style used in something like Williams' 'Star Wars' scores. I'm trying to develop a framework for quantifying how specific musical cues—like a rising string section or a recurring character theme—directly influence audience perception of narrative tension and character development at precise moments in the edit. For musicians or scholars who have studied this intersection, what analytical methods or software tools do you find most effective for isolating and interpreting the narrative function of a score? How do you separate the impact of the music from the visual and dialogue elements to argue for its independent contribution to the film's overall effect?