Psychological impact of leitmotifs across a trilogy: Williams vs Guðnadóttir

[Brandon96]

I'm a film student working on a thesis about the emotional impact of leitmotifs in modern cinema, specifically comparing the work of composers like John Williams and Hildur Guðnadóttir. While I can analyze the technical aspects of a film score, I'm struggling to articulate how a simple recurring melody can subconsciously shape an audience's connection to a character across a trilogy. Are there specific analytical frameworks or scholarly approaches to film score analysis that move beyond describing instrumentation and into the psychology of auditory storytelling?