Filmmaking Basics/Understanding Filmmaking/Analyze George Lucas in Love

Narrative Film Production:
Course #01: The Basics
Lesson:
Lesson #002: Understanding Filmmaking - Study the Way Movies are Filmed in Hollywood
Pages of this Lesson:
Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Watching how dramatic scenes are broken down and filmed in Hollywood.
Page 3 - Analyzing the movie George Lucas in Love
Page 4 - The Basic Filmmaking Process


A short movie similar to our short movie edit

Understanding Moods
We need to look at a real world example of a motion picture which is similar to what we will be filming. That movie is George Lucas In Love. We need to understand why this movie is such a success while other similar movies are failures. The secret is the music. It is the music which creates the mood for George Lucas In Love.

Google search for Deborah Lurie and George Lucas In Love edit

Who is Deborah Lurie and why is she so important?

  • Start by going to www.imdb.com for a list of the credits for the music composer Deborah Lurie. Notice that her first full credit as a film composer is for George Lucas In Love.
  • Skim through the article at www.theforce.net about George Lucas In Love. Look for the part about the film score.
  • And most importantly, notice that Wikipedia does not even mention Deborah Lurie at George Lucas In Love. Amazing!!!!
  • Then download and watch the short movie called George Lucas in Love which can be found at Google.
  • Finally turn down the sound and watch this movie without music.


It is Deborah Lurie's music which makes this movie a success.

And it is the music for our movie which will make our movie a success.

Music For Our Movie edit

Our movie needs the same moods as George Lucas In Love. The only way we can do that is by having music which is just as powerful as Deborah Lurie's score for George Lucas In Love. We begin work on the music in Lesson 8 - Creating the Temp Track.

For now, we will just try to figure out how Deborah did this for George Lucas In Love.

List of all the music in George Lucas In Love edit

When you watch the movie, you will see:

  • The movie starts with traveling music. This music shows that George is busy. This music does something else even more important. It tells us, that this will be a good movie. If you hear good music at the beginning, you know there will lots of different moods clearly expressed (in music, of course) in the movie.

Note that this traveling music at the beginning of George Lucas In Love is Narrative Music and not Background Music. It certainly sounds like background music because it is soft and gentle. But you can tell it is "in your face" narrative music when it is too strong for any dialog. As soon as the dialog starts, the traveling music is turned down.

To be continued…