Beneath Clouds and The Boys: jazz artists making film music

This article examines the compositional processes of established Australian jazz artists writing for film. Two specific case studies are discussed: the Necks’s score for the film The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1998) and Alistair Spence’s score for Beneath Clouds (Ivan Sen, 2002). Specific music cues from the films are analysed in relation to artists’ observations recorded in interviews. The artists featured in this research have well-established careers as improvising musicians and the application of their music making knowledge to the film scoring process is germane to the final film score. Key questions relevant to the film music concern the extent to which improvisation played a part in the scoring process, the application of improvisatory musical experience to the audiovisual domain, and the nature of the collaboration with the director.