Movie Musicals

I rarely post but I have been looking at the threads especially about the Les Mis movie and potential Miss Saigon movie and it got me thinking.



Was Tom Hooper's decision to not have the actors lip sync but have record them on set live -a good decision? I am curious because I am still not sure how I feel about it. I think it was a novel idea but I don't know how effective it was -even though he tried hard to capture a "live" theater aspect.



I few (right or wrong observations):

I know Im' generalizing...

1. Sound.

One of the biggest things I noticed watching movie musicals (from current movie musicals) is the way they sound. Movies like Les Mis and Rent's music sound flat on screen. One reason I realized is we are used to listening to the Broadway cast recording of those shows. Those studio recordings have a lot of reverb and other effects to give the recording more dimension. Doing this makes the recording and the singers feel more "live". In movies, most of that reverb is taking out and it sounds less like a Broadway-recording or an in concert recording and more in reality, if that makes sense. As audiences, because of the medium, we suspend our disbelief and accept ideas that normally we wouldn't in film (like someone breaking out into song out of nowhere). On film to make the story flow, the music and singers have to match the scene and dialogue. So many times, music doesn't feel as pulsating and exciting as it did in the theater. Also there's nothing like seeing something live. That will always be our first reference.

2. Times Have Changed
I know many men in my family watched movie musical growing up in the 1950's, 1960's and even 1970's without the stigma of it being "uncool" or labeled that they may be gay. I could be wrong but it seems more men saw movies like Singin' in the Rain without the stigma that it wasn't cool or manly. I think also looking at the historical context of our country, many people used this as a way to escape. Most movie musicals were crowd pleasures where the plot wasn't as important as the spectacle. Which leads me to content...

3. Content
Many people want a feel good musical (La La Land), but when musicals are used to tell a dramatic story (ie. Les Mis) in a movie, it's pends to be a harder sell. How do you make an audience comfortable with a medium normally used in theater (Chicago and Dreamgirls worked well because each used a show biz theme and staged singing within the movie)? Theater is something that tends to be abstract and let's us use our imagination. Film (for the most part) is a visual medium that by nature fills in those abstract lines. So taking a heavy story, putting it with convention that tend to be associated with lighter context, and then adding a studio (who will rely on celebrities and marketing) can be a hard sell. I also think the more creative and risky the director is -the bigger payoff.



OTHER
I know back in the day, movie musicals were rehearsed the way Broadway musicals were. They did months of preparation. which is interesting. I think the director, cinematographer and so on should be people who have an extensive understanding of theater and have worked in theater or secondary directed a ****load of music videos. I think many directors who have never directed a musical go in thinking this will be easier than it is. Directors need to understand that more than anything that the story has to have a strong resonance with the audience and they need to feel invested. In theater, the director relies a lot on lighting to navigate where they want the audience to look. In film, you need someone who can translate this to film.

Also, enough with adding your own personal spin to a story just for the sake of it. Enough of adding new characters, changing the story, etc. I understand for a film going audience sometimes the original source has to be edited but there's ways to do it that don't seem jarring or leave an audience member confused.

Also of course some movie musicals are easier to adapt for screen than others. But think no matter who awful (Grease 2) anyone, it has the chance to expose a new audience and generation to theater and musicals. I personally would love to see more companies take BroadwayHD's lead and film a show on stage but find a way to give a film audience that immersive feeling.

I think the live singing worked beautifully in some scenes and not much much in others. Anne Hathaway managed to pull it off, but a lot of others simply couldn't and needed all the studio help they could get. It depends on the context of the song (emotional songs tend to work much better live, because the actors never knows what their performance will be like from take to take) and the talent they're using (even Broadway performers would find it difficult to do 30 takes of a song like "Bring Him Home" or "I Dreamed A Dream."

I'm a big fan of mixing and matching live and studio if possible. "My Man" in Funny Girl is a great example. They did the more emotional first part live and dubbed in a studio version for the big, belty part to make sure all of those glorious notes were given full justice.

Movie musicals are genuinely just very hard to do right. It's not an exact science, because every musical is different. Even great shows can be transferred to film more or less intact (like Gypsy) and not feel right or "cinematic" enough. If the casting is off, if it feels too stage-bound, and if the director has no imagination in staging the numbers (or isn't very musical to begin with), it's not going to work.

Look at a number like "Rose's Turn." On stage, it brings the house down with just a spotlight on the actress playing Rose and a blank stage. On film, if it's presented that same way (as it, unfortunately, was in both filmed versions of the show), it lands with a big thud. A director and screenwriter need a vision to make a scene like that cinematic. Even getting into the character's head and having her imagine a huge audience screaming for her could work wonders and be a million times more cinematic and interesting.

I did not love the movie. To put it mildly. But the fault for me lay in the direction and especially, the editing.
Not in the simultaneous soundtrack.

Updated On: 8/12/17 at 04:09 PM

I think Tom Hooper completely misunderstood the basis of this artform and how to use it in film.

The only scene that worked was "I dreamed a dream" because she cries her way through the song and a crying person always evokes something, in spite of singing, so she basically got away with it. In spite of, not because of the singing. Because it made a lot of her notes pointless. In all the other scenes it does not work. Hooper had no clue about how to make the singing work on film and how to actually use it.

The problem with the approach is that it's too literal. This artform per definition is not. Especially not in film. Which makes the film one big showcase of struggling actors trying to act in spite of notes (that fail), and then trying to use that misery to look miserable for the story line.

There were 3 big traps that Hooper walked into:

1. Hiring actors that don't master the craft of acting through song, but only in spite of song. It puts too much pressure on a handful of performers who frankly cannot sing. Yes, Hathaway and Jackman acted in spite of song. Crowe and Seyfried never even made it to the point of acting and just used their tormented face resulting from the note struggle for their scenes.

2. Having them sing live and encourage them to constantly switch between speaking and singing, sometimes even in 1 line, to supposedly make it "raw and real". Hugh Jackman seems completely clueless when he speaks 4 words: "now.....come on......ladies......settle........and then sings the 5th word with a long vibrato...dooooooooooooooooown" it just kicked me out of the film and made audience members laugh. You can't expect the audience to constantly follow the switch like that in every line or word. It makes it unbearable as it does not give the audience the chance to get used to the language. It's not a tennis game between a spoken word and a sung word. In every other filmed performance of that scene I have seen, the Valjean makes it very organic and filmic, singing, "Now, come on ladies, settle down", gently sung, with the last word short. The audience doesn't even think about the language of singing because they already embraced it. That is the essence of this artform. Because it feels natural this way. Not the speaking, not the excessive over-vibrating on the next word. Now if you have people like Samantha Barks or Aaron Tveit who do master the craft of making it natural, let them embrace is instead of forcing them to make it feel fake too, like the rest. But unfortunately they weren't allowed to.

I already notice this in the Broadway version of Miss Saigon now, where in the confrontation Ellen speaks 3 words and then sings the 4th. That feels weird and unnatural. While just gently singing all 4 words with natural intention feels very organic.

Emma Gosnell, writing for The Daily Telegraph, stated that she walked out of the showing due to the poor singing, specifically citing Crowe and Jackman as the cause. Playback singer Marni Nixon said "[Crowe] was nothing. It wasn’t that he was choosing to sing like that, he just couldn't do anything else" and that Jackman acted well but "could have done with a nobler voice". She also criticised Bonham Carter as being incomprehensible, but praised the rest of the female cast. American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert tweeted several disparaging messages, including "why not cast actors who could actually sound good?" and "the singing was so distracting at times it pulled me out", to which Crowe replied via Twitter "I don't disagree with Adam,sure it could have been sweetened,Hooper wanted it raw and real,that's how it is". Nixon rebutted this: "We're talking about a musical. Is that real? People don't go around singing 'La la la la' to each other all day!"

Which hits the nail on it's head in my opinion. Hooper may think the actors have freedom but in fact they are trapped. I see actors struggling with the material which prevents them from making the acting believable. It's completely undermining the artform and the influence of singing, music and illusion. Therefore nothing in the film feels real or raw. Elaborate cinematography, sung music as an underscore, pre-recorded tracks give them the ability to soar with the material. It's not as if the epilogue scene in La La Land would feel more raw and real when it would have been shot in 1 take, live between a trash can and a concrete wall and had the chorus just standing there and sing live because supposedly "that makes it real". That's not filmmaking. Filmmaking is using the music as a voice over, creating a better than life feel with sung thoughts. I want to hear better singing than the character could ever be doing live in that moment. Is leaving out the violins in a romantic scene or better than life lighting more real for the emotions too? No.

Here is an example of a clip which still has a natural sound, but which is clearly pre-recorded.

There is something so intense, raw and better than life about this illusion. Singing this live in a shot like this would have been silly. It needs the kind of mesmerizing feel of illusion, in order to make it work on screen.

I see more nuances in his acting here than I've seen in the whole les Mis film where I only see people thinking about the notes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNVlfy4SWDo

3. The complete lack of elaborate cinematography, filmic effects, beautiful shots that represent feelings/thoughts that are being sung, basically, not making a film at all. That is especially essential in a film about sung thoughts.

In a Miss Saigon movie I want to see lush orange light, a fan, a muggy feel, fabric flowing in "The last night of the world", because that's how it is in their minds. I don't want to see a dark, empty concrete room with just a crate of beer, because it's so realistic. This is about sung thoughts. When Kim shoots Thuy, it is the end of the world for her. I don't want to see her shooting him next to a trashcan and then a silly bunch of people standing around her in the street (because it's so wonderfully realistic) singing "this is the hour". No, I want to see that it's the end of the world for her at that moment, seeing her transported to a big black space, indefinable/theatrical/filmic, just like Chicago or Moulin Rouge, with the blood flowing through her hands, turning into a choir of ghosts singing "this is the hour".

It's all about illusion and not being literal


Les Mis disrespected it's audience, because the regular movie audience walked out of the cinema laughing, having confirmed they don't like musicals after having seen something that did not feel raw and real at all because of the too literal live singing, basically a failed theatre performance on a pavement, but then fake because of the switching (a spoken moan combined with a sporadic note) and the lovers of the artform walked out of the cinema not feeling taken seriously at all.

Updated On: 8/12/17 at 05:10 PM

schubox said: "I love the Les Mis movie. I understand the complaints about the live singing and how it was shot, but to me, if I want to see the huge musical and all the staging I can see the show, or watch a dvd. The movie feels more intimate and presents the story in a new way, and I think it is fantastic!"

I absolutely agree! Plus, it probably would've been very difficult to have an entire sung-through film musical lip-synched. While singing live and lip-synching both have their pros and cons for the performers, I do think it's easier to sing live than to lip-synch to a pre-recorded track.

Updated On: 8/12/17 at 05:56 PM

Jeffrey Karasarides said: "While singing live and lip-synching both have their pros and cons for the performers, I do think it's easier to sing live than to lip-synch to a pre-recorded track."

I think the latter is much more workable and allows for more takes, better preparation, a more effective audio track, more freedom because you don't have to focus on the difficult notes when acting and can still give all the nuances in facial expression, etc. It gives a better than life and necessary feel of illusion to not make it too literal (the sound is better than the actor could have ever done live in that moment, which lifts the intensity) and they can use much more editing and great cinematography this way. Factors that all create emotion in film.

Updated On: 8/12/17 at 07:27 PM

I am not a filmmaker ( Perhaps there is someone here who is a decorated filmmaker or an awarded film auteur?) -- I only appreciate the impact of a director's cinematic vision when I see the finished product. I am only one of audiences who appreciated the film enough to have recorded these numbers for this movie :

http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Miserables-Les-(2012)#tab=summary

WW grosses - $ 442 million

DVD/BLuRay sales in USA alone - $ 80 million.

Obviously, it pleased a fairly big sector of the market.

As to awards bodies --

Oscar : Best Picture nominee

Golden Globes : Winner for Best Musical/Comedy Category

Directors Guild : One of 5 nominations was given to Tom Hooper

I did see the stage version of Les Miserables 10 times ( on Broadway where I caught it for the first time at the end of the original run, in London, in Paris at Theatre Mogador and here where I live)... Since I am both a fan of the theatre and of the movies I try to appreciate that for movies, the primary aim is to deliver " a masterful and powerful storytelling, with singing complementing the acting choices " to paraphrase Oscar winner Tom Hooper.

But to each his own!

Updated On: 8/12/17 at 08:14 PM

It is a matter of perspective. As I said, no one has a monopoly of opinions.

Are you a professional filmmaker, Dave? If you are, can you share which movies you have made? Thanks.

We all have personal opinions as to how we view art ( and both cinema and the theatre are branches of the arts) -- so I would not dare say that my opinion is the considered opinion for a movie unless I am member of an awards body giving recognition to particular accmplishments or a heralded auteur and filmmaker ( or maybe even a recognized professional film critic) ! Even there, I would admit that other filmmakers may have a different cinematic vision.

Updated On: 8/12/17 at 08:23 PM

To each his own, as I have said. We are here as audiences ( unless you are a colleague of a fellow film director) and our reception to how the art is presented is a matter of taste and discernment. In the case of Les Miserables, the Directors Guild of America recognized the work of Tom Hooper. The Oscar nominating body gave a similar recognition to the worth of the movie when it nominated it as one of Best Picture nominees for that year.

And let us respect other people's tastes which are different from others!

Updated On: 8/12/17 at 08:47 PM

Again, let us respect other people's views and not make disparaging remarks ( "instead of apologizing for it" and "That only shows how much you can get away with nowadays." which seems insulting to the audience who viewed it favorably ) if they think differently from us.

As to Miss Saigon -- is the theme of the Vietnam War still considered very relevant today? It is a period piece and maybe since conflicts are now going on elsewhere people may no longer be that interested in that piece of storytelling ( especially if that is supposed to have happened not so very long ago -- for one, Vietnam is a booming economy now !) ? I saw the original production of the show in London ( Salonga and Pryce) and it was at the time when the megamusicals were still very strong in London. Maybe dramatic musicals should find a way of telling period pieces on film ( even with movie musicals) that looks fresh and engaging now?

Updated On: 8/13/17 at 09:00 PM

Bring Him Home sung as a prayer, was the gospel according to the stage production

But maybe Hooper saw it as a song of conflict in the mind of Valjean -- how should he view the entry of Marius into his daughter's life ( remember that in the original novel, Valjean was very jealous of Marius because he was going to take Cosette away from him -- Victor Hugo emphasized that in the long passages he wrote about those jealous feelings of the adoptive father) -- so maybe Valjean was going through the conflict in his mind and also had feelings of jealousy as he looked at the sleeping Marius? Maybe the love for his daughter won out... and he resolved the conflict in his mind by eventually praying for the deliverance of Marius? This was one of the areas of departure from the stage musical. Another example that was missed is the long passage from the time he was able to take Cosette away from the Thenardiers. One of those was the Victor Hugo passage which talked of two Valjean epiphanies ( the first one was the epiphany of redemption while the second one was his discovery of love for another human being - thus, the scene and song of SUDDENLY)... and how they sought refuge in the convent where they spent the intervening years.

It is not a filmed version of the stage musical but a film adaptation of the novel and the stage musical.

Of course I am not saying that Jackman and Crowe were the best singers but they did act their parts very well. And I do respect other views on their portrayals - positive or negative and I welcome this type of discussions if said without slighting an opposite view.

Btw, Crowe did tweet why he voted for Jackman for Oscar Best Actor ( because "of the character arc and the difficulty of performance" ). Coming from someone who has had an excellent acting portfolio, that was a real compliment.

Updated On: 8/12/17 at 09:27 PM

jo said: "As to Miss Saigon -- is the theme of the Vietnam War still considered very relevant today? Maybe dramatic musicals should find a way of telling period pieces on film ( even with movie musicals) that looks fresh and engaging now?"

I think Miss Saigon is about universal themes, love, betrayal, human connections, but also the political themes that match todays climate, just look at the refugee stories. I think it's relevant more than ever.

About the way of telling these kind of stories on film. I agree they need a completely fresh approach. Something that has never been done before. Todays audiences are spoilt with videoclips, the most amazing effects, fast editing, the most beautiful shots in films and the best singing voices everywhere.

They need to make an elaborate plan for every scene in the movie to make it special. And fully embracing the artform and taking it all the way to the moon and back. And most importantly, step away from the literal approach.

sueb1863 said: "I think Russell Crowe's performance would have been better if he hadn't had to spend every song trying to focus on hitting the notes.

Hugh Jackman also had obvious trouble with Bring Him Home. He was clearly straining, something that wouldn't have been the case if it had been prerecorded. Hooper never should have had him shouting that song, it was supposed to be a quiet song of prayer."

I completely agree. Emotion in film comes from other things than struggling with/feeling trapped in notes. Looking miserable while doing it is not the solution for every scene.

I would also like to add that nowadays when a big blockbuster film comes out, many people automatically want to go see it. Regardless of the quality. The regular moviegoer goes for the names or the hype and of course the fans of this genre are curious anyway. Les Mis disrespected both groups of the audience, because the regular movie audience walked out of the cinema laughing, having confirmed they don't like musicals after having seen something that did not feel raw and real at all because of the too literal live singing, basically a failed theatre performance on a pavement, but then fake because of the switching (a spoken moan combined with a sporadic note) and the lovers of the artform walked out of the cinema not feeling taken seriously at all.

We live in a world where people see the most beautifully crafted videoclips, artwork, camerawork, best singing everyday. Wouldn't it be great if that quality translated to a musicalfilm? And wouldn't it also be great if we found the right people for it?

Updated On: 8/13/17 at 06:08 AM