If you could have your life to start over, if you had been given the gift of complete control over your own destiny from the very beginning, how different would your life be?
What would you be doing instead? Who would you be instead of who you are now?
For me, there are so many possible answers. Presently, though, my moods move me to say that I wish I had taken up studies in cinema and become a professional filmmaker.
So many things about the medium call to me so powerfully. I suppose the biggest of these is the fact that is it is a creative process. You get to make something, hopefully something beautiful, something provocative, something generous, from out of nothing. You also get to share, to collaborate, with others during this creative process. In a way, I suppose it’s a lot like being parents. You invest so much of yourself in your creation; your creation is like your child, in that it becomes the focus of all your hopes, and you give it everything it needs.
What part of making films appeals to me the strongest? I don’t really know, to be honest. If you take “me” as I presently am, I’m really ill-suited to be a filmmaker in that I lack the requisite skills to be one. But there again, if impossible wishes were to be granted, I know I would thoroughly enjoy certain parts more than others. I particularly enjoy how the audio elements – sound design, sound mixing, and music for cinema – often exert a subtle yet immeasurably profound influence on a film.
I love music, and one of my most favorite genres is music for films. I suppose this is a result of having a childhood full of memories of listening to so much Mancini and Elmer and Leonard Bernstein and, of course, John Williams. One of my heart’s most fervent impossible wishes is to be someone like John Williams. For me, his music is simply the best. Some of his works even moves me to tears.
His work sings of love:
It gives the hero a suitable fanfare:
It endows scenes with a threat of imminent doom:
Or an air of calm and serenity:
I could go on and on about John Williams, but hopefully these few samples of his work serve to illustrate just how much I love his work and give some clue as to why I have nurtured such impossible wishes to emulate him.
As I close, I’d like to share with you one of my favorite melodies from film. This time it’s a song from the 1980s TV show Airwolf. The song is called “Gabrielle’s Theme,” and it is the show’s primary love theme.
The video is a cover made by a fan and uploaded onto YouTube, but it’s a fairly faithful rendition of the original.
Enjoy!
Joe-Pinions: Scribbles and Sketches 