FMS-Blog : The Wildly Whimsical, Mostly Musical WebLog
Monday, May 15, 2006
Luck be a Lady...
After a heavy weekend burning the candle at both ends, I spent most of yesterday chilling out on the sofa and watching some DVD's I've been meaning to look at since I bought them (couldn't really go very far due to the injury I sustained to my leg after a fall on Saturday night!!). The one that I've got to admit to enjoying the most was a DVD I have of the original 1955 musical Guys and Dolls, with Marlon Brando starring as Sky Masterson and Frank Sinatra playing the part of Nathan Detroit.
Apart from the obviously predictable storyline and cheesy 'exterior' sets, it struck me that the musical arrangement was contrived to perfection. As in so many musicals of this era, the main themes come up time and time again in different guises so as to fix them in the audience's memory and have them prepared for their main outing in the solos and duets, and then to recapture previous scenes when those melodies are revisited at a later stage.
A powerful example of this is the song that Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown encounter on their rendezvous in Havana - Loesser introduces this tune initially in the orchestral backdrop of earlier scenes in the movie, then it appears in various instrumental and vocal arrangements during the Havana scenes (on the couple's tour of the grounds of a church, in the restaurant and also during the fountain scene), finally allowing the song to be presented in full when Sky and Sarah return to New York and perform it as a duet and the main love song of the movie - this is the scene where the characters' actually feelings for one another are established and confirmed. By this time, we are all very well acquainted with the melody, albeit from various snippets earlier upon which dialogue was overdubbed, so this outing was well prepared and served a narrative role connecting the passion of a trip to Cuba with the characters' emotions.
Marketing a project seems to me to be a very similar process to the one described above - initially laying an impression of whatever it may be so firmly that when a direct advertising campaign is launched the recipients are already prepared for it on some level or other and can associate a given symbol or name to the ideas that the project hopes to achieve / fulfill. A good friend of mine warned against getting my name as a pianist and music tutor on every directory going on the grounds that these things on their own don't actually tell prospective customers anything about the skills I have to offer. I disagree : I see the listings in yellow pages and on numerous internet sites as likened to the introduction of melodies in the orchestral background of a movie. Any direct marketing, including word of mouth by reputation, should be much more affective once this ground is laid.
By the way, reading reviews of Guys and Dolls on the internet gives a very mixed bag - Marlon Brando is largely slated for his lack of singing ability as compared to Sinatra and also he is criticised for not successfully demonstrating the actual character traits of Sky Masterson as they originally were offered on the Broadway stage for the 5 years prior to the movie being released. I really can't help but disagree with these sentiments : I thought Brando comes off as a really charming (if overly self-assured) Masterson and his singing voice got the point across - sure, he's no Frank Sinatra, but then his character is supposed to be a jaded gambler / gangster - and anyway, it wouldn't really seem appropriate for him to sing like an angel!!
Certainly, there are many more positive aspects to this movie, including the amazing choreography, so I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't yet had the opportunity to view this picture. Interestingly, this is the only film Sinatra and Brando made together and, even though they only appeared in a couple of scenes at the same time, there was a famous rivalry between them at the time, Sinatra even coining a nickname for Brando - 'Mumbles'.
Apart from the obviously predictable storyline and cheesy 'exterior' sets, it struck me that the musical arrangement was contrived to perfection. As in so many musicals of this era, the main themes come up time and time again in different guises so as to fix them in the audience's memory and have them prepared for their main outing in the solos and duets, and then to recapture previous scenes when those melodies are revisited at a later stage.
A powerful example of this is the song that Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown encounter on their rendezvous in Havana - Loesser introduces this tune initially in the orchestral backdrop of earlier scenes in the movie, then it appears in various instrumental and vocal arrangements during the Havana scenes (on the couple's tour of the grounds of a church, in the restaurant and also during the fountain scene), finally allowing the song to be presented in full when Sky and Sarah return to New York and perform it as a duet and the main love song of the movie - this is the scene where the characters' actually feelings for one another are established and confirmed. By this time, we are all very well acquainted with the melody, albeit from various snippets earlier upon which dialogue was overdubbed, so this outing was well prepared and served a narrative role connecting the passion of a trip to Cuba with the characters' emotions.
Marketing a project seems to me to be a very similar process to the one described above - initially laying an impression of whatever it may be so firmly that when a direct advertising campaign is launched the recipients are already prepared for it on some level or other and can associate a given symbol or name to the ideas that the project hopes to achieve / fulfill. A good friend of mine warned against getting my name as a pianist and music tutor on every directory going on the grounds that these things on their own don't actually tell prospective customers anything about the skills I have to offer. I disagree : I see the listings in yellow pages and on numerous internet sites as likened to the introduction of melodies in the orchestral background of a movie. Any direct marketing, including word of mouth by reputation, should be much more affective once this ground is laid.
By the way, reading reviews of Guys and Dolls on the internet gives a very mixed bag - Marlon Brando is largely slated for his lack of singing ability as compared to Sinatra and also he is criticised for not successfully demonstrating the actual character traits of Sky Masterson as they originally were offered on the Broadway stage for the 5 years prior to the movie being released. I really can't help but disagree with these sentiments : I thought Brando comes off as a really charming (if overly self-assured) Masterson and his singing voice got the point across - sure, he's no Frank Sinatra, but then his character is supposed to be a jaded gambler / gangster - and anyway, it wouldn't really seem appropriate for him to sing like an angel!!
Certainly, there are many more positive aspects to this movie, including the amazing choreography, so I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't yet had the opportunity to view this picture. Interestingly, this is the only film Sinatra and Brando made together and, even though they only appeared in a couple of scenes at the same time, there was a famous rivalry between them at the time, Sinatra even coining a nickname for Brando - 'Mumbles'.
