From the silent era to the present day, popular music has been a key component of the film experience. Yet there has been little serious writing on the complex relationship between popular music-based soundtracks and movies. Soundtrack Available aims to fill this gap, as its contributors provide detailed analyses of individual films as well as historical overviews of genres, styles of music, and approaches to film scoring. With a cross-cultural emphasis, the contributors focus on the use of pre-existing, already popular music, including country, bubble-gum pop, disco, classical, jazz, swing, French cabaret, and showtunes. The films discussed extend from silent film to musicals, and from dramatic and avant-garde films to docu- and rocku-mentaries in India, France, England, Australia, and the United States. Most of the analysis looks at "nondiegetic" music in film-the score playing outside the story space, unheard by the characters, but no less a part of the scene from the perspective of the viewer/listener. However, some essays also examine "diegetic" music, that which is incorporated into the reality of the story - a radio or a band playing in the background of a scene.
In either case, the volume demonstrates that pop music is a crucial element in the film experience, by exploring in detail how musical pattern and structure relate to filmic patterns of narration, character, editing, framing and mise-en-scene. In addition, contributors examine the life of the soundtrack when it is lifted off the text of the film-how the music circulates and acquires new meanings on its own. Contributors. Rick Altman, Priscilla Barlow, Barbara Ching, Kelley Conway, Corey Creekmur, Krin Gabbard, Jonathan Gill, Andrew Killick, Arthur Knight, Adam Knee, Jill Leeper, Neepa Majumdar, Allison McCracken, Murray Pomerance, Paul Ramaeker, Jeff Smith, Pamela Robertson Wojcik, and Nabeel Zuberi.
