Danny Elfman's Batman: A Film Score Guide

by Janet K. Halfyard

Danny Elfman is recognized as one of the most successful, interesting, and innovative figures in recent film music composition. He came to the fore in the late 1980s in connection with his collaboration with Tim Burton on his films including Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), and Sleepy Hollow (1999). In addition to this, Elfman has composed music for more than 40 other films, including Somersby (1993), Dolores Claibourne (1995), Good Will Hunting (1997), Men in Black (1997), and Spiderman (2002).

Beetlejuice was the first mainstream commercial success of the collaboration, but Batman was the film which marked Tim Burton's arrival as a major figure in Hollywood film direction, and equally established Danny Elfman as a film score composer, particularly in relation to action and fantasy genres. The score for Batman won a Grammy in 1989 and is an outstanding example of his collaboration with Burton as well as admirably demonstrating his particular talents and distinctive compositional voice. In particular, it displays the characteristic "darkness" of his orchestration in this genre and the means he uses to create a full length film score from what is often a relatively small amount of musical material, in this case the famous Batman theme.

This book examines Elfman's scoring technique and provides a detailed analysis and commentary on the Batman score. The film is discussed in the context of its comic-book origins and the fantasy-action genre, setting it and its score against the late 1970s and early 1980s equivalents such as Star Wars and Superman , and revealing how Burton and Elfman between them changed the cinematic idea of what a superhero is. The book also explores Elfman's musical background, his place within the film music industry and the controversy that sprang up following the release of B

Genres: Music

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Also known as Steve Halfyard.

Reviews

[Douglass Gaking · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased this book as a resource to write questions for Indiana Academic Super Bowl. It worked wonderfully for creating questions, and teams throughout the state purchased the book to study and prepare for the competitions, which are coming up in the next few months here.

In addition to being valuable for that project, I personally enjoyed the information in the book and how it is constructed, so much so that I picked another book in this series that covers a different film score, and I look forward into delving into that one as well.

Having a score handy definitely helped me get more out of the book. You can order one from a publisher in Europe for about $100.

One of my favorite things about reading this book and studying this film score is that it inspired my own composition. I started experimenting with whole tone scales and doing some of my own composing in the style of some of Elfman's work. Doing that really helped me understand Elfman's writing better, and I finished some creative work of my own that I'm using for another project.

I highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about Elfman, the Batman film, whole tone music, film composing, or composing in general.

[C]

Book would be much better if it showed more of the music score instead of describing it with words.
Enjoyed the extensive backgrounds on Elfman and Batman, but when it came to the music, not as useful or interesting as I'd hoped.