Alexandre Desplat and the Renewal of the Timbre of Hollywood Symphonies: Programmed Sounds as a Form of Casting the Orchestra into Relief with Magical Effect - Text 9
Just as synthesizers are associated with certain eras – the Mellotron and the Moog with the 1970s, Vangelis and the Yamaha CS80 in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) with the 1980s, the programmed sounds of Remote Control since the 2000s – the evolution of the symphony orchestra also enabled it to traverse the history of cinema from the 1930s until the present time, as it reinvented itself and adapted to the new technologies of the day. Desplat, by offering a new approach to the symphonic timbre without altering it excessively by machines and digital technologies, is one of the emblematic composers of this approach. Like other symphonic composers, for certain big productions such as The Twilight Saga: New Moon or the final films in the Harry Potter series (David Yates, 2010 and 2011), Desplat uses what has been called “undersoundesigning.”[10] This increasingly common practice in Hollywood consists in creating orchestration for the symphonic palette (taikos, brass reinforcement, overdubbed instruments etc.) capable of competing with an increasingly high-powered sound design and in this way avoiding a digital timbre in which it is sometimes hard to distinguish the boundary between it and the acoustic ambience of a film.
