Themes for Isolated Scenes and Sequences

The principle of using themes in film music has been a prominent scoring technique since the beginning of film and in spite of melodic themes not being that en vougue anymore, the strategy to create narrative connections through identifying elements (themes, harmonies, sounds, rhythms) is still prominently used in film scoring. Most commonly known are character themes that are attached to a character in the movie and can be referenced when needed. But there exist other possibilities to attach themes like for instance to a location (e.g. the Shire Theme in Lord of the Rings) an inanimate object (e.g. the House Theme from Home Alone) or even more abstract things like a memory, a specific emotion, a collective of people or an idea.

A more rarely used but nevertheless highly effective way of attaching a theme is to use it only for a scene or sequence. At first sight this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense as it generally breaks the possibility to reference back to it. If a theme is confined to an enclosed sequence, it feels like there is no narrative value to giving that sequence a theme, especially when that scene doesn't have a massive impact on the storytelling.

However, singling out a scene through a dedicated theme can have other potentially desirable effects. In a way it can give weight and a feeling of singularity to a scene and can help to elevate that scene into an iconic moment in the movie. Most likely candidates for such a treatment are visually impressive sequences like action scenes that are "centerpieces" of the movie and ideally sequences that people talk about after the movie.

Let's have a look at two of such sequences. The first one ist the Asteroid Field sequence from Empire Strikes Back. At latest at around 1:10 minutes into this sequence above, the music changes into melodic and thematic ideas that are exclusively attached to that scene. And at 2:15 a strong melodic theme takes over (and reappears later in that sequence) that exists only in this sequence. Now while this scene from a current standpoint doesn't look that iconic anymore, it was one of the technical highlights of that movie back when it was released. The music helped to single out this scene and considering the popularity of the music and the scene to this day it seemed to have succeeded.

Another sequence from the same era is the motorcycle escape sequence from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade which again is a musically confined space in itself. And again, it is one of the iconic sequences of the movie with a lot of special effects and stunts. Williams' score captures the frentic but at the same time witty escape of the two from this castle and singles that scene out. And yet again, the score and scene have indeed become memorable staples from that movie. 

While in both cases, the music didn't serve a higher purpose of creating a narrative connection within the movie, it served to help elevate these scenes above the rest of the movie and at least supported them to become memorable parts of their movies.

This scoring approach doesn't need to be confined to exciting action sequences but can also be used in other circumstances. Essentially, any iconic sequence that is of great importance to the movie or storytelling can be treated as a singular entity by the music and get a theme attached to it.  For instance the Evey Reborn sequence from V For Vendetta is a similarly iconic moment where the music breaks out of its function of storytelling and elevates this moment as a singular moment in the movie. However in this case, the relevance of the scene needs to be seen in the narrative context of the story, as it is more or less an essential tipping point of it. With the action sequences mentioned above in both cases the story to tell could have lived without them.

Now of course singling out a scene isn't always possible and the movie needs to be staged for a music use like this but when the prerequisites are met, the conscious decision to treat a scene with dedicated music can create some incredibly memomrable film sequences.