Original Music for the Feature Film 'Mates': Feature Film Screened on Amazon Prime Movies

'Mates' is a feature film written and directed by South African-British director, Arno Crous and was created by an international artistic and production team. Screened initially in the US and UK in 2023 the success of the film has led to translation into multiple languages and screening worldwide on Amazon Prime Movies in 2024.

This research practice critically builds on previous research on internal diegetic music (cf. Original Music for Feature Film 'Euphony' 2020 and Original Music for the Motion Picture 'Happy Families' 2021). It also develops concepts widely discussed in the literature – e.g. Heldt (2013), Chion (2019) et al. In summary, non-diegetic music, where the source of the music is not visible on-screen, is significantly the most deployed type of film music. Diegetic music is less frequent, but conveys a sense of realism with the source of the music visible, be it a gramophone or a performance. Internal diegetic music, however, is where the music is imagined in the mind of a character and its use is very rare indeed and when it has been used, it has been restricted to short, occasional scenes.

Internal diegetic music is critical to the concept of Mates and a clear example of its use is in the opening sequence and the closing sequence. Director Arno Crous sent me the film script to read and invited me to watch the actors in rehearsal at the Cockpit Theatre. Having discussed the Jungian archetypes he deployed in relation to the characters in 'Mates' and the fragile state of lead character Connor at the start of the film he asked me to create music which reflected Connor's fragility, but also hinted at change and hope. I imagined this as personal diegetic music heard by Connor and my creative response integrated these two research elements into the resulting music. Arno Crous then surprised me by cutting the opening sequence of the film to this entire musical composition with no changes whatsoever. This is the antithesis of the standard approach where short music cues are written to picture, as I had not seen any film footage at this stage. The film therefore demanded a unique and innovative research process closely integrated to the Jungian archetypes of the characters together with a critical interrogation of and extrapolation from existing approaches to film music theory (e.g. Music as Image: Analytical psychology and music in film, Nagari 2015).

This work makes critical enhancements to knowledge and practice by addressing research questions such as: can internal diegetic music be deployed to increase character realisation and audience connectivity with film? And: can Jung's concept of 'music-image' be effectively combined with his theory of archetypes, representing universal patterns and images that are part of the collective unconscious? The research process and methodology will be critically analysed further in accompanying contextual information and film extracts.