The Concept of Ghostwriting from Literature to Film Music: The Moacir Santos Case of Study

Abstract

In most cases, the concept of ghostwriting in film music is related to bigger budget industrial movies. It happens mainly because of the amount of simultaneous productions and the agility that the cinema market achieved. Ghostwriters was needed for the first time in a more systematical way during the “golden age” of Hollywood film music, through 1940’s and 1950’s. And it consists of hiring composers and orchestrators to write music anonymously, all the credits would be given to a major musician who signs for the scores. There is a clear correspondence of this concept of ghostwriting and the one used in literature and other writing based stands. In these fields, a huge amount of bibliography can be found, and it is also very easy to reach active ghostwriters service today with a simple internet search, being the academic writing the greatest target of these professionals. Ghostwriters work can be found from early literature, highlighting some studies of Bible’s ghostwriters, to present political speeches, for example. The doctoral research in progress held by the author of this abstract aims to study the Moacir Santos (1926-2006) work for film music, which is temporally located in the first decades that the Brazilian composer established residence in the U.S. (1967-1985). By this time Santos became a requested composer of film and television industries, participating as ghostwriter in the teams of Henry Mancini and Lalo Schifin, specially known for his ghost work in the music composition of the television series Mission: Impossible fifth season.



Author Information
Lucas Zangirolami Bonetti, State University of Campinas, Brazil

Paper Information
Conference: NACMFCS2014
Stream: Film Studies - Film and Literature: Artistic Correspondence

This paper is part of the NACMFCS2014 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon