Anchorage Daily News

All ears grasp for the notes, chords, voices and arrangements of music played in concert halls, clubs and music festivals, because in those venues, music takes the limelight and music makers take their bows.

Not so in film scores, said composer Brent Michael Davids, whose score for the 1920 silent film, "Last of the Mohicans," will be featured at the third annual World Indigenous Film Festival Friday and Saturday at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

A masterful movie score goes mostly unnoticed yet enhances the emotional and narrative arcs of the film, he said. A good score can't save a movie from bad acting, unbelievable characters or poor direction, but a bad score can certainly ruin a good film. To explain how, Davids will do a film-scoring workshop for film editors, producers and directors while in town for the festival this week.

His effort to track down and score a reconditioned DVD release of the 1920 film "Last of the Mohicans" illustrates his devotion to music and film.

Simply said, another score he heard for the film sounded hokey, said Davids. Besides, as a citizen of the Mohican Nation, he saw the opportunity to use Native American instruments and voices in a full symphonic score.

Davids has melded Native American music and Western compositional techniques for three decades now. He has several degrees in music and composition and has earned numerous awards and commissions from organizations and groups like the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kronos Quartet, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Joffrey Ballet and Native American Song.

In a rare ode to the silent movie era, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra will perform his score for "Last of the Mohicans" live at the Landmark Theatre while the movie unfolds during opening night of the Syracuse International Film & Video Festival on April 18 in New York.

The following excerpts from an interview with Davids have been edited for length and clarity. For more about his work, check out his thorough and thoroughly playful Web site, www.filmcomposer.us.

Q. Tell me about this composing workshop. I've never heard of anyone doing one up here before, and I'm wondering what your mission is when working with film editors and directors.

A. The workshop is mostly about how music works with film. I also teach composition to composers, but this workshop is for directors and producers so they can understand composer jargon. I usually teach them to figure out what the film and story require before looking for music. Without musical training, it's hard to know what kind of music should go into a film. What I do is I sort of go through the different types of scoring there are -- scoring for action, scoring the cuts, underscoring the mood and underscoring against the action.

Q. Can you list some film scores that don't work?

A. That might give away too much of my workshop!

Q. Do you find that people know when a score doesn't work?

A. Yes, when they're paying attention to it. When film music works really well, it heightens the story without you noticing it. In this workshop, people actually see why the music isn't working. Sometimes the scene doesn't work because of the music, not the acting or pacing or directing.

Q. Do you think filmmakers who take the workshop look at music in a different way afterwards or that they appreciate the composer more?

A. I'm sure they will. This is more about looking at the film and figuring out what it needs. The genre could be jazz, classical, hip-hop, choir or whatever, but the right kind of scoring -- or what the music is intended to be doing for the film -- is what we look at. I've seen a lot of films with poor soundtracks. There's a tendency for directors and producers and editors to go to their CD collections and try to fit it into the film. They haven't taken the time to figure out the pieces they need first. It would be better to not have any music than put the wrong music in. It's my hope that the whole bar can be raised in film and music, in American Indian films particularly.

Q. What inspired you to redo a score for "Last of the Mohicans?"

A. First, I wanted to see if I could do an entire 73 minutes of music. No talking. It's music 100 percent through. It's a challenge to do that and make it work. The music weaves back and forth through its different functions in a film, but can still be performed by an orchestra.

Q. What was the original score like?

A. I don't know what the original score was, if there was one. I don't know if people played to it live with an organ or piano, but I imagine it was just improvised. Two versions of the reconditioned film came out in the early 2000s, one of them a DVD by Slingshot that has a score with a flute, drums and piano trio. It was a score written down for the film, but I thought it didn't work very well. Being Mohican myself, I saw things that could be in there like indigenous flutes and percussion. I also felt that some of the scoring wasn't right. It was doing the wrong things at the wrong times. The score harkens back to the improvisation days of silent film scoring as if they were trying to capture the sound of a silent film score, with that kind of hokey sound. It didn't work well. I thought it would be way more fun to do a modern orchestra film score.

Q. Most people won't be familiar with this silent version of the film. Tell me a little more about it.

A. Right. It was lost for so long that most people haven't seen it. I investigated it in 2002 and did a copyright search. I was pretty much waiting for it to turn up. I've got a whole collection of "Last of the Mohicans" -- the Slingshot DVD, some TV serials, comic books, a 1971 version shot in Scotland by the BBC that I found on eBay, where the Scottish characters have Scottish accents and the English have English accents. Even the director of it doesn't have the full set of eight episodes. So I've been collecting all these different versions and the 1920s version is probably the closest to the book.

SCREENING: The 1920 silent film version of "The Last of the Mohicans" will show at 9:30 p.m. Friday at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Composer Brent Michael Davids will answer questions about the film and his score. Admission is free.

WORKSHOP: Davids will do a free film-scoring workshop for editors, directors and producers at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. The workshop will include information on musical jargon, four types of film scoring, and how filmmakers can make the most of music without messing things up. Refreshments will be provided.