When I was writing Films from the Future, I immersed myself utterly in the soundtracks of the movies the book takes its inspiration from.
This, it turned out, was an incredibly powerful way of keeping my focus on the underlying social, emotional and aesthetic narratives that intertwine each film as I sought to tie these to technological narratives in the real world.
It also gave me a lasting love of the music these moves are built on — with one exception, these are epic sound tracks, and still inspire me!
When I came to teach the content that the book is based on, I even created a compilation track, where I seamlessly merged together themes from eleven of the movies (sadly, there was one that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fit in with the musical landscape painted by the the other films) — so you can see how far sucked-in I became!
This interweaving of the eleven themes still gives me goosebumps, because it’s so tightly associated with the book and everything it means to me. And a must confess I’m rather pleased with how well the transitions from one theme to the next work!
Of course, I’m personally invested here, but just in case anyone else is curious, I’ve posted the audio file of that compilation above (and below as well, for good measure).
See if you can spot which movie appears where as you listen … and which one didn’t make the cut!
