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That’s What I Am, but only with support

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I recently watched the movie That's What I Am, a coming-of-age movie released earlier this year with a message of tolerance for those different from you, especially gays (although it's set in the 1960s).
 
In the climax of the movie, a secondary character shows his courage by singing an original song a cappella for a school talent show. The fact that it's a cappella is made a big deal of in the dialogue, as it emphasizes the challenge being voluntarily undertaken by this character.
 
So he sings the song. And it's accompanied. Not by an actual player seen on screen, but just in the soundtrack.
 
Every explanation I can think of for this seems less likely than the next. I can't believe the composer of the soundtrack didn't know what a cappella meant. It's possible the composer got overruled by a dictatorial producer, but why should the producer care? Do they think their audiences are too dumb to know what a cappella means? or too impatient to sit through an a cappella solo? Was the accompaniment necessary to cover up the auto-tuning added to the voice part? (The singing was actually pretty good.)
 
I'm trying to imagine this in other fields. A character says he's going to try out for the football team, then we see him dunking a basketball. A character says he's saving up to buy a Mustang GT, and then turns up in a Ford Fiesta. Somebody argues the superiority of Apple phones, then pulls out a Blackberry. Anything like that would get them laughed out of the theater, but screw up vocal music and nobody cares. Why'd we get into this business anyway?

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  1. Allen:  Thanks for the report; a good reason not to bother seeing the movie!  (“Sister Act,” on the other hand, managed to retain verisimilitude!)
     
    The movie business is the business of illusion, not reality.  My introduction to that was the two seasons I directed The All American College Singers shows for Disney.  The amount of really clever illusion designed and built into both theme parks is amazing, but of course it was done by movie designers.  But of course what you describe is not really a matter of physical illusion, but one of creating a particular illusion of reality, and yeah, they blew it!
     
    At the same time I was directing the College show (a summer-only program), The Kids Of The Kingdom cast were on year-round contract doing their own show.  Now at Disneyland the shows were controled by the chreographers, and at one point during their Disney Medley the men were all singing “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” (on prerecorded tape, of course).  And at that moment in the show the choreographers did not have one single man on the stage!!!  And I suspect that hardly anyone watching even noticed, and obviously the choreographer didn’t care!
     
    The two shows I directed were also the only two shows in the series which were done completely live, NO voices on tape, NO prerecord (except for a few added instruments in the Showband arrangement).  Disney’s rationale for using prerecorded tape (usually recorded by the best studio singers in the business, like the Ray Charles Singers) was that their shows had to have one-hearing acceptance and they could never afford to have a bad show.  Fair enough.  We handled it by experimenting with a swing couple who learned and could step into any of the tracks, while one couple swung out to observe the show or to work in another part of the Park for the experience.  And one day in Florida, in my second summer, we went on stage with only 8 performers available out of 14, because of illness or injury, and my swing couple saved the day for us!!  In ’79 this was an experiment.  Today it’s standard practice.
     
    The other effect our swing couples had was that with people swinging in and out of the show, it kept everyone on their toes, and by the middle of August the energy in my show in California was still up and the show still sprarkled, while the show in Florida (same show, but done to prerecorded voices) was loggy and looked really tired.  I think we proved our case!
     
    All the best,
    John

  2. Hi Allen,
     
    I can tell you why you’re in this biz–because you love it and can’t think of doing anything else.  Me too.  And being misunderstood–and having folks not care–is part of it. 
     
    Vocal music is not life and death.  It doesn’t control the economic climate of our country or the world.  By all appearances, it’s not important and that’s why this glaring (to us) mistake is okay. Being different, telling the story of a young person in that era over coming odds, is more important.  Like you, I wish they would get their facts right.
     
    It wasn’t important to this film to have this fact correct–a cappella means somthing to do with singing in public, right?–and we don’t know why they chose to not have it be correct.  Did the composer (as you suggest)get over ruled?  Did the COMPOSER think having music underneath made it MORE dramatic–or did the director/producer? Did they think the kid couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket–I think it would be MORE dramatic in that case?  But you think the kid was okay, so my idea about “more dramatic” with music may be correct.
     
    I need silences and uncluttered sound in my life.  It takes guts to not have some sort of “noise” going on all the time.  And they didn’t have the guts to have the pure sound of a single voice–more dramatic in the context of this movie, when you stop to think about it.  It is not just  “dumbing down” but the feeling folks can’t handle not having some “hum” going on under.  I feel a whole other conversation about that bubbling up, but I will refrain!
     
    I haven’t had enough coffee yet to be pleasant, this morning, Allen, so you are getting the full effect.
     
    Marie

  3. HI, Allen!
    Since I have not seen the movie, I don’t know how well (or bad) the underscore was used to accompany. In the film or media composing bussiness, people treat “underscore” and “source cue (source music)” very differently. Although I agree with your thought (a cappella should be “a cappella”), we could argue that the underscore part represents an emmotional accompaniment or support to the source music (the character’s singing) which might be contrasting real “support” that he(?) did not have in the movie (I assume).
     

  4. Allen – it’s the dumbing down of America, and it happens all the time.  Look at TV.  Look at the movies.  Look at (if you still have one around) a newspaper.  Every one of them makes statements about what “we” are supposed to be like, what “we” are supposed to like, etc. – and it’s a reflection not of who “we” are but of who the “producer” (and I don’t necessarily mean the position in a visual medium company) THINKS “we” are or like.  Of course it’s upsetting to us as dedicated professionals and amateurs; but I’m sure it happens daily, momentarily, to other professions as well.  Our job is education and presentation – to hell with these idiots and their idiocy.  That moment, so critical to your enjoyment of the movie, will, frankly, be overlooked (if they even notice) by 99.9999999% of Americans who happen to see this movie, and it won’t register.  As for the .0000001% who DO notice this, they’re probably (we hope!) safely in the hands of a caring professional like yourself.

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