Gary Ross' Seabiscuit

Due to unfortunate circumstances, I will be lecturing you solely from Gary Ross' Seabiscuit with Randy Newman composing the soundtrack. For a brief overview, the movie starts with a wealthy man, Charles Howard, losing his son and looking for some way to grieve. He begins to race horses and meets Tom Smith, an old-time horse trainer. Together, they spot the unconventional Seabiscuit who Smith sees potential that no one else does. Smith convinces Howard to buy the horse and they find Red Pollard to ride the horse. All of the key parts of this movie are unconventional: Red is too big to be a jockey, Seabiscuit is too small to be a prized horse and Smith is well past his time but somehow they make it work. Seabiscuit gains popularity in a time where Americans needed to be distracted from the Depression Era. The movie continues by Howard wanting Seabiscuit to go up against the "greatest" horse, War Admiral. War Admiral's owner wants no part to do with it. Eventually, they agree to race but not before Pollard seriously injures himself. Seabiscuit is ridden by the greatest jockey of all time and beats the War Admiral. In the next race, Seabiscuit also injures himself. The rest of the movie is Seabiscuit and Red recovering together and later winning the last race shown in the movie. Although I will cover the entire soundtrack in my lecture, the main point that I would like to emphasize that is done well in this film is Newman's use of sounds, especially through music, transitions and the use of a narrator.

First, I would like to talk about the basic different types of sounds that are present in the film. There are many examples of diegetic sounds, which sounds that are part of the character's world. A great example of diegetic sound is when the radio host, Tick Tock McGlaughlin, plays his random assortment of instruments during his show. Some may construe this as diegetic music but he is really only creating sound. Another example would be the sound that comes from the horses along the track. This sound is apparent throughout the entire movie. The pattering from the running horses also shows spatial characteristics because as the horses move around the track, the noise coming from them changes depending on where the camera is in location to the horses. To enhance the diegetic sounds, non-diegetic music, music that exists outside of the character's world, is played in the background throughout the majority of the film. The non-diegetic music will be very upbeat and loud during intense and action packed scenes and the opposite during slower scenes. During one of Red's first races, he gets into a scuffle with one of the other jockeys. During this scene, the music is very circus like. The boys are acting in a manner in which is not appropriate for horse