Dreamscapes and Soundscapes: The enigmatic blend of music and technology in Paprika

Class essay on film festival

Instrutor: Kelly Rae Aldridge

" The completion of a story occurs simultaneously with the completion of an album." 

— Susumu Hirasawa 

Music is often used as a way to set mood, highlight a specific event , accentuate a dramatic occurrence in which to strength our emotion. Choosing the proper music to drive the audience to the film is one of the most important decisions filmmakers need to do. In the film Paprika, which is directed by Satoshi Kon as his fourth and final feature film, he invited Susumu Hirasawa to compose the soundtrack. As as huge fun of electronic music, Hirasawa applied a new technology called Vocaloid that fits in well with the film's surrealistic theme of dreams. In this essay, I will evaluate Paprika with its music to demonstrate how technology and western culture impact Japanese society, as well as how animators and composers collaborate to represent life around us that is packed with media, mass production, and technology. 

The term “Cool Japan” has been used to describe the Japanese government’s efforts to promote Japanese culture and products abroad since 1980 through the present day. The government has invested heavily in these efforts, which have also been described as a form of soft power included funding art, music, and design projects around the world, as well as promoting Japanese food and fashion. When electronic music begin to have a significant influence on popular culture, with the adoption of polyphonic synthesizers, drum machines through the emergence of the J-pop, Susumu Hirasawa made the change to compose electronic music with the advent of the synthesizer. He knew the potential that electronic music has in future as a new form of expression for artists, dancers and composers to explore. Different than traditional Japanese music, It is unique in that it is not a genre or subgenera which is bound by a particular set of rules or guidelines, but rather a way of thinking about music that is meant to reflect the artist's individual thought and creativity. 

The soundtrack of Paprika is one of the first film that used electronic singing voice synthesize — Vocaloid which is a computer program that can generate human-like vocal recordings. It is used by producers for songs without the need for real human. The use of Vocaloid itself made a great combination with the DC Mini, a dream detector device in the film. Paprika is about finding the stolen DC Mini back from dream terrorists who causes nightmares and bring dangerous to people due to mixing with dream and reality, the Vocaloid create a unique, dreamlike and mysterious atmosphere for the film. Since the our ear can only detect sounds in the range of frequencies, the sounds that generated by computer created the sense of unfamiliar and unusual atmosphere to audiences which they could not hear these sounds in the nature world. 

Moreover, both DC Mini and Vocaloid are applied with hearing and are able to reveal the unseen message on to the screen. That is, The DC Mini is designed as a wireless headphone with sensors that can detect signals from a users brain during the sleep and allow therapists using the device direct access to dreams. On the other hand, DC Mini can record dreams and let therapist viewed it on the laptop. Same as the Vocaloid which is capturing the sound, put it on the screen and allow composer to manipulate the sound later on the screenThe previous is visualizing the dream, the later one is visualizing the sound. 

Satoshi Kon, 2006, Parpika 

One of the most well-known songs from the soundtrack is "Mediational Field," which opens the film. Vocals from Vocaloid were mixed in with a variety of different voices, instruments, and artificial rhythms. This beginning is incomplete without the music, which is as effervescent, chaotic, and diverse as Paprika herself. It's the ideal complement to the graphics, which are continuously changing and shifting as well. This soundtrack gives the impression that anything may happen at any time, and that the tune could change at any time. The most exciting characteristics of Paprika is that it is not constrained by real-world things, allowing spectators' imaginations to run wild. That's exactly what Satoshi Kon and Susumu Hirasawa accomplish in this film, merging dramatic pictures with dreamlike-electronic music to immerse viewers into Paprika's fantasy. 

Satoshi Kon, 2006, Parpika 

Different than "Mediational Field", "Parade"' has a trippy vibe. Its centerpiece is a soothing electronic voice modulator that produces an odd, ecstasy and nostalgic feeling. The real parade in the film recurs whenever the story reaches a moment of extreme breakdown between the dreams and reality. Once this song started playing in the movie, things were getting weird, chaotic and crazy on the same page with the images. It fits well to the mess the parade is and the overlapping dreams. Moreover, it also contains a lot of things that Western love about Japanese pop culture. Such as Japanese fortune cat , dolls, toys and so on. 

It's fascinating to observe the marching band of frogs, which combines western cleaner, trumpet, and traditional Japanese instruments. As a result of Japan's westernization, new genres of Japanese music that blend traditional and western elements have formed. Modern Japanese instruments are capable of playing Western-style music. 

In conclusion, by using Vocaloid in the soundtracks, Hirasawa successfully brings Kon's vision to life. It allows the audience to enter Paprika's world as the story progresses and effectively conveys the film's theme to the audience through music. Although Westernization has an impact on modern Japanese music and culture, Japanese composers and artists are critiquing and using technology wisely to reveal society through their art and music.

Bibliography 

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Structure, and the Consumption of Music in Japan.” Asian Music 39, no. 1 (2008): 81–107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25501576. 

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