Abstract
The proliferation of DVD and home theatre systems has enabled greater consideration to be given to developing and marketing all aspects of a film’s visual and audio experience. Rather than becoming redundant, this research explores the potential for the soundtrack album to operate as an adjunct to the movie form. Further, the soundtrack is notable as one of the few purely electronic music compositions in Australian film.
The soundtrack for The Illustrated Family Doctor appears as music within the feature release directed by Kriv Stenders, as well as a soundtrack recording DVD released as The Animated Family Doctor. Drawing upon 4 hours of sound recordings, the music for the film has been condensed to fit the visual action; conversely, the soundtrack DVD includes new visual material by Stenders and Tom Ellard that has been created to accompany some of the unedited music. This new material draws upon the film in a number of tangential ways, wildly accenting certain viewpoints, commenting on ideas and subverting its narrative. The DVD also includes the entire four hours of source material as compressed audio.
The significance and innovation of the soundtrack DVD was recognised by the Australian Recording Industry Association with an award in 2005 for this rethinking of what a soundtrack album could be.