A film score is the written music for the accompaniment of a film, in standard orchestral or other score form for the use of the orchestra, band or choir performing the music on the film recording.
Often, a score will play under quite a large fraction of the run-time of the film and often has distinct motifs which are associated with a particular character or location. Written by a single composer, though sometimes more, it is designed to fit the film and its story perfectly, adhering to a strict timecode.
Score also applies to the sheet music used for musicals (as opposed to the script for the spoken dialogue), although this is obviously a bit of a different thing.
According to Wikipedia, a film score is:
…original music written specifically to accompany a film.
This usually refers to the instrumental music track – whether that’s orchestral or electronic. That means that songs are generally not included in this film score definition. Other names for “score” include: underscore, incidental music, background music. So, for example, the beautiful piece ‘Time’ composed by Hans Zimmer for the 2010 blockbuster movie Inception is part of the film’s score.
The soundtrack on the other hand includes music that was not originally intended for the film but was licensed to enhance it. Usually these are popular music tracks added to films to make them connect on a pop culture level. It generally contains music that may have lyrics and may have been written for the movie specifically, or not written for the movie, but relates to the movie somehow. Like it could be music to be played with the credits, or music listened to by one of the characters. It might be designed to be more noticeable than the score, since it's not timed to coincide with the action. It was not written to sync with the action. If you saw Almost Famous it has a ton of amazing songs from the '60's and '70s but the film was made in 2000. Those songs set the tone for the film and took us back to that era.
Soundtracks can also offer a complete experience when played separately from the film and some songs from it may not even be present within the film at all! Take the iconic collection of songs the ‘Guardians of The Galaxy’ soundtrack album has, or if you are a big fan of TV series, the splendid Peaky Blinders soundtrack.
In general, when someone refers to a “film score” they almost always mean the actual music composed for the film by a composer like Henry Jackman or Ramin Djawadi. However, when referring to a “soundtrack” they could mean the score and/or the songs from a film, like the Black Panther album.
Trust me, it’s alright to get confused between the two terms. To keep them straight just remember that the full soundtrack can include the score but the score does not include the soundtrack.
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