The Academy Awards...?

Question

What's the difference between "Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)" and "Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song)"? Basically, what's the difference between a song and a score?

Also, what's the difference between "Best Documentary Feature" and "Best Documentary Short Subject"? Is the latter just a short movie?

Answer 1

Score is the music - like the Star Wars theme or the Jaws theme. Song is an actual song. More often than not the songs are played over the credits rather than being a part of the story, although this year's nominees all seemed to be part of the story.

Furthermore, the score is more like the emotional undertone of the movie.

And documentary feature vs documentary short is based on the running time. A feature has to be at least 40 minutes while a short has to be less than 40 minutes. It's that simple.

Answer 2

A musical score is a body of music (more than one composition) written specifically for the movie. One of the best and most well-known examples I can think of is John Williams's music for the Star Wars movies.

Feature vs. short subject ... you are correct, the length is the difference. Short subject length is 20-40 minutes; feature length 40 minutes and up.

Answer 3

Score is the music written for the movie by a composer.
Song is anybody's song they write for a part of the movie. Song is always some rocker you have heard of. Score they gave an award to to the Italian dude who did like 30 movies and I never heard of him.

Answer 4

Original song is for one song on the movie soundtrack. Original score is that music you hear in the background throughout the movie.
And yep, short subject is just shorter in length.

Answer 5

original score is the background music while Original Song is the normal english song sung an english movie.no idea of the latter part.