When you think of film music, what melody comes to mind first? Ennio Morricone’s “Man with a Harmonica” from Once Upon a Time in the West, perhaps? Or the Star Wars theme, or even a film music classic by Erich Wolfgang Korngold?

A conversation about music in the cinematic realm, communication, and royalties paid in tuna fish with the newly appointed film music professor Walter Werzowa, media composition and applied music professor Judit Varga, film directing student Wolf-Maximilian Liebich, and film editing graduate Barbara Seidler.

The early decades of the 20th century witnessed three waves of emigration from Europe, the first of which occurred prior to and during World War I. European artists thus played a role in shaping US film from the very beginning—and the studio system, which became a foundation of American film’s success story, was in fact largely created by émigrés.