Ambient music design could be seen, in a musical way, as a fusion of original film score

Film score

A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...

 and sound design

Sound design

Sound design is the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production and video game software...

 or, simply, a kind of 'musical sound design' that lives between these two worlds. It has a much more atmospheric

Ambient music

Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...

 and 'drony'

Drone music

Drone music is a minimalist musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics...

 feel to it and it is supposed to set the 'undertone' for a specific scene

Scene (film)

In TV and movies, a scene is generally thought of as the action in a single location and continuous time. Due to the ability to edit recorded visual works, it is typically much shorter than a stage play scene....

 or the entire story of a movie, TV-series or video game relying on musical sounds, just as an original score and sound design would do to tell that same story.

The term was invented by Mel Wesson

Mel Wesson

Mel Wesson is a British film, TV and video game composer and ambient music designer. He is one of the most influential 'musical sound designers' in Hollywood, yet his sound is often hard to describe or even identify...

 and Hans Zimmer

Hans Zimmer

Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...

 in early 2000 when working on Hannibal

Hannibal (film)

Hannibal is a 2001 psychological thriller film directed by Ridley Scott, adapted from the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. It is a sequel to the 1991 Academy Award-winning film The Silence of the Lambs that returns Anthony Hopkins to his iconic role as serial killer Hannibal Lecter...

and has since became a niche for Mel Wesson's sound. Mel has also made numerous production music CD's for Extreme Music which feature loosely some of the atmospheric textures in his world of ambient music design.

Feature films

2011

• The Green Lantern

2010

• The Tourist
• Inception
• Season of the Witch

2009

• Angels and Demons

2008

• Frost/Nixon
• The Dark Knight
• The Happening

2007

• Michael Clayton
• Transformers
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

2006

• Blood Diamond
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
• Lady in the Water
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• The Da Vinci Code
• Freedomland

2005

• King Kong
• The Island

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2005

• Batman Begins
• The Interpreter

2004

• Thunderbirds
• King Arthur
• Man on Fire

2003

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• The Rundown
• Matchstick Men
• Bad Boys II
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
• Phone booth
• Tears of the Sun

2002

• Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

2001

• Black Hawk Down
• Hannibal

2000

• Mission Impossible II

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Other projects

• Inception Live Premiere Performance
• Inception: The App
• Inception: The Soundscape
• The Dark Knight: 2-CD Special Edition
• SOS Short Films: Electroland
• Shrek 4-D Universal Studios Theme Park Ride
• Various TV-series, theatrical teaser trailers, production music CD's, music albums, music videos and commercials