chrisboardmanmusictestblog

Why use songs in movies?

Lee Plaza Ballroom - Detroit

If you think about it, every art form is about telling stories. Humans have used music, drama, literature, painting and more for generations to express a story or the stories of others.  Even one still photo has a story.

Great photography captures a moment in time that asks us step outside ourselves for a moment and ask: Who are those people? What are they thinking? What in the world happened?

Storytelling is an organic method for humans have to communicate with one another. This is nothing new....we've been doing for thousands of years. As such we have inbred expectations regarding form and content when we are presented with a story. Music can be an integral part of this process.

Music and Storytelling

Film scoring is nothing more than helping to tell stories with music. To be an effective film composer you must understand how stories are constructed and the story that is being told. 

And while the visual image asks us to make decisions about the image based on our intellect and experience, music has the power to inform the viewer of the emotional and contextual part of the story. This extends far beyond what we see. An image accompanied by music tells us what to feel. Music provides the door and pathway to a complete experience which has far more meaning. The greatest challenge for the composer is to match the emotional intent of the story the film is telling. 

United Arts Theater- Detroit

Take the photograph to the left. A superficial glance will inform you that it is a theater in decay. The more you look at it the more your imagination will fill in the gaps. If you look at the image even longer perhaps questions will emerge.  Who performed there? Who came to this theater? Were the rich? Were they poor? How did this theater fall into decay?...and on and on. Music shapes the experience by supplying the emotional context to what we are seeing.

Using music to denote time and place

Our memory records everything we experience. We attach meaning to specific pieces of music that relate to our experience of the music. If I were to play Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler or Debussy symphony behind this picture the viewer would have a specific reaction about the context and the date and time   If I were to play Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, or Miles Davis you would immediately place this theater as a jazz venue. If I were to play the Beatles, The Eagles, Earth Wind and Fire, Michael Jackson, Nirvana, Justin Timberlake or 50 cent the viewer would infer that the experience was related to a specific decade or genre of the Twentieth Century. It is nearly impossible to recall a musical experience without remembering the context of the situation in which we first heard that music.

The power of music as a story telling tool

Existing music (classical, jazz, pop etc) will provide context for the viewer drawn from their past creating a much richer, deeper experience.