The Film and Media Creators' Guide to Music

Vasco Hexel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351678056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Music plays an integral role in the experience of film, television, video games, and other media—yet for many directors, producers, and media creators, working with music can be a baffling and intimidating process. The Film and Media Creators' Guide to Music bridges the gap between musical professionals and the creators of film and other media projects, establishing a shared language while demystifying this collaborative journey. Organized with a modular chapter structure, the book covers fundamental topics including:

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• Why (and when) to use music in a project
• How to talk about music
• Licensing existing music
• Commissioning original music
• Working with a composer

Geared toward emerging and established creators alike, this book takes a practical approach to the process of finding the best music for all forms of moving image. The Film and Media Creators' Guide to Music offers hands-on advice for media creators, providing readers with the confidence to approach the planning, commissioning, creation, and placement of music in their projects with the awareness, understanding, and vocabulary that will enable them to be better collaborators and empowered storytellers. For students and professionals working across film and media, this book is the essential guide to using music creatively and effectively.

Why Use Music at All? 1

1.1 Getting Started

I think music is one of the most effective ways of preparing an audience and reinforcing points that you wish to impose on it. The correct use of music, and this includes the non-use of music, is one of the great weapons that the filmmaker has at his disposal.¹

Stanley Kubrick, director

Understanding the Needs of the Project

During the conceptual stages of any media project an understanding should evolve as to what the project as a whole should achieve—creatively, narratively, and perhaps commercially. A grasp of the scale and scope of the project will firm up as the concept takes shape. These considerations will determine the needs of the project in terms of budget, logistics, and production timelines. Furthermore, initial thoughts on genre, style, tone, and underlying (post-)production aesthetic may form. It is never too early to think about any and all component parts of the project. Some scripts will cite a specific location, such as Times Square. Whether or not that actual location is feasible depends on the production budget, scheduling, shooting permits, etc. Circumstances may dictate that an alternative location be dressed to look like Times Square, to reduce production costs or to benefit from tax incentives in a different filming location. Perhaps the script ends up developing in such a way that a generic town square will do. Sometimes a project banks on famous talent and much effort may go into securing that person. Early planning may stipulate a particular kind of setting for the project, such as a landscape, a season, or time period. Ideas for visual flair and other attributes may arise (sets, costumes, special effects), some soon to be dismissed along the way, others to be developed further.

Thought can and should be given to sound and music as well. There are many ways in which sound and music can transform your project. Asking some questions including “what will we hear of what we see?” or “what will we see of what we hear?” may stir some fruitful creative thoughts. Although sound and music may not actually be created and/or fixed until production and post-production, early planning can catalyze useful reflection on the nature, role, and functions of sound and music in the context of the project as a whole.

Considering the Role and Function of Music in the Project

Can music play a role in the project at hand? Should it? Will it? Why use music at all? There are many compelling examples of films that use no music at all, or very little. As Kubrick says in the opening quotation to this chapter, the non-use of music can be perfectly reasonable and highly effective. Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Rope (1948) uses no composed underscore after an initial opening title. Set in an apartment on a single evening, the film relies only on source music, when Phillip (Farley Granger) plays Poulenc on the piano. The confined setting of the film, like a stage play, reasonably precludes the use of music that might feel intrusive. Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976) uses no composed music. The film’s contemporary setting and vé rité style arguably require an immediacy from which musical underscore might detract. Although they are of a horror genre, where music can play a highly effective role, The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cloverfield (2008) also operate without music. In both films, the narrative logic of a handheld camcorder point-of-view renders music superfluous. Austrian director Michael Haneke consistently uses only source music, i.e., music the characters can hear. German director Maren Ade pursues the same strategy in Toni Erdmann (2016). In the most compelling and creatively rewarding projects where no or very little music is used, this non-use has been carefully considered and planned. In each instance, the absence of music arguably required as much creative deliberation as the presence of music. It is for these reasons that Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! (2017) credit composers as music consultants (Bernard Herrmann and Jóhann Jóhannsson respectively), even though no original music is used.

On the other hand, there are countless examples of audiovisual multimedia that do use music to powerful ends. Media music can be a valuable asset for immersive storytelling. Music may come in many forms and guises (see later in the chapter). It may be newly composed for a project or compiled from existing sources. Media music may be of any musical style, form, and instrumentation. Considering whether to use any music at all may lead to broader considerations: How heavily will the project rely on music? How much music should there be? These are questions that can be asked early on, even if they may not be answered until further down the line.

Music is exceedingly effective as a structuring and framing device. Well-judged placement of music can completely transform the viewing or gaming experience. The highly dramatic crop duster sequence in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1956, score by Bernard Herrmann) is left un-scored until the plane crashes into the truck (and the main character escapes unharmed). Just by looking at the final film, it is of course impossible to know what creative considerations and discussions went into this scene. But it seems likely that Hitchcock, who was certainly aware of the power of music, planned this selective non-use early on. In other suspenseful scenes, North by Northwest features music prominently—for example, during the climactic chase on Mount Rushmore. Sergio Leone chose to leave the opening reel of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, score by Ennio Morricone) un-scored, instead placing heightened emphasis on sound effects and, in conjunction with a slow visual and editing pace, effectively highlighting a sense of discomforting heat and inactivity in the scene. Numerous films make effective use of the sparse placement of music, selectively delineating the structure of the film with music entries and, in turn, giving added importance, a voice, to music when it is used. The judiciously sparse use of music can be highly effective.

Takeaways

• Project planning in the early stages should consider sound and music.

• The absence of (original) music deserves as much creative deliberation as the presence of (original) music.

• Media music is an asset at the media creator’s disposal for immersive storytelling.

1.2 Rules and Principles

There are no fixed rules for the use of music in audiovisual multimedia. Although music has always accompanied moving images from long before the advent of synchronized sound, no hard and fast rules have emerged that dictate how media music should sound or what it should do. If ten experienced media composers were asked to score the same scene, working to the same brief, and with the same resources at their disposal, they would nevertheless all come up with different music solutions. Whilst on the one hand this introduces a certain level of uncertainty to every new project, it also opens up a multitude of exciting possibilities. Historically, we can of course observe prevalent modes of practice in a chosen canon—for example, how a certain set of filmmakers preferred to use music or how a group of composers happened to score films in similar ways. For example, in her 1987 book, “Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music,” the scholar Claudia Gorbman chose to focus on so-called Classical Hollywood films, a period in Hollywood filmmaking that formed a unified body of works, with underlying scoring principles that could, in hindsight, be observed and summarized.² Gorbman highlighted that music in classical Hollywood films tended to be orchestral scores in the so-called new-Romantic style. She also showed that “narrative film music” followed certain principles in the ways it related to the other “narrative vehicles” (dialogue and sound design): Music would be devised in such a way that it would remain “inaudible,” subordinated to the other narrative vehicles and not drawing conscious attention to itself. Gorbman tied this in with Classical Hollywood films’ general aim to mask the technical artifact that is “film,” i.e., hiding cameras and microphones, building convincing sets, employing certain editing techniques, etc., basically anything that might distract the viewer from fully immersing themselves in the narrative. Whilst Gorbman’s analysis was fascinating, the scoring principles she observed are not universally applicable to films outside the Classical Hollywood canon. And scoring principles are not rules anyway, just a collected view on what was commonly done because it had proven effective and what would, therefore, likely work again.

In the ever-evolving field of audiovisual multimedia, no one is interested in insisting on rules. Of course, there are some conventions that are fairly fixed. For example, where dialogue and sound design are present in a film ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword by John Ottman
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Why Use Music at All?
• 2 Different Types of Narrative Media Music
• 3 How to Think and Talk about Music
• 4 When to Think and Talk about Music
• 5 Licensing Existing Music
• 6 Commissioning Original Music
• 7 Collaborating with a Composer
• 8 Finalizing Your Project
• Further Listening
• Further Reading: Film Composer Biographies
• About the Author
• Glossary
• Index