Article Response: "5 Ways You Can Use Music & Film Scores to Make Your Film More Dynamic"

[ Link to Article ]

    It's common film knowledge that having music and compositions present in a scene can easily make it more powerful, emotional, humorous, frightening, etc. For hundreds of years, people have used music compositions in their films and animations to leave an impact on the viewer and make it more memorable. In this article, written by V Renee, she examines the way music is specifically chosen and written to give an audience an emotional response while watching a film.

    Now, there's a difference between a soundtrack in a movie and a score. A soundtrack is a song that wasn't written solely for the movie, while a film score was written specifically for what was happening during a scene. Music can be used in a variety of different ways, for example, the setting of the film. It all depends on the time and place. If you were to make a movie with it taking place in the 1920's, you would have older sounding music playing, rather than music from the 2010's. It would just sound odd otherwise because of the time difference, unless your goal is to make the scene more comical or modern sounding.

   Music can also be used to alert the viewer of something happening off screen, or foreshadow an upcoming event. For instance, one of the most famous scenes in Jaws when the girl gets pulled underwater by a shark. The music starts up before the shark even touches her, but it's an indicator that something bad is about to happen. You can even build a sense of continuity, for example, in Friday the 13th, once you hear that "Chchch, hahaha" music play, you know that Jason is most likely going to show up soon.

    Something that I never realized was so difficult to do, since I often use this in my own videos, is filling the silence. I'm a big fan of using music wherever I can in my videos, although I've realized that I may need to just leave certain scenes without any background music as it may be fine that way. However, sometimes you need to fill the silence so that the audience doesn't feel uncomfortable watching something so quiet. It's difficult though, because you need to make it so that the music goes unnoticed.

    I really liked reading this article because, as I said, I love using music in my own videos. I love being able to create an atmosphere and having the audience feel certain emotions just by adding in a composition. Whether it be a hero swooping in and saving someone, an antagonist being introduced, the loss of a main character's best friend, or a ghost popping up and scaring the audience, I believe music will always be a vital aspect in adding emotion to each and every film trope.