Music Is The Answer

I have played some form of musical instrument almost my entire life. Starting with piano at the age of 4, I progressed into violin at 7, the drum kit at 9, the snare drum in a Pipeband at 11 and dispensed throughout the most of this, dabblings in guitar and voice. I do therefore, like to believe that I have a good ear for music. I’ve realized recently however, that there are two different ears that one acquires for deciding what is good music and how to produce good music.

I’ll explain a little further. When I play an instrument, let’s say piano for example, I am able to listen to a song and then play it out on the piano. I can “play by ear” basically. I’ve come to think over the years that this means my brain is highly tuned to the musical elements and is able to pick out a good song from a bad song. When it comes to choosing songs for film however, this theory never quite goes to plan.

I refer specifically to another film I made over the summer holidays about a girl who happened to choose the wrong night to drive down one of the scariest roads in Perth. The hardest aspect of the entire production was trying to find music that reflected the tone and emotional impact I wanted to evoke from the audience. No matter how hard I tried, it ws almost impossible to replicate the type of music I wanted and then enter that information into a search engine for copyright free music. I tried everything: looking on YouTube for “scary songs”, looking up copyrightfreemusic.com for “creepy music”, even attempting to create something spooky in Garageband. Nothing sounded right. I realized then and there, after giving up and just going with some crap I found the night before my film’s screening, that it takes a certain amount of talent to be able to find a good song for a film.

Whilst Louise was in charge of sound and did produce a good song for the climax, it just didn’t seem to fit the mood. It’s hard to produce something like that when you are limited to a bunch of crappy sound bites from Garageband. In the end, we decided upon a piece which had a steady bass beat coupled with a punching drum kit. The aim was just to reflect the increased tempo of the scene through the sound as well as the vision and I think in the end, what we used does work for the scene.

The end credits song however, proved harder to decide than anticipated. I wanted something cheeky and spunky but not cheesy. Unfortunately when you type “cheeky” and “spunky” into a music search engine, cheesy is the first thing that comes up. After trawling through countless numbers of crappy songtunes and Latin folk songs, we finally decided upon techno style beat which sounded a little sterile, reiterating the technology theme of the film.

I’m really considering undertaking some form of music production for film short course over the holidays or possibly looking into doing it as an elective during my exchange to Florida as I’ve realized from this production, sound is JUST as crucial, if not even more so, than image and to be able to manipulate it is an obvious talent.