How Music Affects Film

And Television...And Real-Life

I only really noticed this when I was sitting doing homework and Spotify was dying on my computer. The lack of the music that I have normally throughout most of my life was disconcerting at best. Thoughts of exam halls, of silent work in classrooms, or scarier things like being in an empty house after dark filled my mind, and I couldn't quell the feeling, until I had made a slap-dash playlist on Youtube and I could resume to annotating my Art GCSE work.

But it got me thinking, about why it is that I now feel that music is the soundtrack to my life. It doesn't really matter what type it is. Of course I have preferences. When I write my novel (80802 words and counting!) I like having relatively plain music, such as film scores. Right now I like the "How to Train Your Dragon" playlist by John Powell, but when I started the book, I found the fast paced guitar chords of Blue Skies songs a good way of making myself writing quicker. When I play Tetris, I listen to heavy metal, or occasionally Falling in Reverse. When I am just browsing, I put my entire playlist on shuffle. When I walk across the heath, often on my way to acting I like listening to the Blink-182 album "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket", because I feel like I'm in the opening credits of a teenage coming of age film. Think Breakfast Club. But even without the music I prefer, I always want there to be music. I'd rather have anything, from deathmetal, to bubblegum pop, to baroque (and I hate baroque music) than silence.

In fact, I often use music to write entire film scripts. I used to do it with playlists. I would take characters and make playlists of songs that would play while their story evolved. Then I would sit and listen, editing and watching the characters like my own personal movie. Now I am more likely to direct music videos. I have the most in depth ideas for the songs "Bulletproof Heart" and "The Only Hope for Me is You" by My Chemical Romance, with ideas blooming for "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W". The nerdiest part is that the plotlines are entirely original with both canon and alternative characters, but also work as a canon prequel to both the music videos and the comic books. So far, they also do a pretty good job of explaining things.

My question is why I feel the need to fill my life with music in this way, to the extent that it feels eerie without it. Whilst it probably has something to do with my undying unhealthy love for music, it's probably been influenced by the media that I surround myself by. The majority of this is film and television, and if you notice, everything shown on the television is wrapped in swathes of music.

Whether it be a film with a majorly hyped up soundtrack - "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist", a musical - "Miss Saigon", or just clever use of music in the background - "The Amazing Spider-Man" practically everything shown to us on screen uses music of some kind.

I think it was knocked home to me the most when I watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Body". This episode used no music at all, to attempt to weird the audience out. "Music comforts an audience," proclaimed writer Joss Whedon, and he was right. The lack of music made the episode chilling, stilted and awkward - which perfectly summed up the emotions that the plotline evoked. However, it also proves that essentially music is necessary, if we do not want our films to come across as jarring and strange.

Most of us assume that film is mostly visual, but this could not be further from the truth! We do get a visual experience, yes, but much of the emotion is communicated via music. Films are our fantasies, and fantasies defy logic and reality. Even if a film is not "fantasy", the dialogue is polished, the events more extraordinary than your average day. They conspire with your imagination, working with the unconcious mind to give you an entire experience of illusion, which alters our emotions. Because so much of the experience does not happen in our concious mind - instead we receive a feeling in our concious mind - we often do not notice the soundtrack to a film unless it is a breakaway hit, such as Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. If I were to say to you - hum the background music from your favourite film - no matter how familiar you were with it, you would probably struggle to recall more than a few phrases.

Nino Rota wrote the score for The Godfather, and used a lack of music to heighten intensity in the scene when Michael Corleone shoots his father's enemy. Instead we heighten panic by using the device of hearing a train screech to a halt outside. But whilst we have already established that a lack of music can be jarring, so too can cleverly composed scores. Hitchcock originally decided that his iconic shower scene in Psycho would have no music. However, a, Bernard Herrmann wrote a composition of jabbing, jarring notes which reminded listeners of dying animals. Hitchcock used the score to great success.

Sometimes, we use science to ensure music really has the effect we want it to. Films such as Irreversible used infrasound, which has been demonstrated to cause anxiety, extreme sorrow, heart palpitations and uncontrollable shivering. Infrasound has been noticed naturally occuring around areas of "supernatural activity", and is also produced prior to major storms and earthquakes. The infrasound caused the audience to feel "disorientated and physically ill", and was used in parts of the film prior to the main shocking visual sequence.

Aside from soundtracks, some movies use songs to promote a certain era, setting or clique. For instance, in the film "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", music such as "Asleep" by The Smiths shows Charlie's depression and mental health issues, whereas songs such as "Heroes" by David Bowie show how he is happier with his friends, and has ultimately grown as a person.

If you still do not believe that music affects how we view cinema, then watch this ingenious clip in which a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean which has no speech has different styles of music played over it, inducing very different emotions and feelings to the film in each one.

I hope this has been interesting or enlightening. What do you think? Can you name songs from your favourite film? I'd love to know.

Bella
@ThatBellaFern