Use of Music

    Music is another aspect in film creation and is another way that filmmakers try to add more feeling, emotion, etc. to a particular scene in a film. Music is found virtually in almost every film and is a great way for filmmakers to set the mood of a scene. For instance, you can use different kinds of music to give the viewers a sense of happiness with an upbeat tone or sound filmmakers can use music to give a more intense and dramatic feeling by using a more mellow or low tone or sound. According to Hoeckner, Wyatt, Decety, and Nusbaum, “film music has powerful aesthetic effects on the perception and understanding of screen content”. As you can see music does play a vital role in film and now I will looker further and concentrate on the music used in drug films.

    As I said before some filmmakers uses music in order to give the film an upbeat or cheerful song or tune in order to give this positive and or optimistic sense of feeling. A good example of this particular kind of music is the movies and skits played by Cheech and Chong. The interesting thing about their films is that they would actually sing themselves, which added a lot to their many comedy scenes. Cheech and Chong would use music as another way to entertain their audience and would add humorous lyrics to some of the songs that they often times wrote and sung as well. I think it is this kind of creative addition that makes films great and stand out from other films despite being music being just one of many important aspects of filmmaking.

    Other films will use a deeper songs or sounds in hopes to change the mood of a film and convey a more intense and more power scene in a film. This use of deeper songs or sounds is commonly found in films about drugs, especially the films that incorporate drug addiction and the different negative impacts that coincide with people who use drugs. This is because often times the filmmakers in this case has a powerful goals with their films. Filmmakers want to grasp as much emotion from the audience as he or she can in order to convey the different moods that the filmmakers are trying to create throughout the film. I attached an example in the form of a movie clip from the film, The Basketball Diaries (1995). You will notice the low and almost creepy kind of music that is used in this particular scene as the character is visualizing his past and all the things he left behind as he struggled to overcome his major drug addiction, which is the source of all his problems. I hope you enjoy this short clip and I hope this helps further your understanding of the importance of music in film and how filmmakers utilize music as a source to be creative and have the ability to impact the different moods and feeling from scene to scene in a film.

Hoeckner, B., Wyatt, E. W., Decety, J., & Nusbaum, H. (2011). Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters. Psychology Of Aesthetics, Creativity, And The Arts, 5(2), 146-153.