Rant On How Everyone Uses Music

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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MUSIC IN THE MOVIES SUCK. MUSIC ALONE IS GOOD; MOVIES ALONE ARE GOOD.

Okay, here’s the deal: Hollywood has made way too many movies that have… no, NEED soundtracks. Why? Because their actors aren’t good enough. For example, let’s look at “The Fast And The Furious.” Do you think that it would have such an impact if there were no rock soundtrack? No… in fact, it doesn’t have an impact (okay, maybe “don’t see the sequel” or “drag-racing kicks ass,” but those are pretty bad morals–EVERYONE knows they shouldn’t see a sequel after the “Cube 2” monstrosity). So, they add in music for the least important scenes that don’t need acting. They’re just going to have dinner… bad acting! NO! Wait… add in some music! That always works, and because Universal gives such an extravagant amount of money for fluff like this, we can add anything in! Yawn… oh, wait, I’m up because THEY’RE PLAYING THEIR MUSIC SO DANG LOUD. I haven’t seen it (and don’t plan to), but it looks like crap, and you know it just by the fact that you can read in a review, “The police cop character is shooting at a fugitive on the street… no policeman would do this when innocent lives at risk.” Maybe corrupt cops would do something like that, but not trained ones that are honest.

Now, since I’m posting this on the Elysiun Chat, I’m going to relate to the two Blender shorts I’ve seen with music: “Just One Wish,” and “Cyan Sun.” Now, these are pretty good shorts. Why can’t they just forget music? It’s not like they need it. If you’re going to prove that you have a good story on your hands, you wouldn’t need music, holiday-ish or sci-fi-ish. The story could carry itself, and if you can’t, your story was doomed from the start and not even the best music will make an impact.

Should I ever get around to making shorts, I want to keep them SOUND-FREE. Filmmakers started out with moving pictures; why not start there? If you want to make a movie, don’t make it audio; make it visual. You don’t hear the phrase “hear a movie” for a reason: You SEE a movie, because the visuals should make up the movie, not the audio. Silent films can be played on mute and make an impact; try it with “The General” (don’t try “Nosferatu,” you’ll be bored to death). So they have music on the DVDs and videotapes; so what? They aren’t needed. You can go to a movie deaf and it should have an impact; if you really need to hear it, it’s an audiobook. Combining them makes a modern movie, and judging from what Hollywood is doing these days, you shouldn’t combine them.

Again, if I make movies, I want to start with no sound. No music, no voice, no sound effects… just silence. Silence is golden, and if my stories suck, then at least I have the decency to keep them bad than to add in blaring music that just deafens you. When a story makes an impact without you hearing anything, there’s a good story. When you need to add a soundtrack, people overlook that and see your awful story. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t need music at all during “The Birds,” and it is one good film. It’s not great, I admit (kind of boring), but never once do they use music. That’s ballsy. Even ambient music is omitted; the only “music” you hear is that of the birds. When you need ominous music to keep your audience in suspense, you’re not storytelling properly. You need a STORY, not a soundtrack.

“Just One Wish” has a nice soundtrack, I admit, and the “Cyan Sun” music can rock at times, but ask yourself if you’d watch the films without the sound. In fact, do just that. Watch them without the sound. See if the stories still make you think or have a bittersweet feeling on you afterwards. If they don’t, they’re not classics.

I don’t get this. I’ve heard that Edward Scissorhand’s soundtrack is so good, you can listen to it on your own and have an impact. That’s a compliment? Isn’t that saying you can have the film at home without watching it, because all you need is a CD player? If you want compelling music, listen to “Classical” music. You don’t need a TV, and you don’t need an understanding of language; all you need is a CD player and a CD of, say, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

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And now for a brief rebuttal!

I think you’re confusing the context and ideas (the story itself) with the means of mediation. Storytelling is an abstract idea. The abstract ideas of a story get communicated to an audience through the use of all sorts of different media, whether it be printed word, voice, moving pictures, sound, interactive media, etc.

In film, stories can be communicated through dialogue, moving pictures, abstract imagery, sound effects, music and various other techniques. All of these are just methods of communication - they don’t all have to be visual, and layering multiple forms of communication atop each other can make the end result much stronger, or just different.

Watching a video with the sound muted isn’t a way of evaluating the quality of a story, it’s a way of evaluating how the visuals communicate that story (just one piece in the puzzle). In starting out, it’s up to the author of the media to define the means of communication. If a piece is designed so that it uses both video and audio in order to form an integrated piece of communication, then obviously taking the audio (or the video) out of the equation will harm the final result. You can’t compare this to (for example) old silent films, where they weret under the constraints of no sound/dialogue etc. right from the start, so the way that they designed the visuals will of course reflect this, and hopefully tell a story on it’s own.

When saying ‘do these videos need music?’, you may like to look at it from another perspective - do movies need video? We got by telling stories by word of mouth or through media such as radio shows. If you extend your logic to this perspective, you could imply that a story is weak if it needs visuals to be able to communicate it. Of course, this is a pretty absurd thing to say…

The fact is that one form of communication is not necessarily’better’ than another - they’re all different and it’s up to the author how he/she wants to use them.

(Even though it’s a rant, I guess it’s good that you’re now posting more interesting topics than just random spam :wink: )

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Whatever… geez, Cube what a waste of time…

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A movie without any music or SE whatsoever is bland and boring, IMO. Pure silence just induces sleep for me…

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music can make or break a movie…, imo its a very strong part of the movie, the music and audio… the music adds alot to the feelings, it can describe epic, sad, heroic scenes,…

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%|

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one word: SHUT UP!!! ok that was 2…

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argh, if you absolutely have to post about something like this, please do it in the off-topic forum…

and yes, music plays a very major and important role in movies…

d52477001

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you got some kind of wicked software that insults Cubefan whenever he posts something?

This thread is totally related to movies, and CG shorts in perticular, so I would suggest you try to reply with your brains instead of your nickname-offense gadget.

Roel

ps. yay! I’m back from a 5 day sailing trip, tho for once I would like to come back to this forum and not see insults flying around the place…“I have a dream…”

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Good movies are like good literature: they appeal to as many senses as possible. The most boring books I have read are ones that only appeal to the sense of sight. If a book is at a Renaissance feast, I want to see goblets and cooked meats and happy feasting guests, but I also want to smell honey and roast pheasant, hear musicians and bards entertaining the crowds and knights and kings speaking of legends and old wars, I want to run my fingers over the silky surface of a newly woven tapestry. Now movies can only really appeal to two of our senses - sight and sound. Why not use all they can?

And some examples where I thought the music made it worthwhile: Fiat Lux, OOM, The Matrix, Shine, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Edward Scissorhands, I could go on forever. And when you say to simply listen to classical music (which I do most of my days), don’t you ever see a movie in your head? Something like Racmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto is a tale of passionate unrequited love, loneliness and togetherness, anxeity and peace, fury and resolve, the stuff of humanity. Every piece of music is a movie.

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Damn… first I decided not to answer in this, but here I go… Right Cubie… Movies and Music…

Music has always been very important, perhaps the most importandt sound feature of movies. Yes. Even back in times, when they just had mute movies, there was some person at the movie theatre, who was playing piano music tho enhance the scenes of the movie.

Now days, when whe special efx and suberb sound efx, the music still does the same. Enhances the effekt of the visual aspects of the movie. Some times it done horridly, but in somecases, Like in “The fellowship of the Rings” and “The Two Towers” The music is essential part of the magical illusion of the Middle Earth. Imagine these two movies without music. Yes, they would be visually amazing without it, but the music is the main creator of atmosphere and thus it finalizes the experience of magic.

Over and out.

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And some examples where I thought the music made it worthwhile: Fiat Lux, OOM, The Matrix, Shine, Mr. Holland’s Opus,

“Shine” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus” had music as plot points, I think. There it was pretty much neccesary (though it’d be kind of fun to see a movie about music, without any).

And sorry about posting this, but really, music can be a dead-giveaway that your acting’s no good in Hollywood. I was just pointing out that we shouldn’t follow conventions like that.

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argh, this is pretty silly

the score for a movie isnt a substitue for acting, its an addition to it. if you look at old horrors from the 70’s, although the SFX sucks, theres just no tension, because the score isnt written for tension. then you go and see resident evil, and scenes like where the guy goes into a pitch black room by himself with night vision on, and you totally know hes goign to get wasted, your just wating for it, on the edge of oyur seat, and then he goes “all clear” and turns the lights on. music is a tool for creating tension, and mood, things like that, music is not something you can act with.

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Ugh, you guys might hate me but I’m leaning to Weirdhat’s view on this. Alot of movies lately are more an more dependant on their music to charge scenes up and give intensity to otherwise lacklustre acting and storyline. There needs to be more of a balance.

Some movies of old had it right. Take “Thief” for example. The movie seemed to even stress that it would be music dependant with the commercials screaming Tangerine Dream at the end, but in the end a fantastic performance by James Caan held pace with the soundtrack throughout the film.

What movies all lack in my view is silence, but not just in the soundtrack. Camera views too seem to make them loud now, with constant movement and excessive close-ups that make them noisey even when muted.

Perfect example was a movie called “Assasins” with Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas. I saw a ‘making of’ video after watching the movie and the director was bragging about one scene where Stallone was looking at a clue near this fence. All the sudden a dog charges the fence and barks loudly and Stallone doesn’t even flinch. The intent was for the scene to be perfectly silent, make the audience jump out of their skins when the dog charged and show that Stallone was such a rock.

I myself didn’t even notice this scene when watching the movie. I rewound and looked at the scene again and yes there was total slence. BUT the camera angles were ‘loud’ and the dog didn’t make me flinch either. The whole movie was filmed like a music video and regardless of the soundtrack it was loud throughout. In a film based on assasins, where silence is paramount, they failed the mood with excessive cinemetography.

Alot of the latest releases are like musc video’s. Keep the audiences attention every second like comercials and don’t ever let up. No build-up, no suprises because there’s no silence to compare them to.

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Good Rebuttal Broken! I totally agree… so what if a scene relies upon the music to set the mood… If you change the music you change the mood. I love the fact that music is becoming a bigger and bigger part of film. Look at any pixar film… they use music just to set the mood. I love student films that at least try and use music in their projects as it shows they are at least trying to think about the viewer and how they will see it… and hear it. Some of the best animation has nothing but music behind it. Look at a lot of the old disney animation or fantasia.

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I wasn’t going to reply to this thread, but it appears that Enzoblue can’t tell the difference between me and Cubefan so I feel I should say something.

On the other hand, I have to go to school in 10 minutes and I can’t think of good wording for what I want to say, so for now I’ll just correct Enzoblue’s mistake and maybe I’ll say something about music later.

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The point should always be the story. Everything else is only a means. If music improves the story telling, then use music. Otherwise, don’t. It’s as simple as that.

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DOH sorry Weirdhat :frowning:

Had the flu all weekend, not at 100%.

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Oh my god! cubefan against the world once again!

Music is really important! what matters if your short movies hasn’t enough force without music? you also has less force if i cut your leg… music is a part of the movie, not “an extra”…

In a film or a short there is no video+music… both are the same thing.

Look my last short movie, i haven’t released it until i got music (not a good one, because of i composed it at my own, and i’m not a musician) but it’s needed to get the inital mood, and to create atmosphere, it give’s a special support to the action to change your feelings and emotions.

https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12153&sid=7875acc3b7980fbc3bf6770d6b34aeb6

I remember first time i assist to an spanish animation festival called animadrid. i was participating with 2 short’s, one made with blender and one made with max. One of them has no music, only audio-fx, and when watching both of them at a full of people cinema i felt as my short without music was in disadvantage.

i think that a movie without music isn’t a bad movie, but is a mutilated one.

-Ángel Quijada Álvarez

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I just saw Cabaret (Liza Minelli etc.) after a long long time again. It is a stunning movie, and has a very strong effect on me. Though it has a great story, what would that movie be without music?

Someone said that composing music for a film is like washing a body of the dead man: it does not bring him life, but it makes him look better.

And CubeFan, you are talking nonsense.

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