Seminar 6

This seminar focused heavily on the use of soundtracks within films with a focus on why and how they're used and how they effect the audiences engagement and emotional connection with characters or situations in the film.

The first film we analysed was American Graffiti (1973) by George Lucas, with focus on the scene near then end of the film that shows the drag race between Milner and Falfa, Falfa being the antagonist within the film and Milner being a heroic figure.

Throughout the film, music is sourced from radios within cars and in locations, and this scene is no exception as right from the beginning, the song pans in as the cars move up to the starting line. This technique really defines the film as having excellent attention to detail in terms of continuity, as well as showing the culture of the characters in the film as being youths who listen to this 'rebellious' radio station at all hours of the day. The song's style and genre also builds on this rebellious theme that is prominent throughout the film, and also starts to build tension through its pace. The music is drowned almost completely out as the characters exchange dialogue and the car engines start revving and getting louder and it is brought abruptly back in as Falfa's car crashes. This is so it doesn't distract the audience from the main action in the scene which is the race and crash, and the reason it's brought straight back in is to remind the audience that these characters are still teenagers and almost bring an element of nostalgia to the audience as they empathise with that age group and the 'stupid' things that they do.

The next scene we analysed was the final one in season 5 episode 8 of Mad Men, where the main character Don puts on a record at the request of his trophy wife, Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles, and this starts a slow cut montage sequence showing a number of different main characters in the series.

The music used here is very significant with the overall plot of the series, as it is used very strongly as connoting Don's struggle and refusal to change to a modernising society. This is shown because in the ending shot of the scene, we see him pull the needle off the record and which abruptly stops the track and he walks off screen. This connotes his refusal to change because he is listening to something new and strange that he doesn't like, so he walks away from it and almost refuses to accept it as a concept. The montage sequence that follows the music is also very effective as the fast paced and psychedelic genre of the song contrasts with the slow pans or slow cuts between the various characters and locations within the montage, allowing the audience to take in what they are seeing very easily, instead of being confused by the fast paced and erratic music.

After analysing these scenes we started looking at peoples Night Journey assemblies/rough cuts and discussing what technical aspects of them could be improved. The majority of what came up was about audio use in Media Composer, and what could be done to improve the overall quality and professionalism of it and here is a brief outline of what we were told. When using music in films, as an editor you always have to make sure it is in stereo format instead of mono. This goes for almost any form of sound as well apart from those which you want to use panning on, and this is because it gives a richer, more equal sound in both left and right speakers, instead of just half volume in both. We also learnt the correct way to order and organise your audio tracks, by always putting sync sound (dialogue) on track one (and two if duplicating mono), then on tracks 3-4 putting on folley and sound effects, whilst on the final tracks put the music/soundtrack. When importing music, always adjust the levels to prevent clipping as almost all music tracks are exported to be very loud when played back, and are not optimised for films. So straight after importing them, you should adjust the levels to be around 0 to +8db so they don't clip and distort when exporting.