Use of Music in Movies and Roller Blade (1986)

People connect with the music they hear in movies.  It’s as important as anything else.  Music accentuates the mood of a scene, lifting it beyond the visuals, dialogue, and sound effects.  It can make a horror scene more terrifying, a sad scene more tear-filled, or a happy scene more joyous.  It manipulates audiences into feeling how a filmmaker wants them to feel.

There are a few different kinds of music that can be used in movies.  The score is the instrumental work that gets composed for the movie.  There are recognizable licensed tracks.  There are the diegetic songs that are a part of the world of the movie.  This is slightly different from musical music, which the characters sing to tell the story.  There are original songs that get produced for movies all the time.  And finally, there are credits songs.  This could blend into other types of music, but there are definitely those songs that simply play while the words scroll.

Each type of music has a different reason for happening.  It could be to affect the audience.  It could be to affect the characters.  Or it could be to avoid any monotony, particularly in just watching a series of names and titles.  Music is essential in helping present a film, and it’s time to break down each of the six ways of using music.

Score

The score is an essential part of a movie.  It is the mood music that goes under a scene.  The score is the influences what the audience is feeling during a specific moment.  Do you want them to feel the heroic actions of the main character?  The score comes in with a booming hero theme.  Do you want people to feel chills during a scary scene?  The score quietly comes in with strings and high noises, blasting sound for the scares.

Things get a little more complicated than that, of course, but that’s the basic idea.  The score manipulates the audience to give the movie a greater effect.  Think back to movies like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, or pretty much anything with music by John Williams.  Think back to horror franchises like Halloween and Friday the 13^th.  Consider the spaghetti westerns with themes by Ennio Morricone.  None of these movies would be as powerful without their scores.  The work that the composed music did to heighten the heroics in Indiana Jones, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; the scares in Halloween, Jaws, and Friday the 13^th; or the bombastic space action feel of the Star Wars movies went far beyond what the movies could have done without it.  The score was as important as anything else.

Licensed Tracks

Audiences love recognition in their movies and licensed tracks help with that feeling.  They were the songs produced outside of the movie that were sought out for use.  Much like the score, they frequently get used to heighten a certain emotion in a scene.  A pumped up, recognizable song works really well in an action scene, chase scene, or any other adrenaline boosting scene.  An ominous, haunting song works well with tension.  Sad, melancholy songs work well for tear-jerking moments.  The possibilities are as endless as the score.

A licensed track that is instantly recognizable to audiences with grab their attention and get them more invested in a scene.  It could be put under some travelling or mundane tasks to help speed them along or make them more interesting.  Think back to James Bond, which went on-the-nose in its use of licensed music for Die Another Day.  The franchise wasn’t known for using licensed music but selected a known, older song for a travel scene in the 20^th installment.  As James Bond travelled to England on a plane, the song London Calling began to play.

Licensed music could also be used to give a sense of time to events.  If the story took place in the 1960s, music of that era could be used to help the film feel of the time.  More recently, the 1990s have been a decade that movies looked back on.  The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story used songs of the era, such as Cameo’s Word Up, to give everything a 1990s feel.  The costumes and props were also of the era, but the music was that final cherry on top to solidify the story in the 1990s.

Diegetic Music

Diegetic music may include licensed songs.  It usually does, in fact.  The difference is that instead of playing under a scene to set a mood, the song becomes a part of the scene.  The characters in the movie can hear the song.  They might be singing along with the radio or at a concert.  Diegetic music is a part of the story.  It makes the use of licensed music less jarring, a part of the world rather than a song placed over it.

There are movies like Baby Driver and Guardians of the Galaxy that make an entire soundtrack out of diegetic music.  Baby turned on music while he was driving to give him a rhythm and to get rid of the tinnitus in his ears.  Peter Quill listened to a tape his mother left him when he was a child because the music brought back memories of his mom.  Other movies might use a diegetic song or two instead of an entire soundtrack.  Fred Claus used Elvis Presley’s Rubberneckin’ as a diegetic song in an important scene when Fred wanted to show the elves how to have fun.  He danced to it in the workshop, getting all the elves hyped up.  It ended up backfiring and got the North Pole closer to shuttered, but it showed everyone that they didn’t need to always be serious.  It was diegetic music being used in the world of the characters to further their story arcs.

Musicals

Much like diegetic music, the music in musicals comes as part of the film’s world.  The characters tend to sing and dance to the songs.  That’s the whole idea of a musical.  The story is told through the music, by having the characters create it.  There are two types of musicals.  There are the ones where characters randomly break into song and the ones where the concept of music is part of the story.  They each have their pros and cons.  That’s a conversation for another time.

Most people think of musicals as characters randomly breaking into song.  The characters will be in the middle of a conversation and they’ll start singing with music swelling up.  West Side Story, Rent, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, and most Disney animated movies have had their fair share of random breaking into song.  I prefer the justified musicals, where there’s a reason to break into song.  Many of them have musician characters.  Jem and the Holograms, The Apple, and Glitter all had their musical elements, and all were about musicians.  Still, each song pushes the story forward.  We Got Heart was about Jem and her siblings proving that they were more than just faces for the music company.  They were musicians using their musical language to further their story.

Original Songs

Many movies go a little further than licensed music, or music from Broadway musicals.  They get musician together to perform an original song for the soundtrack.  This brings some attention to the film, as people become interested in the new music by an artist that they know.  Sometimes the song is used like a licensed piece, placed over a scene to set a mood.  The best part of original songs is that they tend to get tied to the movie.  When people hear the song, they think of the movie.  When they see the movie, they think of the song.  They become two parts of a whole that will always be tied together.  Usually.  That didn’t quite happen for Tears in Heaven and the movie Rush, but it usually happens.

Most people probably think of Don’t You Forget About Me when they think of original movie songs, but there are many more than that.  The LEGO Movie had Everything is Awesome.  A Star is Born had Shallow.  Flash Gordon had Queen doing the Flash Gordon Theme.  The James Bond movies always have an original song.  Goldfinger, Live and Let Die, You Know My Name… There’s one for almost every James Bond movie, including a horrible Die Another Day song by Madonna.  An original song could be a great asset to a movie, bringing more people into it through the new music it features.

Credits Songs

Every movie has a credits song.  And that credits song could also fit into any of the five categories that have already been discussed.  There are credits songs that are score, licensed, diegetic, musical, and original.  The most common are score, licensed, and original, but it doesn’t mean that the other two never happen.

An end credits song is as important as, if not more important than, any other song in a movie.  It’s the final beat that the audience is being left on.  Think about The Breakfast Club and how it ends with Don’t You Forget About Me.  That song hits a beat with the essay being read and the image of John Bender throwing his fist up in the air.  It’s a song that perfectly encapsulates the movie and brings it home in the final moments, leaving a great taste in your mouth.  Or consider Guardians of the Galaxy, where the end credits are accompanied by a diegetic Jackson 5 song while Baby Groot dances.  Audiences leave the movie chuckling, knowing they had a good time, thanks to an upbeat song and an entertaining bit of comedy.

The Sunday “Bad” Movies have included many movies that tried these sorts of things in their end credits.  Roller Blade, a 1986 movie about nuns who roller skate in the post-apocalypse and fight off evil with love and knives, used an original song at the end to give the credits that extra little push.  It was all about being a savior, just like the movie was about the nuns being the saviors of the post-apocalypse.  The pace of the song represented the action-heavy final act, leaving the movie on a semi-adrenaline pumping note. 

Music is an essential part of any film.  It can manipulate the audience, create a mood, push the story forward, or leave people with a good feeling as everything ends.  The music could be under a scene.  It could be a part of the scene and part of the story.  The characters could interact with it.  Or it could be something to soothe the audience while the credits roll.  No matter the use of music, a movie wouldn’t be the same without it.  Few movies come out absent of music, and there’s a good reason for it.

There are two sides to any movie.  The visual side had the lighting, framing, editing, blocking, set dressing, and all that other stuff that pops to the audiences’ eyes.  That’s the side of things that people normally think of.  They remember what they see.  The audio side brings in the sound effects, music, and dialogue that fills out the rest of the movie.  People treat the audio side of things as the sidekick because silent films existed.  Only, silent films weren’t silent.  They had sound accompanying them.  They had music, which goes to show you that music will always be an important part of movies.

Now let’s get to some notes:

• The Apple (week 196), Jem and the Holograms (week 238), Fred Claus (week 265), Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (week 87), Die Another Day (week 153), The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story (week 337), Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (week 84), Glitter (week 22), Jaws, Friday the 13^th, and Halloween were all mentioned in this post.  I’ve covered three Friday the 13^th movies: Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (week 46), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (week 85), and Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (week 294).  I’ve watched one Halloween movie: Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (week 48).  I’ve also seen two Jaws movies for the blog: Jaws 3-D (week 240) and Jaws: The Revenge (week 240).
• Roller Blade was directed by Donald G. Jackson, who also directed Hell Comes to Frogtown (week 206) and Return to Frogtown (week 334).
• Jeff Hutchinson and Suzanne Solari were in Roller Blade.  They had previously both been in Hell Comes to Frogtown (week 206).
• Finally, Michelle Bauer made her second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Roller Blade.  She could be seen in Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust (week 252).
• Have you seen Roller Blade?  What did you think?  Did I leave out any kinds of music?  Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• Twitter and the comments are also good places to let me know what I should be checking out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts.  Tell me what to check out.  Come on, y’all.
• While you’re here, check out the Sunday “Bad” Movies account on Instagram.  I’m trying to keep it updated with stuff.
• Next week, I’ll be diving back into an area of bad movies that I haven’t visited in a while.  Adam Sandler is back.  No, I’m not watching his new movie for the blog.  Not yet, at least.  But I am going with one of his Netflix releases.  I’m checking out the first release of his Netflix deal, the star-studded The Ridiculous 6.  And I already know what I’m writing about.  But you’ll need to come back next week to see.  I’ll see you then.

On the Line (2001) and How Kevin was a Passive Protagonist

The main character of any movie could be one of three things.  They could be a hero, a villain, or someone in between.  The heroes attempt to save the day, the villains attempt to ruin it, and everyone else just attempts to make it out alive and in one piece.  As for the audience, they want to relate to the main character.  If the villain is the protagonist, they want to understand why they chose to be a villain.  If the protagonist is the hero, they want to feel invested in the hero’s goal.  And for the people in between, they want to connect to their struggle to make it out.

There need to be some good stakes for the audience to connect with a protagonist.  Not only that, but the protagonist must fight to come out on top.  They must fight so they don’t lose what is near and dear to their heart.  The villain could be fighting to keep their methamphetamine empire afloat.  The hero could be fighting to save the princess and destroy a dangerous weapon.  The in between character could be simply trying to outrun the monster chasing them through the woods.  Every story has stakes of some sort and the characters should be giving it their all to make sure that things go their way.

The fight is the most important part of a character’s stakes.  A character must be working towards their goal.  They make decisions, choose a route to go down, and live with the consequences.  How active they are within the story will dictate how involved the audience is.  If a character actively tries to get to their goal, the audience will have an interest in whether they get there or not.  The worst thing for a main character is that things just happen to them and get them to their goal.

Passive main characters have come up in the Sunday “Bad” Movies before.  The post for Thumbelina was all about how passive the title character was.  She drifted through the story with people pushing her in different directions, not making her own choices until the climax.  She was taken from one place to another.  She didn’t choose to go to the places.  She was kidnapped, led, and coerced into her journey.  It was a bland story because she never actively did anything until the end.

On the Line was the same way.  The main character hardly made any of his own decisions.  Things happened around him.  He floated through his own story.  There were only two points where things were pushed forward by the main character.  We’ll get to that in a few minutes.

On the Line was a 2001 romantic comedy about Kevin Gibbons (Lance Bass), a hopeful advertising creative in Chicago.  He hopped on the train home from work and met Abbey (Emmanuelle Chriqui).  They hit it off, but he forgot to get her name or phone number.  He put up a few missed connection posters in hopes that she would contact him, then headed to work where he was getting his big chance at being a creative voice.  After a bunch of random women call their apartment looking for Kevin, his friends Rod (Joey Fatone), Eric (GQ), and Randy (James Bulliard) decided that they could set up a scheme to get themselves some dates.  And the story went from there.

Kevin, much like Thumbelina, was a passive character.  He did a couple things for himself.  Namely, he did the posters, and a few billboards later on.  The driving force of the story, however, was everyone else acting upon him.  Most of the obstacles were overcome because of what the other people did and not what Kevin, himself, was doing.  He sat still and let the middle section of the story happen around him.

On the Line started with Kevin being passive.  Abbey initiated their conversation.  She started the entire love connection.  Kevin was on his way home from work, listening to Al Green and singing along.  Abbey heard his singing and said something along the lines of “I Can’t Get Next to You would be more fitting because I can’t get next to you.”  She was telling him to move his briefcase from the seat next to him so she could sit down.  When they reached their stop, she said it was her stop.  Then he said it was his too.  She initiated that.  She was the first person to share something about themselves.  And it was Kevin’s lack of action that led to his not getting her name or number before they parted ways at the train station.

One of the two bits of activeness that came from the Kevin character was when he put up some posters to try and find Abbey (whose name he still didn’t know).  The posters were a missed connection sort of thing with his phone number.  Random women started calling.  He went out on a few dates with them, trying to find out if it was the girl from the train.  None of them were, though.  The newspaper even wrote a story about his trying to find Abbey with the posters.  Public interest in Kevin rose.  Not from his own doing, but from the newspaper article.

The tide would turn against Kevin.  Again, it wasn’t because of anything he did.  Kevin was on the phone with Eric while at work.  Eric asked Kevin to let him, Rod, and Randy could set up a dating system with the non-Abbeys.  Kevin didn’t agree to it, but he was in an argument with his boss and shouted something that Eric took as agreement.  When people found out about the dating scheme, it was written up in the newspaper and people started to hate Kevin.  His life was experiencing a roller coaster because of what other people were doing.  He would get active again after the world blew up around him, putting out the billboards.  But the whole middle section between the posters and the billboards, he wasn’t doing anything for himself.  Stuff was simply happening around him and he was going for the ride.

This was even more apparent in Kevin’s b-story, as he tried to advance at work.  In his first scene at work, Kevin was hanging out with the mail room supervisor, Nathan (Jerry Stiller).  The boss quickly came in to tell Kevin that he was part of a new Reebok pitch team.  He threw out a few ideas that didn’t get chosen until his partner presented one of them as her own idea.  Kevin then wandered aimlessly around the workplace watching his partner’s success rise while his faded.  It faded more due to the bad press in the newspaper.  Basically, whatever the newspaper thought of Kevin was what the workplace thought of him.  If he was represented well, he was liked.  If the paper trashed him, nobody wanted to work with him.  In the end, his partner got her promotion, then fessed up to the idea being his.  They both got to keep the positions they were in.  The partner kept the promotion, and Kevin kept working for Reebok.  But the whole work story felt like something that just happened to Kevin, rather than something that he pushed for.

On the Line was a movie about Kevin being a mostly passive character.  Two of his actions helped push the story forward.  Putting up the posters and buying the billboards reconnected him with Abbey.  The rest of the story was outside forces steering him along.  His friends set up the dating scheme.  Rod wrote a song about the missed connection.  Kevin’s partner got herself and Kevin their new positions within the advertising company.  Abbey initiated the contact on the train, over the phone, and at the train station during the final moments of the film.  Kevin didn’t work that hard to find her.  He basically left her signs on how to find him.  Then he turned on cruise control and coasted through the rest of the movie.

A passive character can bring a movie down almost as much as technical ineptitude or bad dialogue.  When the character isn’t struggling to achieve their goals, the audience has less investment in their reaching them.  If the character is sitting on the sidelines and watching their life pass before their eyes, the audience doesn’t feel like they are part of the story.  An active character is involved in a story and the audience is along for the ride.  That’s when the audience feels true emotion.  That’s when the audience becomes attached to the movie.

A heroic protagonist must fight to defeat the villain.  A villainous protagonist must fight to overcome the hero.  The person in the middle must fight to get to their goal in one piece.  No matter the life views of the character, they need to put up some sort of a fight to reach their goal.  The audience wants to see the struggle.  The struggle raises the stakes.  It makes every decision and every choice more important.  That’s what gets people interested in movies.  That’s what gets them interested in television.  That’s what gets them interested in books.  That’s the magic of storytelling.

There’s some magic to these notes, too:

• Thumbelina (week 286) was mentioned in this post.
• On the Line featured David Fraser, who could be seen in Iron Eagle IV (week 90) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (week 184).
• Louis Paquette made his return to the Sunday “Bad” Movies this week after already showing up in Glitter (week 22).
• On the Line wasn’t the first time Michael Sercerchi has shown up.  That would be Exit Wounds (week 93).
• Dave Foley played Kevin’s boss in On the Line.  He was also in Monster Brawl (week 99), where he played a commentator.
• Jerry Stiller made his second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week after doing voicework in Foodfight! (week 143).
• Finally, there was Chris Kirkpatrick.  He’s best known as a member of *NSYNC.  He was in On the Line for a little bit at the end.  He was also in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190).
• Have you seen On the Line?  What did you think?  Was Kevin too passive?  Was that *NSYNC song That Girl (Will Never Be Mine) kickass, or what?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter.
• Twitter and the comments are also good places to let me know what I should be checking out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies installments.  Hit me up.  I like suggestions.
• There’s an Instagram for the Sunday “Bad” Movies which I tend to use.  Check it out.
• Now we’ll talk about the next movie.  I didn’t know when I chose it, but I’m revisiting the filmography of Donald G. Jackson.  The zen filmmaker himself.  It’s not one of the Frogtown movies.  There’s still one of those in the series that I haven’t watched.  Instead, I picked a movie about roller skating, knife wielding nuns in the future.  It’s called Roller Blade, and that’s coming up next week.  Come back to see what I write.