Sunday, June 23, 2019

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 13th.  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 13th; 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 20th 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:

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