Choosing Music For A Documentary Film
Documentary Films have a different process than a fictional narrative. Most of the time, the filmmaker has a story outline they are trying to tell, but as shooting commences, life happens! Unexpected events arise and what was going to be the dramatic climax is eclipsed by something more interesting or unusual.
To use music to score the film, you can hire a composer to start developing a library of musical themes for the story. This is something I’ve done several times and it works quite well. Because of the fluid nature of documentaries, you can provide the only constant to the whole process which is a consistent emotional tone with the music. Documentaries come together in the editing process and by having a library of thought out music to tell this story is extremely helpful.
You can also do this by carefully selecting similar pieces of music in a production music library like 300 Monks. Sometimes you can get great results by using several different pieces by the same composer or even different sections of the same piece. By the way, you can tell if a piece is by the same composer by the visual icon which are assigned to each composer.
You can also wait until a rough edit of the picture is done and then score the piece with a composer or by choosing from our music library.
Ways to Use Music In a Documentary
- Create a memorable theme that becomes the audio mnenomic and branding for the film. This is what every television series and commercial tries to do, why not you?
- Create musical themes for characters to unite the storytelling
- Create musical themes for sections of the story
- Background emotional shading – music is pure emotion and can often lead the audience to a heightened feeling that was impossible without it
- Foreshadowing of something to come
- To unite a montage of pictures, video
- Covering up the sound of bad production audio
- Masking location audio which you have no rights to, such as the radio is on in the background
- Ironic or strange juxtapositions – You can do what Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Cameron Crowe famously do, put music emotionally is the opposite of what we would expect.
Here’s a video that goes over some of the basics of music for a documentary. He forgot to mention that you can license music through a website like ours for affordable and legal clearance.
How Hollywood Selects Music For Film
This is a portion of a panel from the Music In Film Summit 2010. Obviously this case study example, Despicable Me, is out of the budget range of almost all independent filmmakers, but it does give an idea of all the behind the scenes things that are necessary to select and create music for a film.
Unfortunately, we don’t see the shot with and without the music, but listening to the discussion gives a broad overview of how composers and music supervisors approach storytelling aspect. I always think of scoring film as sort of like taking a big gigantic AUDIO HIGHLIGHTER through the script which I use in multiple colors to draw attention and manipulate the emotions of the audience.
This is mostly about the relationship aspect of making a film work with building a good creative team which includes Director, Producer, Composer and Music Supervisor.
How To Manipulate Your Audience With Music – Score a Movie or Film!
This is one of the best examples of how music can be used to change the complete intention of the storyline in your film or video.
Pretty hysterical how over the top their musical choices are.
They also have a pretty clever sponsorship product placement.
Video Sample from An Instant Filmmaking Tool – Stupeflix
We wanted to see what we could whip up with a few photos and videos and some tracks from our catalog using the very cool video creation site called Stupeflix. This is a short little film about the fruit called Ochuvas from Colombia, South America. You get to see a little of where they grow, the fruit and how to enjoy them with some aguardiente. Salud! Oh and check out the music which you can download and use in your project right now.
I must say this is an awesome video creation tool. Using just a few still photos, 2 short video clips all shot on point and shoot cameras and then the map creation and text to speech capabilities of Stupeflix, I’m pretty impressed. It did take a little longer as I think the server went down over the weekend and I had to wait to finish. Tell me what you think below.
7 Patriotic, Anthemic Royalty Free Music Soundtracks
Music that stirs the hearts and minds of men (and women!). These tracks are all legally pre-cleared so you can use them right away in your project. Listen and download the free preview to try it out with your client before you buy, then come back and purchase the exact track for the exact usage you need.
These are just a few of our Patriotic selections. Make sure you check out the whole collection.
The Gift -perfect for a graduation moment or a regal celebration.
Inside Our Hearts - This ones is more contemporary radio pop feel. Feels like a stadium with lighters aloft.
Roses – Sweeping, grandiose, cinematic and driving.
Mission of Honor - Serious, solemn, heroic, stoic. Sounds like Gladiator.
Boldly Forward - Driving, positive, orchestral
The Prez - warm, acoustic, positive Americana
Olympic Opening - regal, motivational, grand, moving – this piece was featured at the Beijing Olympics.
Production Music: Tips for Using Our Store
Here’s some tips for using our Production Music Online Store. We’ve heard that some of you haven’t noticed our NEW FEATURE of FREE DOWNLOADS of COMP FILES.
If you look right under the title of any song or track in the production music library, there’s a link called Download Music Preview. This will allow you to download any of our music files (with audio watermark) and insert it into your presentation, or video or film or website –so you can get your client approval (or your significant other!)
This makes life much easier so you don’t have to guess whether the timing is right or if it works well to your project. Then, when all is worked out, and the client has said “You are a Creative Genius!”
you can come back and purchase the clean version, insert it and voila, you’re done.
Here’s some handy steps:
- Search or Browse for the music based on genre, or a band or artist you like, or even by the mood of the music
- Listen to the preview music tracks
- Download the associated music preview file for comping into your design or video edit
- Show it to your client or partners and get their approval.
- Come back here and search by typing in the name of the track or the product ID (same as the file name of the music preview file)
- License and Download
Here’s a handy graphic that says a thousand words.
