Remember the old “Will It Blend” videos where the guy takes all these electronic objects and puts them in a blender to show off how sturdy their blender? Brilliant advertising. Just brilliant. Naturally, a blender doesn’t have to be that powerful but they made the point that needed to be made. If their blender could shred an iPad, it could shred just about anything.
Okay, so what does this have to do with creating and/or using royalty free music? Nothing and everything. If that sounds like a lot of double talk, it’s not. Hang in there and I’ll explain.
The “Will It Blend” videos made an over the top point to simply say our blenders will take care of your blending needs without any problems. So, the question becomes this. How can we show a client that your royalty free music will take care of their needs? And if we are the client, how do we know that the music we’ve purchased will do what it’s supposed to do, grab the viewer’s attention?
Well, continuing in the tradition of “Will It Blend” we need to go over the top to make a point. If it’s to first convince the client to even hire us for the job then we need to have samples of our work that really show off our chops. In other words, we have to find the biggest, splashiest and most bombastic pieces of music we’ve ever written and put them on display.
But how?
Again, looking at “Will It Blend” they take a simple concept, a blender blending something and turn it upside down on its head by putting things into it that just don’t belong. How can we do this with royalty free music production?
One way is to take a video that is obviously very serene and peaceful, like a girl picking flowers in a field, and put a 100 piece orchestra complete with pounding timpani and crashing cymbals into the mix. Think 1812 Overture and let it all hang out. The end result will be almost comical but it will get the point across that your music can do just about anything, including turning a serene, peaceful video into a rousing march.
Another way is to create a video where the mood changes often. Maybe you’ll start it off slowly and then suddenly the pace quickens. For example, at the start a woman is taking a slow walk through the part and then suddenly we see a crowd of people running through the park because a dinosaur is chasing after them. The music is going to change rather abruptly. And them before the viewer can get a chance to accept where the video has gone, it changes yet again to a scene where kids are going around on a merry-go-round with the music changing yet again.
If you really want to show off your scoring chops, get a hold of a public domain video from the silent film era and create your own score for it. The music in silent films really had to carry the film because there was simply little else. Oh sure, if you watched something like Charlie Chaplin or Harold Lloyd, there was a lot of action, but without the music, that action wouldn’t have had the same effect.
Now let’s turn to the client side of this equation. You’ve got a video. You need music for it. You really want the music to carry the video because most of it is action and there is very little, if any, dialogue. What do you do?
Well, in this case, what you DON’T want is music that is just filler. See, most royalty free music isn’t meant to take attention away from what’s going on in the video. It is there to add to it without being distracting. That’s why we normally stay away from music with catchy tunes. But in the case where the video needs the music to carry the action, we need to do the exact opposite. We need to come up with something over the top like the theme from Star Wars. Everybody knows it. Everybody can sing it. Something like that would make the audience watch the video no matter what the video itself was about, as long as the music fit the action. And make no mistake about it…there better be action if you’re going to go over the top like that.
Okay, so how do you know where to go with the music, either as the creator or the client looking for music? The answer is really quite simple. Watch the video without music. How does it make you feel? If the video does a good job on its own in getting the point across, then the music you will want to use should probably be more subdued. At the very least it shouldn’t be some catchy tune that viewers are going to walk away from the video singing. I mean imagine you’re making a video of a man giving a presentation on some new piece of software and while he’s speaking you’re blasting out the Star Wars theme or something like it. Do you think anybody will listen to the presentation? For one thing, the music itself will be too distracting. For another, they won’t even be able to hear the poor guy speaking. As the client or the producer, you need to know when to be in the background and when to come forward.
As the music producer, your client may not understand or know this. That’s why it’s YOUR job to explain why, for this particular video, the music needs to be more subdued or whatever. Again, how do you tell? Watch the video. Does it need something to get attention? If so, then the music has to do the job because if what’s there isn’t doing it, there’s nothing else. It’s all on YOUR shoulders.
Eventually, as you do this more and more, either as the client or the producer, you’ll get a feel for when you need to show the audience that your video will indeed blend.
Just make sure they’re wearing safety goggles while they’re watching.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim