Jingle Hell: Lesson 2

Revision

We will start this class with you sharing some of the adverts you've found through the homework exercise we started from the last lesson, and go over the five major functions of music in advertising: 

1) To Keep the audience engaged/ watching

2) To appeal to a target audience

3) To help tell a story

4) To elicit an emotional response

5) To create a 'hook'

Later in this course we will be devising our own adverts, jingles and movie soundtracks, and being able to identify the PURPOSE of a piece of music generates a useful check-list for a composer or musical director when they're writing or selecting a piece of music for a soundtrack. Questions composers often ask themselves are:

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF WHEN COMPOSING (OR CHOOSING) MUSIC FOR FILM/ ADVERTISING

1)  Is this song interesting? Does it stay interesting, or do you get bored of it after a while? How can I KEEP it interesting?

2) Who does this song appeal to? Who am I trying to sell to? What sort of music do they like? How does this song compare to those tunes?

3) Does it help to convey the story I want to tell? Could I do this in a more effective way?

4) How does it make you feel? Is this how I want people to feel? How could I make it more emotional? (without getting too cheesy)

5) Does it get stuck in your head? What is the main hook? How can I make it more memorable

MUSIC, EMOTION and MOTION PICTURE 

Music plays a really important role in shaping our emotional response to what we watch, and often the signal from our ears will overpower the emotional messages of what we're seeing on the sceen. 

Directors of really violent action films (like Quentin Tarrantino) will often use light, happy music to counteract the graphic violence on-screen, in order to make it seem tolerable (or even humourous or appealing).

Watch the four clips below. What genre of movie (eg horror, romantic comedy, motivational video etc) do you think this might be from? How does the changing soundtrack effect the way you think and feel about each clip? 

In class, a fun exercise is to break into groups and pick one clip each; write a description or plot synopsis of the movie (you imagine it's from) and then share it with the rest of the class...after the last group has shared, we play all the clips and reveal that you've all been watching the same thing, with different soundtracks... 

The suggestive power of music is even more powerful when we combine it with footage of people. Let's try the same thing again with a well known political figure...

EXERCISE: MUSIC DIRECTION

1) Download a short 'stock footage' clip from a royalty-free video site (I use pexels.com)

2) Drag and drop your footage into a new Garageband Project

3) If the clip already has music, click on the audio track and delete it (if it's just ambient noise, this step is optional)

4) Select a piece of music you would like to use

4) Drag and drop the music into the open Garageband Window

5) Cut the segment of music you want to use by positioning the tracking bar (click on the numbered 'ruler' at the top of the project window) and holding down "Command T" (you'll need to do this at the beginning and end of the segment of music you want to use.

Then drag your trimmed clip into position

6) Scroll to the end of the Garageband project, and drag the end marker back to where you ACTUALLY want your movie to finish

7) Export the movie to your desktop by going to the dropdown "File" menu at the top of the screen, then Movie > Export Audio To Movie. Select the folder you want to save it to, and your movie is made!

NOW GO BACK TO STEP 3, AND DO IT AGAIN (TWICE MORE)!

Give your movie clip three different contrasting moods, by selecting contrasting pieces of music with each edit.

Extension exercise:  If you're already a film editing buff, and you can find your way around a video-editing program like imovie, or if you just want a challenge, you could use that programme instead of Garageband. That way, you could give your movie a bit of extra polish and impact by using some video tools (adding text, adjusting lighting, changing the playback speed etc). 

SOME EXCELLENT EXAMPLES OF STUDENT WORK

SABRINA - "KIDS RUNNING"

Sean - "The Argument"

Kalila - City Street