Film Music

Mary Stewart in her textbook, Launching the Imagination, asks us to consider the effects of sound in film (310). Stewart relays Aaron Copland's five points of the enhancement of film with the help of music. Stewart also refers to Copland as "a master of film music" before sharing the five points as follows:

"Sound can create a more convincing atmosphere of time and place . . .
Sound can communicate the unspoken thoughts of a character or the unseen implications of a situation . . .
Sound can serve as a neutral background, filling space between bits of dialogue . . .
Sound can build a sense of continuity . . .
Sound often heralds the beginning of an event or rounds it off with  a sense of finality" (310).

One may think that sounds in a film are merely the cliche building of music as someone in a horror film is searching through their dark house with a baseball bat after they've heard a noise, however this is probably never the case. There is a slew of impacting elements that film music can use to give the viewer a more profound experience of the particular film. Stewart shares these elements that Copland outlined in order to explain that sound can make or break the setting, provide insight for a particular character, provide sound during breaks in dialogue in order to maintain that audience's interest, can create unity between scenes and ideas that would have otherwise been interpreted as separate, and then the building of the music that points toward a significant point such as the beginning, end, or climax (310). Nevertheless, the next time we view a film, we should stay aware that the messages in the film are not only conveyed visually. Due to the major roll that music plays in films we should recognize that it has an effect on our understanding of the visuals and overall messages conveyed by the film.