Music and Film Trailers

In lessons I have been learning about pieces of music and considering what links it to genre.

We listen to varities of music and have to match it up to the different genres without knowing what trailer it was. For example the snare drums in one made it clear that the trailer would be linked to military and war. Keys are also important when looking a music in film trailers, minor key is more mornful sounds and major key is positive music. Sound effects are also a powerful section of the trailer and this is consistant to genre e.g. screams for horror or for digital enhancements like a reverse symbol in trailers like thrillers as this is dramatic.

Award winning John Beal is a music composer for film trailers and I have conducted some research using Wikepedia. His list of major studio credits includes campaigns for such hit films as JFK, Titanic, The Matrix, Forrest Gump, The Last Samurai, Aladdin, the Star Wars trilogy, The Hunt for Red October, True Lies, In the Line of Fire, Patriot Games, The Mask of Zorro, Black Rain, Ghost and Finding Neverland. John Beal was the first of his kind a composer creating original scores for film trailers. "I realised the trailer was not being served as well as the picture was," he says. Beal has been the man behind the music for more than 2,000 trailers scoring everything from The Matrix to Mean Girls. "After 30 years of doing this, the soundtrack in my head as I'm doing the groceries is a lot more dramatic than other people's" he says. "I live in a constant state of hyperbole." The art of scoring a trailer requires not only a certain style of thinking, but an entirely different approach to composition. The typical trialer lasts two minutes and are split into three parts: beginning, middle and end, usually all containing different pieces and styles of music. The goal is to produce a heavily briefed, tightly wound and meticulously edited piece of work in which every second counts. I also used information from The Guardian to help me with this research. 

The industry has now developed into companies which make music for trailers these are 'trailer houses' and 'trailer libraries' and an example is Two Steps From Hell is an American production music company based in Los Angeles, California. The company focuses predominantly in movie and trailer music, and has supplied tracks to films such as Harry Potter.

The key learning point I have learnt from doing this task is how important music is when differentiating genre.

The video below is the trailer for Annabelle, it uses music in a effective way to support the horror film trailer. At the start it is silent but with some dialogue however loud drums and violins are quickly added into the background as it becomes instantly dramatic as voilins and strings can create an eary sound. The quite music/silence when there is dialogue makes people focus on this to understand the storyline. As more images are shown on the screen and some film titles e.g the director there is an uplifting song from a record player which is played in the background it then shows you an image on the screen for a while which is scary however this music doesn't fit in with the genre of horror but is actually very effective. It then goes on to the freaky sound of what sounds like a mobile twisting above a cot, which is sounds of a xylophone this gradually increases to a very fast pace which becomes the opposite of relaxing like it's supposed to be,  this is linking to the fact the main part of the film which is a doll and continues the tense atmosphere of what's going to happen next. The sound effects such as screams and loud bangs which are typical of a horror trailer and build the tension alongside the music as well as a very loud sounding horn which makes you jump towards the end. These also help make the genre obvious and adds to the drama.

A key learning point I have learnt from analysing music in a horror film trailer is that I am going to use music which builds tension up so maybe increases in tempo. Also sound effects like loud screams are very effective becomes sounds like this denote fear.