Sunday, January 7, 2018

Nothing But Trouble (1991) and How Music is Used in Movies



Movies are both a visual and aural medium.  You watch a movie, but at the same time, you listen to it.  There are a multitude of sounds to be heard.  Foley work, like footsteps, help to make a scene feel more realistic.  Ambiance, such as the basic room sound, can make a space better realized.  One of the most important aspects, however, is the music used in a movie.

Music is one of the biggest influencers in a movie.  It can change the tone and energy in a way that sends things in a completely different direction.  It can build tension in a horror film or add to the loving feelings of romance.  Music can change a character.  It can even affect the plot in serious ways.  If it weren’t for music, movies wouldn’t be half as entertaining or moving as they are.

There are many different ways that music can be added to a movie.  Each method of inclusion makes for a different effect.  It could be a background mood setter, of it could be something that the characters know about.  Overall, there are six primary ways that music can be brought into a movie, and they will be separated into two categories.
Background
The thing about background music is that it’s in the background.  Only the audience hears the music.  This background music can manipulate a person’s feelings.  It brings that ominous feeling that lets you know that something bad is around the corner.  It gives you the stings that help bring the laughs.  Or it can punch up the excitement by bringing an upbeat tempo that accentuates the action.  The first two of the six primary methods of using music in movies fall under the background category.

First off, there are scores.  People specifically write and perform instrumental music as a mood setter.  These are the more subtle uses of music in the background.  The instrumentals fade in and out as characters interact with what’s around them.  The beats could match up with the action, or they could be ambiance like a background noise, that simply provides a vibe.

An example of a Sunday “Bad” Movie that had used a score to great effect was Flash Gordon.  The band Queen came in to create a score that would push the movie forward.  They made an 80s kind of synth rock vibe that fit the action/adventure/sci-fi film pretty well.  The Halloween movies had pretty solid scores that lasted the entire franchise in various forms.  The score in Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers might not have been quite as iconic as the original, but it still used a variation on the original’s theme to great, horror effect.
The other type of background music in films is the soundtrack of songs.  It’s not quite the score (which is also a bunch of songs that could be the soundtrack), but a collection of various pieces of music.  They don’t all originate from one artist or group working specifically on that movie.  The songs could be songs that were already produced beforehand, or they could be songs commissioned for the movie.  Either way, they’re not the instrumental score.

A bunch of movies in the Sunday “Bad” Movies have examples of this kind of music use.  Die Another Day featured an opening theme song by Madonna that played through imagery of James Bond being tortured by the North Korean military.  Mortal Kombat and its sequel featured the iconic Mortal Kombat song.  Gigli featured the song Love the One You’re With, which I keep forgetting is in Gigli until I hear it and think “What movie is this song in,” then get disappointed when I rediscover Gigli.  One of the biggest, though, was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, which featured a few covers of popular songs such as Free Ride and Higher Ground.  Those two songs were used in early scenes featuring the teens performing different sports, setting up their athletics for their later fighting moments.

Background music can be essential in pushing a mood as well as keeping silence from bogging down a movie.  Montages use music to make a series of events more exciting as they play out in quick succession.  Background music is key to many instances of storytelling.  Other uses of music are important too, which brings us to the other section.
Foreground
Music that plays in the foreground of movies is music that plays in the universe of the movie.  Both the characters and the audience are able to hear the music and be affected by it.  The characters could be listening to it, or it could be in their background while they are doing something else.  There are many ways in which the music could be presented.

Going off of the soundtracks I was talking about in the background section, there are instances of interactive soundtracks that get used in movies.  Friday the 13th: A New Beginning had a scene where a character turned on music in her bedroom and danced before being killed.  She was interacting with the soundtrack of the movie.  Fred Claus featured an important scene where Fred approached a North Pole DJ and changed his music selection from Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Rubberneckin’ before dancing to the new music choice with the elves in Santa’s workshop.  Again, the music was important to both how the scene flowed and what the characters were doing.  He was interacting with it, but it was also atmospheric music for the audience.

The rest of the foreground music involves different ways in which characters perform the music.  Performances are a big part of the music world.  Concerts are a major source of income for musicians.  They must perform to record an album.  Movies can take advantage of this performance aspect and add it into the way an actor performs.  Sometimes the opposite can happen as well, where a musician performs with the added task of giving an acting performance.

One of the original ways that this was done, and a way that still survives, was through the musical genre.  Musicals involve the stories being broken up with music that the characters sing.  The characters aren’t necessarily musicians.  They simply break into song while doing what they would have otherwise been doing without song. 

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead had characters trying to survive a zombie outbreak in a fast food restaurant.  They sang songs about fast food, love, and slow fast food love.  They weren’t musicians.  Their stories didn’t need music.  But it was there and they sang.  The same could be said about Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.  He didn’t need to sing to team up with a lucha libre wrestler to fight lesbian vampires.  Yet he did sing.
Sometimes to alleviate the random singing of it all, the characters become musicians.  They end up performing their music in concert settings.  Or they perform to show their musical talents.  The songs could have something to do with their story, or they could be songs performed as songs only.  The better quality musicals of this type will make the songs relevant to the story being told in order to have the songs push the movie forward outside of the character having another performance.

One example of this was in the film The Apple.  The songs built out the characters, from the BIM song that showed how controlling the company was of the world’s people to the love song played at the beginning that showed that love could conquer all.  The songs were important to the story.  Road House, on the other hand, was more of a music for music’s sake movie.  The bar had a band that performed music.  The music didn’t push anything forward in itself.  It was background music for the bar while Dalton did his thing of getting rid of the bad.
Reversing the characters being musicians thing, there’s also a tendency in movies for musicians to be characters that are themselves.  These cameo performances might be seen as stunt casting in movies.  “Hey, let’s bring in that popular musician to play themselves and perform.  That could get more people in seats.”  It can work in some cases.  In others, it doesn’t work at all.

Musicians playing themselves and performing in movies began early with the inclusion of April Fools in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  That brought a performance by someone named Lil’ Flip at a party.  Who is Lil’ Flip?  I’m not sure.  Later on in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, the two God’s Not Dead movies were featured.  They both had appearances by Newsboys, a religious band.  The first movie even had all of the main characters coming together for a Newsboys concert.  The movie that inspired this post fits into this kind of music usage.

Nothing But Trouble was a weird little 1991 film written and directed by Dan Aykroyd.  He played the judge in a small, nothing industrial town who liked to bring the full extent of the law down on wrongdoers.  Some of the lawbreakers that were brought into his court were musicians of the band Digital Underground.  He wanted them to prove that they were musicians, which they did by performing Same Song.  They then performed at a wedding ceremony a few minutes later in the movie.  These couple moments were the best part of the entire movie.



As you can see, there are many ways in which music can be used in a movie.  It could be used to set a mood, to push the story forward, or to accentuate something that is already happening.  The most important thing that music does is provide an aural experience while watching something.  It would be pretty boring to watch a movie on mute.  Sound is half of watching a movie and music is one of the most important parts of sound.  Without music, things would be dull.  Don’t you think?
You might think my notes are dull, but they’re here anyway:

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