Filmmaking is not purely about visual storytelling. If it were, then movies would be a lot less dynamic than they are. Additionally, though humans are visual beings for the most part, visual depictions are not sufficient to express the full range of meaning and expression which stories (and particularly films) are meant to display. Books get away with it, because the whole power of the written word is to explicitly reveal what the eyes are unable to see and to capture the imagination with things that cannot be directly glimpsed. With a film, visuals take center stage, and the hidden elements expressed by words in books must remain hidden. This is one reason why people say "the book was better"; the hidden elements are often times obscured in the visual retelling of written stories, so the visual retelling is seen as deficient.
And yet, movies are the most powerful storytelling medium in the world today. Why?
The answer is music.
Music for a long time has been the first thing I go to to kick start the creative process. When a project comes to mind, or a particular progression of shots is used in one of my videos, it is usually inspired by or based on the structure of the music in the video. When I can't find the right music for a job, I have a harder time completing it. When the undercurrent of the music is strong, I do some of my best work. I intuit the flow of the story better, and as a result, whatever I create usually has a better feel or vibe than if I did otherwise. Creatively, music tends to act as a Muse and a map to my work.
Music is able to trace those things which cannot be directly expressed in the visuals of a film. The idea of a musical theme can establish the entire central framework for a story, subtly revealing to us the heart of the work and its creator without the audience ever seeing it. Music has emotional power that compliments the visual elements, because although a film can express emotion visually, the presence or lack of music colors that emotion with a more transcendent framework.
Take the film A Ghost Story, for example. This film is based entirely on the progression and emotion conveyed in a single song which appears at its midpoint ("I Get Overwhelmed" by Dark Rooms). Everything else about the film, from the story to the soundtrack, to the title sequence, flows from the fount and core that is this song, almost as though the movie is an extended music video for the song itself. That does not mean however, that the entire movie is saturated with its melody. There is, in particular, a scene about a third of the way in that is particularly powerful because of its lack of music. A woman, grieving the death of her husband, returns home to find a pumpkin pie on her kitchen table, an apologetic gift from her realtor. For the next five minutes, she labors to eat the pie while slumped against the wall, the only sound being her fork scraping against the plate. Eventually, she leaps up to vomit, having eaten too quickly, and the music returns with a rich swell.
Had the music remained through that whole scene, the poignant realism of grieving alone in an empty kitchen might have been lost. The music which makes this movie possible conveys such a presence that even in its absence, it speaks.
There are dozens of such examples. From the cold resolution of The Revenant theme, to the mournful (though victorious) trumpets of Gladiator, to the transcendent and horrifying ending of Hereditary, music is the heartbeat of the film, the unseen force that drives and maintains the story in its course. It provides direction where the audience sees none, and provides complexity and provocation to harmonize with the visuals.
It is music that drives my creative process, and whether it is the backbone of your own creative process or not, it should be an essential part of whatever you are making. As filmmakers, we are not called merely to think with our eyes or our lenses. We must learn to use our ears as well.
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