To Sing or Not to Sing?

This week in class we held class presentations and one in particular struck me as interesting. One group decided to focus on music and its effect on the media, especially film, and how changing the background music to certain films can completely change a scene, and how certain songs become known as theme songs for the film they were featured in. However, I thought it would be interesting to examine films that have absolutely no soundtrack attached and see the reasons why and effects that come out of this.

The first film that came to my mind was Alfred Hitchcock’s classic, The Birds. The fact that there is no score makes those bird sounds extremely effective. Those sounds without an interfering soundtrack makes them stand out much more and it’s as if Hitchcock’s trying to say, ‘this is a real world and thus there is no ’omniscient’ music. The next film I thought of was Dog Day Afternoon, a film I did my presentation on earlier this semester. I believe this film had no soundtrack for two reasons, it was to emphasize the acting, and because the film was based off of a real event making it play out as real life where music does not play in the background. The final films I have found with no soundtracks are The Blairwitch Project, Cloverfield, and Paranormal Activity. All three of these films became successes because of their realism effect because of the shaky camera, realistic acting, bad quality sound, and most importantly no music. So it is my overall conclusion that the reason music is so successful in many films is because in a film we like to escape and take ourselves out of real life therefore background music makes it seem that much more magical. However, in films where realism is the main approach, background music would take away from the realistic approach. I find myself open to both types of films depending on the film I am looking for, if it is a film I’m looking for an escape the background music is the perfect quality, if I find myself looking to be frightened, or truly captivated and feel like I am there then I would probably prefer there to be no soundtrack.