Running head: THE SHAPE-SHIFTING EFFECTS OF MUSIC IN TV AND FILM 1

The Shape-Shifting Effects of Music in TV and Film

Grant E. Polmanteer

Central Michigan University

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Summary

The ever-involving industry of music within TV and film leads to many new avenues for

the two storytelling mediums to interweave in uses of music. While harmonies have always

played a key role in the TV shows and films, there is a growing movement to use music as a

visual storyteller. Instead of serving as the soundtrack for the main characters on the big screen,

music is interwoven as a character, right alongside the actors and actresses donning a movie set.

With articles documented in Mix and Post magazines, the trend is growing in use.

Films within the past few years, such as Baby Driver, A Star is Born, and Blade Runner

2049 all employ the use of music to their storytelling elements. The most obvious use of this is in

the 2017 action hit, Baby Driver. As Linda Romanello for Post describes, “[Edgar] Wright’s

position on the film was that audiences experience it from Baby’s perspective. In other words,

they hear what he hears (including the musical tracks he’s listening to in his earbuds). At the

same time, the action around him plays out in perfect sync to the beats and rhythms of the tunes,”

(Romanello). With the opportunity of a film like Baby Driver, mixer Julian Slater stepped up to

the task to deliver a mix that seamlessly blends a soundtrack with the action on the screen. With

songs ranging between several decades, Slater and his team brought the idea to life of

introducing music as a character. Songs like “Bellbottoms”, “Debora”, and “Debra” are integral

to several key scenes in the film. “Bellbottoms” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

accompanies the scene that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Slater’s team syncopated the

blues song in with the turns and flips that typically encapsulate a wild car chase. The inclusion of

the music as a character in and of itself, allows it to become a life of its own, beating its own

pulse alongside the wild visuals in front of the viewer. “According to Slater, when the audio

crew first started on the film, “we tempo-mapped each piece of music and all the sounds we
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wanted to work with the music, which is something I’ve never done before. We also pitch-

corrected and modulated the sound effect to make it work with the music. When you watch it,

you’ll see all the car chases or police sirens are all working in sync with the music,” and many of

the scenes that are not featuring gunshots and wild action, still allow for the music to react to the

scene itself (Romanello). Especially in the romantic plotlines between Baby and Debra in the

film, as the music subsides and flows in between conversation that occurs between the two

infatuated lovers. Baby Driver isn’t the only film to play with music and sound in such a unique

way, as A Star Is Born from 2018 proves. Matt Hurwitz of Mix, and Iain Blair of Post, both

identify precisely the way music intertwines in the film and is used. Blair writes in an interview

with Bradley Cooper, the director and star of the film, “‘It’s everything, and we spent so much

time mixing, and in so many different formats — 7.1, 5.2, Atmos and so on. I went crazy! I had a

great sound team with guys like Alan Murray, our supervising sound editor who won the Oscar

for American Sniper. One of the film’s themes is fame, but I didn’t want the usual paparazzi and

so on in the film. Instead, I thought, ‘What’s fame like sonically? It’s a cacophony of noise, and

then utter silence. Two extremes. And that’s how the movie opens and it informs the rest of it,’”

(Blair). While it is inherent to the film that movie is the sole focus, as it is about two musicians

falling in love with one another, however the infusion of music allows for the tunes themselves

to shine much farther than the plot. Combined with the script of Jackson (Bradley Cooper) and

Ally (Lady Gaga), music allows for plot points that build up through dialogue and actions to

culminate in a musical number and fully encapsulate the emotions being felt at the very moment

of the music coming into play. Cooper also identified the phrase, “What’s fame like sonically?”,

which allows the viewer to realize that fame in this film was largely identified by the music

being played, especially in front of an audience, or lack thereof. As main engineer Benjamin
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Rice indicates of his work with the soundtrack for A Star is Born, the music accompanying the

film had to work as its own element to tell the story, “Key for each track, he notes, was being

certain all understood how that song fit into the story and character arcs. “That was always at the

forefront of our minds,” he explains, “’What is the sound supposed to be?’ And we would try

approaches with different instrumentation that may work, it may not. And just circle into, ‘This

is the sound for Jackson,’ or ‘This is the sound for Ally,’” (Hurwitz). The film in this way goes

in a different route of Baby Driver where certain songs are identifying with specific characters

and allowing the viewer to experience one set of feelings, vs another. To round off the film, Rice

explains: “‘When we were all done,” says Rice, “I told Bradley, ‘What I love so much about this

is, it keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. You feel like you’re really with them in

the performance.’ You feel like you’re on the stage, at the arena, not something you’re

witnessing from afar,’” (Hurwitz). Blade Runner 2049 takes a different approach in its way of

telling a story through music. In fact, the music that largely accompanies the 2017 film is

actually sound effects acting in a musical way, an even newer hybrid of sound design and

storytelling. Larry Blake of Mix writes, “[Mark] Mangini joined the film the first week of

January 2017 as supervising sound editor. He spent several months in the early stages

endeavoring to realize the director’s goal of “composing with sound,” (Blake). The key phrase

here is, “composing with sound”, demonstrates the mindset the sound editing team kept in mind

for Blade Runner 2049 as the crew weaved together soundscapes and sonic environments to use

sound effects in a musical way in order to speak to the viewer. Music is undergoing and will

continue to become a newly evolved storytelling tool in film specifically, as Blade Runner 2049,

Baby Driver, and A Star is Born have all done in their own unique ways.
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TV shows are also using music to define characters over the course of a set of episodes.

Better Call Saul, Broad City, and True Detective all employ the chords and harmonies of music

to reimagine how a story is told. Broad City, a series about two millennials living in New York

City, is the most forefront example. Jennifer Walden for Mix, details how music is a character of

its own in Broad City, “Because Broad City is all about New York culture, [Max] Feldman likes

to maintain the flavor by culling cues from local artists. Some of Feldman’s favorite NY-made

tracks for Season 3 are Bruce Smear’s “Junktion” that plays during the basketball match in

Episode 2: “Co-op”; Jarina De Marco’s “Tigre” that punctuates the dramatic entrance of Vanessa

Williams in Episode 3: “Game Over”; and Zebra Katz & Kashaka’s “Marijuana,” and AceMo’s

“On the Low,” which plays while Ilana and Hannibal put a gift basket back together in Episode

4: “Rat Pack.” Feldman reveals, “There is probably no less than 60 percent of New York-based

artists at any given time, if not more. When the artists aren’t from New York, I actually try to

look internationally, although I’ll use any artist with a great track,” (Walden). In the case of this

series, music is the life and soul of the city that the characters go through their daily lives in. The

interplay between the music and two main characters bring out the life in each element, and

further create a dynamic and gripping story to follow. On the flipside, Better Call Saul, a series

about law and drama, the music featured is understated and extravagant at the same time,

mirroring the series’ main character Saul Goodman. In Lily Moayeri’s article for Mix, she writes

that “... scenes are broken down one at a time with many discussions about effects, such as

footsteps and dog barks. Porter starts the score talk with questions rather than offering his

thoughts. This way he can ensure he has the same vision and catches all the nuances,” (Moayeri).

in several scenes are scored by how main composer Dave Porter feels a scene out. For a specific

scene, Porter describes his workflow, “There is a frenetic courthouse montage of Saul making
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deals with various lawyers, conferencing with clients, and dealing with the court staff. A piece

from Vivaldi is used, but redone for the show so that it was more relatable and more connected

to Porter’s score,” (Moayeri). Within these series, the music is used to set the tone, in its usual

uses, however it is also tapped for character purposes, to invent a character on-screen, such as

Saul Goodman himself. True Detective, as Blair Jackson describes for Mix, has “...the music,

which is almost like another character—or a whole bunch of characters—in season one,”

(Jackson). The music in itself appears as a recurring character, in some sense to the series,

especially in specific seasons as producer T Bone Burnett describes, “‘...all the music that

happens until the eighth episode is drawn from that theme. I wrote a set of intervals that could be

broken down into many different configurations, so the DNA of the melody is in all of the music.

Parts of it will appear in a scene, and another one comes over here, but in the end, the whole

thing is revealed,’” (Jackson). In True Detective the dark, percussive, melodic elements of the

score participate in much of the series, to accompany the viewer in each episode. Due to the

repetitive nature, the music itself becomes a character in which the viewer is accustomed to

hearing and adds another detail of storytelling to the product. True Detective, Better Call Saul,

and Broad City are not the only TV series to do this, however they all work with music in such

unique ways, that it feels like re-imaginings of how music can be used in an hours-long TV

season.

It may be subtle in some media, and at the forefront in others, but in large part, music is

undertaking another evolution in the way its used in film and television. Each film or TV show

listed have all undergone massive critical acclaim and cultural success, and some of that may be

attributed to the iconic music of each piece of art. In some ways, the musical element of these

visual pieces has remained true to its original uses of accompaniment and subtlety. However,
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many visual works are employing the use of sound, but especially music, to create new

characters and storylines in ways many have never seen previously. In this way, music can be

seen as a shape-shifter, taking the forms of many ideas and forms as it is reinventing itself in the

decades previous and the years to come.

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References

Blair, I. (2018, November). A Star Is Born director Bradley Cooper. Retrieved from

http://www.postmagazine.com/Publications/Post-Magazine/2018/November-1-2018/-I-

A-Star-Is-Born-I-director-Bradley-Cooper.aspx

Blake, L. (2018, January 06). Effects Become Music. Retrieved from

https://www.mixonline.com/sfp/effects-become-music

Hurwitz, M. (2019, January 08). Voices From the Stage. Retrieved from

https://www.mixonline.com/recording/voices-from-stage-recording-mixing-music-a-star-

is-born

Jackson, B. (2014, April 01). Music for 'True Detective': T Bone Burnett Digs Deep for Eerie

HBO Drama. Retrieved from https://www.mixonline.com/sfp/music-true-detective-t-

bone-burnett-digs-deep-eerie-hbo-drama-369328

Moayeri, L. (2015, April 09). The Music of 'Better Call Saul'. Retrieved from

https://www.mixonline.com/sfp/music-better-call-saul-424239

Romanello, L. (2017, August). Audio: Baby Driver. Retrieved from

http://www.postmagazine.com/Publications/Post-Magazine/2017/August-1-2017/Audio-

I-Baby-Driver-I-.aspx

Walden, J. (2016, April 07). The Sound of New York City. Retrieved from

https://www.mixonline.com/sfp/sound-new-york-city-427152