Music in Film

Bride Wars

You can see the opening of bride wars by clicking here

This opening starts with a fun up-beat tune and then a close up shot of a wedding scrapbook covered in fun colours and materials is shown, there is then a montage of shots all relevant to a wedding shown for example a bride and groom cake stand. Throughout all of this the fun music is playing and that too is also relevant.

The first lyric is "I found so many things I dreamed of" followed by lyrics including "days go by and were still laughing" and "he's all mine and were never alone". All of these lyrics are positive and are strongly linked to romance, as well as weddings (from the shots and clips as the music is playing). This immediately tells the audience that the story is upbeat, like the tune, and is about love.

Aside from the lyrics, the tune itself is infectious, it instantly makes you feel happy and positive, it sets a light hearted and fun atmosphere and personally, would make me want to continue watching.

Titanic

I have done a post about this film opening and I talk about music a lot in it you can find that here however to summarise, the music is very depressing, it has a low base and instead of singing lyrics, notes are sung in a very slow but moving way. Unlike the opening for "Bride Wars" it doesn't make the audience feel happy and it isn't upbeat, however still very powerful and informative along with the shots in the background telling us it will be a sad story as the sad music plays in the background of people on the titanic waving goodbye to their families. Another thing I mentioned in the post is that at most of the higher notes there is a transition in shots moving from different people on the ship waving to their loved ones, it heightens the emotion and sets the mood making us feel as if the film and storyline itself may not have such a happy ending due to the strong focus of the 'goodbyes' in the opening. Finally, the music resembles traditional Irish music and Ireland was the last 'port of call' before the titanic set sail, so it is very fitting

Music does an incredible job of setting the atmosphere and mood, it is something people listen to everyday and they will listen to different songs depending on their mood, which is why I think having music in an opening is a very good way of letting the audience know what the overall mood, atmosphere or feel of the film may be, people strongly connect to music and therefore I believe its a powerful thing to include.

The only disadvantage to using music for the whole opening is that it may not give enough information about what the film is going to entail, the titanic is a very well known story across the world therefore it isn't really a problem in the film's opening, however if a less known film only  had music in it for the first few minutes the audience may get bored or make an instant judgment about the whole film based on the music, therefore I think in an opening it would be better to only have music in the first half.