Emotion Through Music
Music And Subliminal Emotion
Music can complement pictures through grand gestures, but often something very subtle is just as effective as it tugs subliminally on our emotions.
Take your film footage, as it is, without sound. What does it convey? What would you like to bring out of it? And how could music help you to say it even better?
My music has the power to enhance your pictures, to exploit the full range of depth, emotion, mood and intensity of your work. Put the right music with images and energy is released, in a kind of alchemy where the combined result is greater than the sum of the individual components.
And music has the surprising ability to warp time. Visual sequences that feel properly paced when viewed mute can pass by in a blink when the right music is laid with them. When they hear what I have written, directors often wish they'd allowed more musical breathing space in a scene.
It's essential that you are completely satisfied that your work is sensitively interpreted, and as a composer I take very seriously the accurate interpretation of what a director is trying to achieve in their production. For me this is an intuitive process of careful listening to you and combining this with my broad knowledge of music and experience of writing to picture.
On this page you will find examples of ways in which music transforms sequences by working on underlying emotion.
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Executions in a Theatre: Battle For Warsaw - BBC2
Chernobyl Reactor: Surviving Disaster - BBC 1
Haunting flute music cuts across the frantic activity of a nuclear disaster, allowing viewers to enter the minds of those most affected as they try and take in what has happened.
Elizabeth David: Wall to Wall TV for BBC2
The couple are dwelling on the break-up of their restricting, dull marriage - but the music points to the future, when Elizabeth will have the freedom to write.
Eiffel Tower: Nature Tech - Burning Gold Productions and MR Films for ORF
Viewers are told that the Eiffel Tower was inspired by the strong honeycomb structure of bone - a serene clarinet theme tracks the graceful movement of the lift moving upwards and we reflect on the elegance of design in nature.
Family Joik in Lapland: Reindeer Girls - Burning Gold productions for BBC2
Swelling strings and other instruments behind the Lapland song help us all to share the experience of the mother and her children for a few minutes, and to appreciate how precious it is.