Dawww Dun
Dawww Dun
You don’t even need to hear it. Just reading it is enough to remind you how scared we all were watching Jaws. But Jaws without John Williams' music just really isn’t that scary.
But you’re not trying to make Jaws. You’re creating a video to showcase your people, your culture, your track record… yourself. This doesn’t mean the music can’t have an impact on the viewers' emotions. In fact, the wrong music can have a bad influence on the viewer. It can make it boring or just lacking in feeling.
What do I know?
The impact music can have in storytelling and just the general influence it can have on people is something I’ve been studying and putting into practice for over 20 years. From creating platinum-selling albums and playing to thousands of people throughout Europe and America with Republic of Loose, to scoring TV, radio, theatre, and film, to my current work as a content creator with Generate Leads, I’ve been composing and producing original music, alongside performing, curating and editing other people’s music to make people dance, cry, laugh or just take interest. It’s an incredibly satisfying profession: from seeing 30,000 people dancing and hollering in the rain at Oxegen, to the feeling of pride when an original piece of music comes together with an expert video edit to capture a sentiment that just wasn’t there until the music was added.
Metec Consulting Engineers: Earth Day video by Generate Leads featuring originally composed music.
Built Interiors content showreel by Generate Leads featuring originally composed music.
There just isn't any budget for a music composer.
But why is any of this relevant to you, the reader? Let’s say you’re the owner of a company and you want to make a slick video to show all your existing and future clients how passionate you are about what you do. But then the videographer puts generic, flat library music under the dialogue and all the passion is gone. The viewer loses interest and moves on to the next corporate video. So should you hire John Williams for every piece of video content you make? Well, ideally yes, but in reality, the difference between a video with generic library music and an emotionally didactic score doesn’t need to be that different in cost.
ADCO content showreel by Generate Leads featuring originally composed music.
Of course, for evergreen video content that will live on your website and be a flagship for who you are and what you do, an original score is a very worthwhile investment. This music will be written and edited in conjunction with the video edit to create a bespoke video production that captures the viewers' attention and tugs on the heartstrings, or gets their heart pumping. However, with the right musical ear, know-how and experience, library music can achieve similar results. These results can be achieved within a budget tailored to topical video content that’s needed to meet the weekly demands of the social media algorithms.
Tritech Engineering is 25! - Video by Generate Leads featuring choice library music edited to enhance the messaging of the video.
By combining two or more pieces of library music, even in a short video, the viewer can be taken on a journey, with dynamics in tone, pacing and feeling. This will highlight certain points and make them stand out, or if done correctly, can enhance the sentiment to a level that may not have been apparent when the footage was shot.
Sound advice
So the next time you’re watching a corporate video from one of your competitors, (or your friends) and you hear a soulless generic piece of library music trundling along beneath the dialogue, think how much better it could have been with the right musical score. And when you’re making your next (or first) video, why not give me a shout at Generate Leads before you start. Generate Leads can advise on all elements of the shoot, from inception to delivery to the marketing plan you need to implement once you’ve made your perfectly scored video.
