Providing Context

In my Digital Tools and Media Management class, we recently had a genrebend project.  My genrebend, for example, was turning Toy Story into a horror movie.  Others turned action movies into comedies, or turned serious movies into musicals.  While creating this trailer, I struggled with making this friendly movie actually look intimidating.  I found that the key was in the score.  Once I added the daunting music, the trailer came to life and became believable.  From this experience, I realized how important it is to incorporate something for both the audience’s eyes and ears.  Random clips of angry looking toys, without any context, could be taken as a joke.  Adding the right audio, though, gives the audience the context they need.  In the art of storytelling it’s important to set the stage and have clear context.  If nothing changed in a movie visually and someone changed the background music, the entire tone could flip.  It’s important to portray the right message and having the wrong music can really make or break the story.  The audience can’t hear the music we play in our heads, so we have to provide every aspect.  In real life situations, we are aware of how much music can affect our mood, so this has to be in the back of our mind while storytelling.