Why Adding Unique Music To Film Is So Important

If you've seen the documentaries Earth (2007) or Chimpanzee (2012), you might have noticed that nearly every scene in these films feature background music. While these soundtracks are beautiful, here is a question: do you remember the tunes? 

Even though both Earth and Chimpanzee have wonderful music, the "tragedy" may be that the tunes go by unnoticed.

This video by Tony Zhou explores why it is that music becomes forgettable or sounds alike in Hollywood movies:

As Zhou explains, filmmakers should, ideally, choose music that fits a scene while straying from editing the footage around temp music or creating tunes that convey exactly what goes on. 

Failing to add a unique musical touch or "playing it safe" results in forgettable tunes. Worst case scenario, audiences may even start to think of the background music as background "noise."

The opening intro of Wall-E is an example of unexpected music in film. The tunes of "Hello Dolly" play as we watch a dystopian, post-human landscape unfold on screen. The music takes us back in time and makes us nostalgic for a time when humans inhabited the earth.

The contrast this music serves up, between image and sound, makes the scene interesting. You certainly "notice" the soundtrack! If the filmmakers were to have inserted dark, melancholic music, the music would literally iterate what the images already evoke. 

But even though the music conveys a different feeling from the images, the music still "fits" the movie -- its quirky, fun nature mimics the personality of Wall-E and goes along with the more light-hearted nature of the film.

Can you think of more movies where the music added a unique, memorable touch to the film? Or emotional scenes that conveyed the story without any music at all? Let me know your thoughts. 

Academia Glosses Over The Artistry of Bambi

When I took my course on Ecocritical Approaches to Filmmaking at university, the texts we read on animation often focused on critiquing the films of Disney. Bambi (1942) was repeatedly one of the films that was met with heavy criticism due to its idealized portrayal of nature. For one of my readings that focused on Bambi, I noticed that the artistry that went into the film was simply glossed over.

Although I recognize that academic texts such as these must have a focus and that this focus was on the portrayal of nature, I find it sad that academia in general does not seem to refer to animation with the awe of the medium that I believe is due.

So, in this post, I want to elaborate a bit on the pre-production work that animators undertook for Bambi and share some deer studies from the film—as a type of tribute to the amazing artistry of the animation.

In the reading I mention above, the author explains how the animators took life-drawing courses on fawns to understand their anatomy and mannerisms. As he writes, Walt Disney wanted the animals in Bambi to be as realistic as possible (while still fitting into the “appeal” aspect of the animation medium. For more information on appeal, please see this post by storyartist Mark Kennedy).

When we compare drawings of deer from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, made just a few years earlier, with drawings from Bambi, we can see what a huge difference these classes made in making the deer more believable and anatomically correct.

The legendary animator Andreas Deja, the supervising animator on characters such as Gaston, Scar and Hercules, has a blog, Deja View, where he posts various drawings he inherited from some of Disney’s Nine Old Men (a series of animators known for their incredible skill and who were the ones to discover the principles of animation during Disney’s Golden Age).

He has done a few blog posts in which he shares some of these drawings, as well as photos from the life-drawing sessions during the making of Bambi. You can find these posts here and here.

I have shared some of these drawings below:

When academia refers to Bambi, it’s important not to overlook the incredible skill and hard work that went into the film. At the time of its making, animation was still a new and unexplored medium. The filmmakers had no way of knowing whether animation could sustain the level of realism Walt sought. Yet the animators took on the challenge and created Bambi -- a film with realistically drawn deer as had never been seen before (and perhaps not since). From an animation perspective, Bambi is a masterful showcase of artistry.

Animator Milt Kahl's pencil test of Bambi

Story Analysis Of Song Of The Sea And Grizzly Man

Should humans have a fearful respect of nature, or should we seek to connect with nature, no matter the dangers we might encounter? Do humans “belong” in the natural environment?

These are some questions that both Grizzly Man (2005) and Song of the Sea (2014) address. A documentary by Werner Herzog based on the video recordings of bear enthusiast, Timothy Treadwell, Grizzly Man suggests that the gap between the human/animal world cannot be bridged. In contrast, Song of the Sea portrays an idealized natural environment that serves as the backdrop for the rekindling of a lost human/animal/nature connection.

To give a brief synopsis of Grizzly Man:

Treadwell travelled to Alaska for extended periods of times over a series of years to live with the wild grizzly bears. While there, he filmed footage of the bears and of his “changing” relationship with them—how he was able to “tame” them and make them used to his presence. Treadwell believed that his encounters with the bears proved that humans and wild animals can live together in harmony, if only we make the effort. Tragically, Treadwell and his girlfriend were killed by a grizzly during their 13th summer there.

In Song of the Sea, the girl, Saoirse, similarly dwells in wild nature. In this clip from the film, she finds her mother’s white sealskin coat. She wears the coat and goes to the sea, where she meets a group of seals and becomes a selkie (from Scottish/Irish mythology).

Like Grizzly Man, this clip shows us a human interacting and becoming one with the wilderness. It is as though the boundaries of human and nature/animals are blurred. As ecologist Marnie Gaede says in Grizzly Man at 20.32, “he wanted to become like the bear… I think perhaps he wanted to mutate into a wild animal as he says in his last letter. He says, ‘I have to mutually mutate into a wild animal to handle the life I live out here.’ And I think there’s a religious sense in that, in the sense of connecting so deeply that you’re no longer human.”

As these two films show, the act of connecting with nature can be a wonderful experience – the viewer gets a strong sense that Treadwell loves his life with the bears. Similarly, this scene in which Saoirse becomes a selkie is awe-inspiring. 

At the same time, we need to reserve a fearful respect of nature. As goes without saying, wild animals can be dangerous and not always appear in the form of cute seals. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two films is that the seals don’t pose an immediate danger to Saoirse, whereas the bears in Grizzly Man have a natural urge to kill Treadwell (or at least I cannot imagine that the seals, with their cute character designs, are threatening).

Should Treadwell, then, have been less extreme? Should he have tried to bond with, say, squirrels instead of bears? 

Whichever way we choose to bond with nature, I believe the key is to retain a notion of difference between animals and humans. No matter how much we idealize nature or attribute it with human characteristics—no matter how much we believe we can become and act like wild animals—we are not the same. The idealized world of Song of the Sea communicates an impossibility. We, as humans, cannot turn into seals. The fantasy of doing so can only ever live in our imaginations. When Treadwell wished to become like a bear, he perhaps forced a fairytale narrative onto the grim realities of nature.

Yet I also believe that this notion of difference between animals and humans should not be exaggerated. Both animals and humans cohabitate the planet together. We are alike in many ways—we eat, we poop, we are born, we die. We experience pain and suffering, love and happiness. 

The tricky part is finding the balance between respecting our differences while recognizing our similarities. As we go about making films of tomorrow, we need to carefully contemplate how we wish to construct our relationship with nature. If not, we risk attributing human characteristics to the natural world. 

Story Analysis Of Nephtali And The Revenant

How would you represent nature in animation? Would it be a place where nature heals and helps the main characters process their inner turmoil? Or would it be an environment where nature takes no sides and serves as an indifferent backdrop?

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s, The Revenant, and Glen Keane’s short animated film, Nephtali, are two stories that provide polar opposite answers to these questions.

Using wilderness as a backdrop, both these movies portray a search for meaning and spiritual transcendence. Only The Revenant suggests that meaning cannot necessarily be found in nature.

In Nephtali, we see a ballerina who dances her way through an internal struggle in a forest. The animator of this piece, Glen Keane, was a 38-year veteran of the Walt Disney Studios before he left the studio in search of new opportunities. He describes in an interview how this longing for something new partly inspired the story in Nephtali. As he says, “As I left Disney, I didn’t know how I was going to express myself as an animator. I just knew that I needed something maybe deeper, something less commercial, more artistic, but I didn’t know how that would happen.”

He goes on to explain that Nephtali is like a visual poem in three movements that explores an idea of yearning for 'something more.' The story is built on Psalm 42, which begins with “As the deer pants for streams of water / so my soul pants for you, my God.” In the first part of the short-film, the ballerina is yearning for something, looking into the distance; Glen Keane describes it as a “spiritual calling.”

The second part of the short-film involves conflict. The ballerina is swept away by the wind and has to dance her way through this struggle.

The third and last part is about freedom. It is based on the blessing of Nephtali as it is described in the Bible: “Nephtali is a doe set free, that bears beautiful fawns.” Having searched through the forest, the ballerina thus finds what she is looking for.

Using nature as a backdrop for a spiritual search, Glen Keane communicates that we can find what we are looking for in nature and achieve a new level of consciousness. In essence, he shows us that God/spirituality is in nature.

The Revenant similarly portrays themes of yearning — yearning for meaning and transcendence. Throughout the film, the characters are always searching for something or someone; Elk Dog for his daughter; Hugh Glass for the revenge of his son; John Fitzgerald for wealth and security. Within all of these wishes lay prevalent religious/spiritual undertones, like we saw in Nephtali.

For one, the word “revenant” itself has supernatural associations – it implies returning from a long absence, even death; like a ghost.

In a similar religious/spiritual vein, Fitzgerald discusses the idea of God during a conversation with Bridger around 1.17. He promptly ends a story he is telling by stating that “it turns out, God is a squirrel.” By saying this, he highlights a sense of meaninglessness with life and what they are doing. He implies that God does not exist.

The characters all long for more than what they’ve got; they all communicate a sense of despair.

Unlike Nephtali, however, the characters in The Revenant do not find the meaning they are looking for. People are killed; Elk Dog’s daughter is raped; Glass gets his revenge – but is it ultimately fulfilling?

Like in Nephtali, the filmmakers have chosen to make nature the backdrop as the story unfolds.

Thus, both Nephtali and The Revenant express a desire for spiritual longing and have situated that search for meaning in nature. However, whereas Nephtali offers the hope that transcendence and meaning can indeed be found in nature, The Revenant, on the other hand, does not imbue nature with this power. In this movie, nature doesn’t offer the characters the consolidation they are looking for. Their suffering and interpersonal conflicts never cease to exist – not even as they search through the wilderness.