Definitions
- Spotting: the meeting (spotting session) in which the director, editor, composer, and music editor watch the film and decide where the music comes in and goes out (the cues), with what function and what character. Each cue gets a code (e.g., 1M3 = reel 1, third music cue) and start and end timecodes.
- Hit point: a precise instant in the picture (a cut, a blow, a door closing, a glance) that the music underlines with an event (an accent, a change of harmony, the entrance of an instrument).
- Mickey mousing: a technique in which the music literally imitates the movements on screen (steps, falls, jumps). The name comes from the Disney cartoons of the 1930s; Carl Stalling (Warner Bros.) and Max Steiner (King Kong, 1933) are historical examples.
Functions of music in a cue
- Emotional: says what the character feels or what the viewer should feel.
- Narrative: leitmotifs, foreshadowing, memories.
- Structural: joins different scenes, covers a montage, marks the beginning and the end.
- Pacing: gives speed to a chase or slows down a scene.
- Diegetic / non-diegetic: music that the characters hear (radio, an on-screen band) or that only the viewer hears.
Calculating tempo and hit points
The problem is making a musical tempo coincide with an event at a precise timecode.
- At 24 frames per second (film), 1 frame = 41.67 ms.
- At a given BPM, the duration of a quarter note is 60/BPM seconds: at 120 BPM = 0.5 s = 12 frames.
- If a hit point falls 7.5 s after the start of the cue, at 120 BPM it is exactly beat 16 (bar 4, beat 4 in 4/4, counting from beat 1). If it falls at 7.8 s you can change the BPM (7.8 s / 15 beats = 0.52 s → about 115.4 BPM) or put the hit on an eighth or sixteenth note.
- DAWs let you insert markers at timecodes and calculate the tempo automatically (in FL Studio: the Fruity Video Player 2 plugin and markers in the Playlist; Cubase and Logic have dedicated “tempo detection” functions for hit points).
- For musicians in the studio you use click tracks (fixed or variable tempos), streamers (lines that sweep across the screen), and punches (white flashes) to signal the hits.
How much to synchronize
- Hard hit points: underline every event (comedy, exaggerated action). This is mickey mousing.
- Soft hit points: a change of harmony or the entrance of an instrument at the instant, without an accent.
- Free music: the music doesn't follow the events but the overall emotion; this is often the more modern and less intrusive choice.
Mickey mousing is used today mostly in animation and comedy; in dramas it is considered a flaw if overused.
Other tools of the composer for picture
- Stinger: a short musical event (accent, orchestral hit) on a single instant.
- Transition sting: music that covers the cut between two scenes.
- Bed / underscore: a carpet under the dialogue, in a register that doesn't cover the voice (avoid density between 300 Hz and 3 kHz during lines of dialogue).
- Temp track: temporary music placed by the editor; useful as a reference but dangerous (the director gets attached to it).
Use in real films
- Max Steiner — King Kong (1933): tight synchronization with the movements, considered one of the first modern film scores.
- Carl Stalling — Warner Bros. cartoons (Looney Tunes): virtuosic mickey mousing.
- John Williams — E.T. (1982): the finale was synchronized loosely, and then the director re-edited the images to the music.
Practical exercise
Import a 60-second scene into the DAW. Mark 5 hit points with markers. Choose a BPM that makes at least 3 hit points fall on a beat or an eighth note. Write a cue in two versions: one with hard hit points (mickey mousing) and one with free music that changes only harmony on the hits. Compare them against the dialogue audio.
Related topics
Leitmotif and themes, Orchestration by instrument family, Tension and release, Video game music.