Soundtrack Research #1

Luther

We believe the choice of music/soundtrack is the most important component to a successful film, especially in the opening two minutes because it reveals all and introduces the characters. The music helps tell the story and allows the audience to empathise with the characters, without the music, there would be a lack of feelings or emotions linking the characters together with the audience. A soundtrack can eventually turn into a sound motif, which, with high ranking films, has helped to make them even more successful in the past. 

Our choices are varied and open as we are able to get hold of non-copyright music and place that over our film, or if we can get hold of a composer, we are able to create our own music so we have maximum control over what is produced. The composer should be able to adjust the music we provide for him and suit it accurately according to the scenes. However the negatives with getting a composer to do this for us means that it is very time consuming for him himself, and it is all dependent on the management of our time. Either way, we have started to look at different soundtracks which we find may be suitable for our opening two minutes.

As mentioned earlier on we have two main influences over our production and these are Taken and Luther, both of which incorporate their music skilfully into their productions. Even though each production has a different storyline, the soundtracks are similar to what we desire. The well-know sound motif of Luther is called “Paradise Circus,” by Massive Attack, it presents a mood of dread over Luther, people who have viewed Luther would understand that this mood is portrayed not only through the soundtrack but also Elba’s haunted face, which is why I believe the soundtrack works incredibly well for Luther. The melody of Paradise City used for the titles of Luther is very melancholy and captures the aims of Luther. The bass in the background adds to the city feel as it’s based in London but the soft seductive side is similar to his personality. Luther is well known for choosing different songs to oversee the end credits; the aim for this idea was to lift the high energy after the last frame, also giving an aspirational look towards the next episode. This is what made Luther become one of our biggest influences, it has aspects which truly link with our film, due to the high impact of their short series, and it has rubbed off on us to make sure we create a high impact film. However after long hours of deliberation we have decided that something similar to “Paradise Circus,” is not what we would use for our opening two minutes, simply because it is too upbeat to fit in with any of our scenes. We are planning to use a slow and derelict type of music for the scenes with our antagonist in, helping to increase the tension.

However Luther doesn’t only feature “Paradise City” as a soundtrack. Series 3 Episode 2 is the most influential episode upon our production. This is because not only has the soundtrack helped us come up with a few ideas, but also the actions of the antagonist assisted us with the type of actions our antagonist will be completing. Although we will not be copying the actions at all, the ideology of the creepiness of the antagonist is what we aim to portray, the way he touches the girl’s belongings. Unfortunately I am not able to get an example of the track but it is very slow paced, yet delirious with the sense that it changes tempo suited to the actions of the antagonist. While the antagonist enters the house of the protagonist the music is incredibly fast paced, because it allows the audience to think something will go wrong, however as soon as he enters and starts snooping around the music deepens and slows down to a point where the audience struggle to hear the music. This is because it portrays how the antagonist is calm and fitted with his situation. That is the sort of music we wish to convey because it fits perfectly with the antagonist and his “ways.”