The Advantages of Using Bird Chatter Instead of Musical Soundtracks in Movies

Hollywood producers are always looking to find new, innovative ways to create a hit movie. Some movie producers have gone as far as putting talking dogs into their films to try to make them successful, but many overlook the power of music.

One technique that a lot of Hollywood producers haven't tried yet is to use bird calls as the soundtrack of their movie.

There are many advantages to replacing the soundtrack of your movie with bird calls, but this short essay will detail a few of the most obvious ones:

Financial

According to David Bell, author of "Getting The Best Score For Your Film," a high budget feature film can cost up to $400,000 plus a $200,000 to $400,000 composer fee. That is an awful lot of money to spend on music.

When your movie is about a haunted house for example, it would make a lot of sense to invest money into bone-chilling and spooky music because that can play a big role in giving the audience they haunt they paid for, but for movies where music is less important, it might be smart to consider using bird calls to fill the dead air.

When dealing with a medium-budget film, you could decide to use bird calls instead of music and re-allocate your funds to another part of the production because you don't need to pay a bird for the music they produce.

Legal

Under U.S. law, in order to use a song in a movie you must acquire a Synchronization License from the publisher to use the song in synchronization with the video and a Master Use License from the record label to reproduce the song in your film.

The advantage of using bird chatter in your film instead of music is that you can circumvent the acquisition of these music licenses because birds won't sue you unless a human lawyer is representing them.

The chances of a human lawyer representing a bird in court are extremely low and there have been no known cases in the history of film of somebody being sued for using bird calls instead of music.

Nostalgia

Other than scent, which is known to be the human sense most strongly linked with nostalgia, hearing might be the next. In terms of hearing, here is nothing more nostalgic than hearing a bird you remember from your childhood. That memory can be very therapeutic for people and very enjoyable for others. These emotions can add to the overall enjoyment of a film.


All in all, replacing your soundtrack with bird chatter should not be overlooked by mainstream Hollywood.

Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic romantic-comedy-drama film (genre hybrid) based on the 1986 novel Forrest Gump by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and starred Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field. The story beautifuly illustrates several decades in the life of Forrest Gump, a slow and naïve, but good-hearted and athletically gifted, man from Alabama who witnesses, and in some peculiar cases influences, some of the defining events of the latter half of the 20th century in the United States (the period between Forrest's birth in 1944 and 1982). The film is much different from the novel on which it was based, including Gump's personality and some of the events that took place.

The main sets took place in late 1993, mainly in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Extensive visual effects were used to incorporate Gump (Tom Hanks) into archived footage and to develop other fun scenes. A compelling soundtrack was featured in the film, using music intended to pinpoint specific time periods portrayed on screen. Its commercial release made it a top-selling soundtrack, selling over twelve million copies worldwide.  Some of the songs include Hound Dog by Elvis Presley, Fortunate Son by Creedance Clearwater, Respect by Aretha Franklin, and many more American favorites. 

This famous film was released in the United States on July 6, 1994.  The film became a commercial success as the top grossing film in North America released in that year, being the first major success for Paramount Pictures since the studio's sale to Viacom, earning over $677 million worldwide during its theatrical run. Forrest Gump holds a high rating of 8.8 on the Internet Movie Database, which makes it the 13th best movie of all time for the website and in 1995 it won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director for Robert Zemeckis, Best Actor for Tom Hanks, Best Adapted Screenplay for Eric Roth, Best Visual Effects, and Best Film Editing. Forrest Gump also easily attained multiple other awards and nominations, including Golden Globes, People's Choice Awards, and Young Artist Awards, among others. Ever since the film was released, many variations of interpretations of its protagonist (Forrest Gump) and its political symbolism have been made.  

In 1996, a themed restaurant, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, opened based on the film and has since expanded to multiple locations worldwide.  If that doesn't show you have much of an impact this film made, I don't know what will!  One of the scenes of the American classic of Gump running across the country is often referred to when real-life people attempt the feat. In 2011, the Library of Congress selected Forrest Gump for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".  

After all these facts, can you even argue that this movie isn't the best movie of all time?! If you haven't seen this film yet, it's time to stop whatever you are doing, sit down, and focus your attention on the best movie of all time. 

Requiem For a Dream

One director that uses sound as a key tool to telling his story is director Darren Aronofsky. He is known for using a dark tone to fill the nature of his stories. He has directed award winning films such as The Wrestler, and Black Swan, but my favorite of his is Requiem For a Dream. It redefined what a "drug movie" could be, illustrating a brutal addiction especially through the works of his chilling soundtrack and other sounds. I remember the first time I watched this horrifying film was in the 8th grade. My uncle told me it was a great film and had an incredible soundtrack so I was interested. And although I was terrified for 101 minutes, I couldn't stop thinking about how incredible the film was. Sound design is perhaps the most overlooked art in cinema, and for good reason: truly perfect sound serves only to enhance immersion in the film. Its not supposed to draw attention. But once you start paying attention, Requim's scenes are filled with subtle, striking enhancements. From the hallucinated growl of a characters fridge to the grating teeth-grinding of an addict on uppers. For a low budget film, Darren Aronofsky turned this film into something unforgettable.

Composition

Like I said in my last post, I have always been somewhat fascinated by sound design, but the actual composing process and the music design in movies blows me away. My parents could recall me as a child humming the theme song for Indian Jones which was composed by the brilliant John Williams. But as I got older and my musicianship got better, I became more and more intrigued by the composition of music in film and television. 

I recently started a show called Revenge on ABC. The show is about a little girl whose father was framed for a murder he didn't do. When the girl (Emily) grows up, Emily pursues to free her father and serve justice for his fraud. But I wasnt captured by the story, or the acting, I was captivated by the music. The show is composed by Fil Eisler. Fil is a Czech born, raised composer and multi instrumentalist. He has done movies such as My Best Friends Girl, and Redline, but he is most known for the music in the television show Revenge. In his early career Fil was actually hired by Robie Williams who was an ex boy band singer who decided to start a new band with real instruments. Fil was hired as his guitarist. In an interview I watched with Fil, he said that it was the energy that the musicians brought into the studio set the bar for how good music in a television show could be.

Ive noticed while watching the show, the melodic tone really sets the emotion of the entire scene, and this show always has a particular creepy, and haunting soundtrack. For example when one character is walking with a coat and gloves on and he turns off his phone, the music that plays is really creepy with a low cello playing. But when I watched it with no sound the scene just looked like a normal guy walking and checking his phone. It showed how vital the music composition is in a show, because it can make or break it. 

This week in movies...

Friday: Tonight, I've just watched Reservoir Dogs by Quentin Tarantino. And I've got to say I was taken aback by it. And I'm not sure if in a good or a bad way.

In one aspect it was beautifully done and in Tarantino-fashion. Lots of blood, lots of "F" and "N" words but wonderfully showed the grittiness of what it means to do a "job".

Maybe it's due to the last few of his movies I've seen are his quote-on-quote best movies, that I built it up as going to be just another Pulp Fiction but with more mobsters.

Hopefully if I watch it again in a few weeks or so, I'll appreciate it more... Of course I enjoyed when Blonde cut the cops ear off- the pacing of it was so well done that my ear only hurt once I saw the ear in Blonde's hand.

And like always, the soundtrack was on point... And I loved Orange's references to Marvel... made my night.

Saturday: This afternoon my boyfriend and I saw Gangster Squad. He wasn't sure on whether we should see it or not since the website, Rotten Tomatoes, gave it a low score. I usually hate what most critics say about a movie so I finally beat the whole "But Emma Stone is in it!" to a pulp and we finally got to see it.

It wasn't that bad. Now, I enjoyed Josh Brolin bash peoples' faces in and Ryan Gosling in a fitted suit but it was a movie you have to see at least once. The story telling was sub-par but it was still a good gangster movie. Brolin's wife in the movie was one of my favorite characters and the fight scenes were always exciting. 

Don't spend your money on the movie while it's out in theaters- wait till it's either at your $2 theatre or until it's at RedBox. If you like Ryan Gosling and gun fights, might as well check it out.

Creating suspension

Recently in class we watched a segment from The Fast and the Furious and watched how the scene was able to generate suspension.  In the scene Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) races Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) to some train tracks a ways down the road.  The suspense is generated by the train that is coming.  One aspect of the scene we noticed that helped to grow suspension was the feeling that time slowed down.  Not only was it slowed by slow-motion, but many shots were compiled showing close ups, the train, the cars, the train again, and then back to the cars.  The scene itself takes much longer then it should for two fast moving cars to race a quarter of a mile.  The close ups themselves even aid to the suspension.  Shots of the actors such as this one (Not the exact shot but similar)

Help capture the emotion and the intensity.  

The sound and music also helps to play on the audiences emotions and add anxiety to the scene.  There are different styles to using this sound and music.  In fast and furious you hear the roar of the engines and the train thundering down the tracks.  All of this adds to the action and the intensity.  Another movie I watched however uses sound a little differently.  In The Good the Bad and the Ugly, a classic wester, the movie has one scene in particular that uses very little sound, and only has a slow song in the background which could honestly be considered just whistling.  This movie uses the same technique of closeups to keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

In this scene you have Clint Eastwood, and three other travelers in a standoff.  The scene is only comprised of shots of their face, eyes, and the occasional gun.  The feeling of slowed time is also applied hear.  No action takes place, just the actors standing waiting for the first to make a move, and there is what feels like 10 minutes of just Eastwood squinting confidently in the face of death.  

In both movies, when the train passes and the shootout is over, there is an immediate feeling of relief as you sit back down in your seat.  It is at that point you can finally notice and appreciate how well done the scene was in building up your suspense.

Robert Cannon

Alternative soundtrack uses

One thing I love is when music from a film is used dubbed over separate footage. The results aren't always pretty, but in this case, the outcome is truly stunning. Take a look and enjoy it for yourself.

android dreams from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo.