Filmmaking / Directing : Intersection of Music and Film by Echo Elliott

Interesting challenge. Would you use the cinematic device of showing the character either turning on car stereo, putting earbuds, etc. to distinguish ambient soundtrack from music video sound track?

Other than that, it might depend on the style of the visual cinema action?

> Would you use the cinematic device of showing the character either turning on car stereo, putting earbuds, etc. to distinguish ambient soundtrack from music video sound track?

Yes! Great tip. Thanks! Would love to connect

> "So excited for life! Who's going?"

Cheers Echo Elliott! I've heard really good things and will try to make it! ٩(^‿^)۶

Echo Elliott and I really appreciate your professional cinematic profile photo, setting a whole new standard !!

Great question, Echo Elliott! I feel like in the early days of music videos, directors would try to make it into more of a story by actually adding a dialogue scene to start, and possibly to finish (a terrible example would be MC Hammer's "Too Legit to Quit"). Within traditional music videos is also the opportunity to have a beginning middle and end, and even have fun with cinematography. Janet Jackson's "When I Think Of You" took great care to make it seem like a traditional musical film with what appears to be all one-shot (it's very clearly broken up, but it's well done): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaleKN9GQ54

All that to be said - regardless if it's a thing or not, YOU SHOULD DO IT! If it excites you, even scares you a little bit, that's okay - go for it!

I'm not sure if there's a genre name for it, but like you, I am also fond of stories that involves music but isn't necessarily a quote/unquote music video.

I don't know if it's quite as prevalent now as it was a few years ago, but people would cut anime shows to music to create AMV's (Anime Music Videos for short) that would usually create a story by mixing the song's lyrics with the anime's subject matter... which honestly is where my mind went when I read your post.

An example of that would be this video called Tainted Donuts, which mixed two shows together with a japanese song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9e_WIoJJnI

Here's another one (featuring one of the shows in the above clip), which tells a story featuring the Weird Al song "Living in the Fridge": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrTULtvs9Dw

I could list a ton of AMV's, but like Karen said, there are traditional music videos that did a terrific job at telling a story... as being an 80's kid, I find the music videos of that era try to tend to tell a story.

I'll list my favorite, which is the Alan Parson's Project video for "Don't Answer Me": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLvFbBR4XOg

Because I've toyed with doing music short stories myself, but it'd take too much time and money for songs I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get the rights too... but if you can do it, do it! I'd watch :)

> It'd take too much time and money for songs I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get the rights to... but if you can do it, do it! I'd watch :)

Ryan Andrew Brandt Thanks so much for bringing this up! I should have made it more clear, but I have the music problem solved because I already have a pipeline of well-known musicians who want to collaborate on this. I'm looking for script writers who connect with this. I'm wondering what it would cost for a talented writer who connects with music to write the script for a short film inspired by a specific song.

Hey Echo Elliott if you've never watching "Across the Universe" I suggest you add it to your queue immediately. It is a musical film that uses Beatles music from start to finish and it is phenomenal. I just rewatched it the other night. The middle gets a little weird (much like the Beatles' musical career) but it still holds up! Check out the parallels between the 1960's and today as well.

Jason Mirch Thanks so much for the tip! I watched it before and loved it, but I'm struck by how relevant it is to what I'm working on now! I'm going to rewatch it. If you hadn't suggested it, I would have missed the connection. Thank you so much!!!

Reservoir Dogs, Baby Driver, Guardians of the Galaxy, Pulp Fiction, Bohemian Rhapsody... it's a thing ;)

Knowing how to use music is SO vitally important, it can make or break the tone of your movie.

Errol Teichert when I first saw Baby Driver, of course I was carried along, yet upon reflection realized later that the story material was a bit thin to put it mildly. Do you think that is an inherent hazard of the form or was that one an aberration?

Daniel, I think Baby Driver was supposed to be a throwback to the car chase films of the 70's. Typically, those had pretty thin characters and story. In my opinion, Baby Driver was deeper than any of those movies, and it still wasn't exceptionally deep. But it achieved what it was going for, so I'm happy.

Echo Elliott Yeah, if you have music rights cleared, you’re pretty much ready to go! At that point it’s just finding the right song for the right writer.

As for price, I think that’ll really depend on how long any of these projects end up being.

If they’re meant to be longer than the song (so say, a 2:30 long song ends up being a 10 to 20 minute short), it might be a couple hundred bucks or more.

If it’s the length of the song, it might be significantly less, especially if the only thing written in the script is the action lines set to the music lyrics.

As someone who has never been paid for my writing yet, I have no idea what would be fair to a writer and reasonable to a producer, to be honest.

I can say that a short I wrote based on The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes” was 4 pages long.

I've written a short that incorporates several riffs and songs from the 50s & 60s that I would love to produce. Are you good at securing music rights?

Pulp Fiction is a film (along with a few others) with possibly the most soundtracks. Some even from 50s/60's. Reason it carries well so many songs is that it's non linear with several stories intersecting, or a character from one story walks onto the next set appearing in a different plot. I don't know any films where music constantly plays unless they are already classed as film musicals. Music is an extremely powerful tool, good or bad sound or good or bad music can make or break a film.