Music & Multimedia
>> Wednesday, April 1, 2009
There is a very interesting piece posted on Poynter this week by Regina McCombs, about the appropriateness of using music in video; Music in Multimedia: Add Sparingly, Not as a Crutch . In general, she makes the case that you should not add music to what you gathered from the scene. And when you do, be careful.
"The authentic audio, video or photography gathered in the field is the most important material you have as a storyteller and a journalist. Adding material that was not gathered through the reporting process must be done with great caution and skill."
She then writes. "In the rare cases in which you add music, it should be used to enhance or further the narrative, not to compensate for incomplete reporting. As he judged this year's NPPA TV editing contest, Brad Ingram of WGHP-TV in Greensboro, N.C., said he saw too many examples in which music was used to "mask problems with the story and used to fix spots in the story where too often the elements weren't there."
"Brian Storm of Media Storm agreed. Music works best, he said, when the photojournalism carries the storyline and contains the narrative, not because narrative is missing. Music "doesn't make a piece work -- all the elements have to be working. It's like another gear you have."" Read more.
She then posts three examples of the same video; one without music, one with music, and another with a different type of music. See how the music influences the feeling of each video -or not.
Clearly, I think this is open to discussion, and should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Recently, Leslie Barbaro used music to drive a video on the the opening night of the state wresting championship weekend, for which there was no narration or A-roll. She used a fast-paced techno sound she created in Garage Band, and it rocks throughout the piece, as scenes from the opening night flash one after another. I thought it worked great, being that it was meant to be a scene-setter, sights-n-sounds kinda video -to show how crazy and frenetic the whole championship weekend is.
I'm curious to know what everyone thinks. Please post your comments.
-Tom Franklin
