The Use of Popular Music in Film Trailers

CONTEXT:

Jadi gw udah semangat 45 mau bikin essay dengan topic “Popular Music in Film Trailers”~ But then, I re-read the assignment instruction and BAM! Ternyata gw salah mengerti apa yang diminta dosennya~ So, gw harus ngulang essay-nya~ T.T

Tapi essay yang lama udah terlanjur mulai dibikin introduction-nya and it was pretty awesome (menurut gw), jadi daripada dibuang sayang, gw post disini aja yak! Wkwk~

Buat yang tertarik sama music/film business mungkin ini bisa jadi knowledge. Buat yang ga ngerti dan ga mau tau apapun tentang keduanya, monggo di klik “x” di pojok atas kiri (for Mac) atau kanan (for Windows). I don’t care if the bounce rate is high for this post. It wasn’t meant to be made anyway~ But still, thanks for at least accidentally visiting! :*

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Before explaining about the use of popular music in film trailers, it is necessary to define what a trailer is. Deaville and Malkinson (2014) define trailer as cinematic texts that are crafted in studio and meant to promote the upcoming release of a new film. Film producers design trailers to generate audience’s emotion in a short duration normally 2-3 minutes (Chertkow and Feehan, 2016). They usually consist of narrative content, cross-promotion, celebrities, genre, special effects, and soundtrack. They sometimes use background music that does not necessarily becomes the film’s soundtrack.

According to a fan-based website Soundtrack.net, the music used in a trailer could be:

·      Popular/mainstream music, such as the Top 40 music

·      Classical music, such as well-known Mozart and Beethoven pieces

·      The scoring of other films, such as the scoring of The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers and Edward Scissorshands

·      Specially-composed music, such as Hans Zimmer’s music especially made for particular films

·      Previously-composed production music

·      Cover songs and remixes, such as Joseph William Morgan feat. Shadow Royale’s cover of What a Wonderful World in Insurgent, the remix of Beyonce’s Crazy in Love in 50 Shades of Grey

Those kinds of music are selected for the purpose of complementing, supporting and integrating the sales messaging of the trailers. In case of popular music, it is usually selected because of the melody, uniqueness and stand-out quality, dynamics, appropriateness of the lyrics, or familiarity with the film theme/story (The Sync Report, 2016).

In order to use a popular song for a film, film producers need to obtain a license from certain parties in regard to the ownership of the song. The CEO of The Rights Workshop whose service is helping clients, on projects ranging from independent to blockbuster and award-winning films, to secure rights on music, photos, lyrics, and album arts to name a few, Brooke Wentz points out several keys for music licensing in the US practice:

-       There are two rights to every song: publisher rights on musical works (belongs to the writer of the song) and master rights on song recording (belongs to the person who recorded it). To use a song, permissions from both entities are required.

-       The fee is negotiable and the same regardless how long the amount of time you use for the song.

-       Songs that are in public domain are free to use, while songs from deceased musicians are owned by their family and conflicted songs (never be clearable) are not recommended for use.