Afterellen.com is having a short film contest. I was considering reviewing all of them quickly, but most are… not so good, so I won’t (I’m trying to stay true to my ’semi-critical’ tagline.) I will say that I liked Too Much Plaid the best, despite the occasional awkward and/or preachy dialogue. At least it was unforced, the material suited to the actors.
Never mind about that. I do have something to say about all of the films:
There was too much music!
I never thought I’d hear myself say that – I am a semi-professional musician, after all! How can there be too much music? Especially if it is good music – and most of the music in these films was at least fairly good. Music makes everything better, right? (A la Jackie Primrose Monahan…)
Nope, it certainly doesn’t.
Problem #1 with music: Using it to create artificial emotion.
The writing and acting in a film must be able to create emotion on its own. The music is only useful for heightening existing emotion, not creating it! Girl Talk was the worst in this regard: I don’t know these people, I’m not identifying with them, and indie rock music isn’t going to make me care if they’re kissing! Simply having them kiss in silence would have improved it tremendously, mostly because:
Problem #2: Good music makes your average film look awful!
I used to play in a small youth orchestra. It was an informal group, and the director was more of an organizer than a musician. I was always having to convince her that having a pianist accompany the orchestra was a bad, bad idea. Why? Because the piano always sounds good! It’s always in tune, it has a good tone, and it’s usually play by an extremely competent player. In comparison, the orchestra, while quite good by itself, suddenly sounded out of tune, error prone, and generally made up of absolute beginners. It almost sounded as if we needed the piano to keep us together! Of course, if an orchestra is sufficiently talented, a piano can be a good addition – but as a member of the group, not as accompaniment.
The same thing happens with these films. Look – nobody expects them to be wonderful, but adding goodish music makes them seem worthless by contrast. In some of the worst cases, I found myself completely ignoring the picture and just listening to the music.
Perhaps I’m just in a Anyone But Me is the greatest web show ever – partly due to its economy with music – induced haze. Still, I can’t help but think that all of these films abused music. Even having no music at all would have been a great improvement.