Understand Music?

Understand Music from finally. on Vimeo.

Music is a good thing. Without it, few of our film projects would work.  Music is one of those absolutely foundational elements in good cinema.  Music can be, and often is, fitted neatly into the background of a film as a trigger to subliminal emotions in the viewer,most often without the viewer’s attention.  One of the great mysteries revealed of successful cinema is mixing the once secret sauce of focusing the audiences attention wherever the director intends.  Music is a major tool in directorial misdirection; the emotional river for the sub-concious to follow.  With the right music choice, an audience can close their eyes, and flow right along with the storyline, even without seeing it.  The music imparts “taste,” “spice,” and “style” along with strong emotional flow to a story line.  It helps mold the focus of attention right where the filmmaker wants it.

Every good cinematic production script starts out with building the backstory.  Backstory being the story that came before the story the audience is about to see.  In the current trend of “short is more than enough,” understanding the music choices I make are vitally important in setting up my backstory tone and hint the emotion I am looking for my audience to resonate with.  Backstory is the stage upon which good audience visualization takes place, so every trick in the (story)book or (photo)bag is fair game for exploitation, especially cool music tricks.

The production crew of “Understand Music” seem to know a lot about all of this when they undertook the making of “Understand Music.”   But what they say they did not know until they started with the research for this piece: Music is also a pretty damn complex thing. This experimental animation is a visual journey through some of the parts and bits of music. Have a look. This film is a masterfully crafted visual demonstration.  I would have like to have seen the visual reflected in the music all the way through, as it did momentarily in the page on dissonance.  But then, they did not claim to understand music.  Their conclusion was to “enjoy it.”

About the creators of “Understand Music.”  finally. was founded in 2012. We are a young, ambitious, creative studio based in Mainz, Germany.
We are graphic designers, animation artists, photographers, editors and cinematographers, but beyond all that, we are family. We share our ideas and our passions. We develop concepts and are always on the lookout for new ways of visualizing ideas creatively. Our references include On-Air-Designs for public service broadcasting corporations as well as editorial content and classic television advertising. Interdisciplinary and cross-platform work is absolutely essential to us. Just contact us via email or telephone. We are very much looking forward to a creative exchange.