Puppet Kaos - where Kelvin Kao plays with puppets and tell random stories

I really like this video posted up by Kevin McLeod. He is this musician that has put lots of royalty free music on this website Incompetech under a Creative Commons license for people to use, and in this video, he talks a little bit about scoring music for movies. I’ve always thought that music was great for creating an overall mood and enhancing what’s happening on screen, but little did I know that it can also be used to create focus. In this video, he shows a film clip that has two characters with different emotions. When he uses music that matches the mood of one of the character, our eyes are drawn to her. And when he uses music that matches the other character’s mood, our eyes are drawn to him. That’s an interesting effect that I’ve never paid attention to before: sound can create or change the focus.

When I think about it, there are other examples that come to mind. For example, if there’s sound effects of water dripping, you are more likely to pay attention to that part of the picture. If you hear the sounds of a waterfall, your eyes are more likely to be drawn to the actual waterfall. And when the dark and somber music that is playing while the villain taunts the victim suddenly stops, and is replaced by the hero’s fanfare music, we know that the focus has been shifted onto the hero… even if the hero hasn’t physically appear on the screen yet! Music (and sounds in general) can certainly play a big part in videos.

PS. Kevin is also working on a new project, FreePD, where he releases some of his music into public domain for people to use in videos or what-not. Is this guy awesome or what? Such generosity!

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