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Trailer Music Seen a good trailer lately? What about the music in it? Much of the music used in trailers, because of the lead times involved do not contain any score written for the eventual film. That's when the marketing department gets creative and goes out to find some of the best music to make the trailer perfect. The following are broken down time-wise, listing only long enough clips of music that is recognizable on a casual listen, and are probably not originally created sound effects. I use publicly available resources and my own two ears to research these sources, so no I do not have secret sources. If you have a question about a movie other than Lord of the Rings, please consult the trailer music database at Soundtrack.net. If your question is not answered there, try these messageboards devoted to trailer music: Soundtrax 5.0 and MovieMusic.com. Questions or comments contact me or discuss it on the Messageboard Thanks for visiting! A big thanks to everyone who has written me with info or speculation to fill in the blanks.
A
Discussion with Howard Shore (18:28) Q: Is it just the marketing department that comes up with the
idea to use the “Requiem for a Dream” sound track on the previews, or how does
that happen? A: Well, that was an ad thing. The didn’t do it on this movie, but they used
it on [TTT] . LOTR is such a closed world, in terms of the culture. I think that
was the confusion on it. Trailers rarely use the music from the movie. LOTR was
so scrutinized, that the fact that it had some other music on it was like “Well,
what’s this music???” And in fact, trailer companies do that all the time. It’s
like a normal kind of thing. So they just a piece of music. They use my music in
other trailers from other movies. But the piece is not in the movie, and not
connected to the movie, it’s just part of the advertising for the movie, which
is done very “closed”. A contract is given to a trailer company and they have to
deliver a trailer and the sound track. So they just do it themselves. You don’t
really have any real influence on what they do. It’s a separately contracted
thing. On this film, however, I did the trailer, and I did it because of that,
because it created so much confusion. So I said, well, I’ll just do it. And I
have done them on other movies. Tim Burton does his own. In Ed Wood we used all
the music from the film. I prefer that, obviously, but sometimes it’s just not
really in your realm of control. Simone Benyacar, Dan Nielsen, Veigar Mairgersson and Craig Stuart Garfinkle
are at least a few of the featured composers of a company called
The Ant Farm (according
to
Soundtrack.net's Composer Information). "The Ant Farm Music Department provides Music Supervision and Music
Composition for motion picture advertising. We have seven Music Supervisors and
three Composers to help build a marketing campaign. In the past five years our
supervisors contributed song selection to such varied projects as Sixth
Sense, Catch Me If You Can, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind,
Shrek, Pearl Harbor, and Signs. One of the most
exciting achievements was selecting and re-recording a new version of Johnny
Mercer's "Something's Gotta Give" with the Royal Crown Revue. The RCR version
worked well enough to become the main teaser cue in Nancy Meyers' latest
romantic comedy, "Something's Gotta Give". Composition continues to be a key element to our success at The Ant Farm. We
create both original material and scores based on existing cues. Our hit list
includes scores for Unbreakable, Undercover Brother, Spy
Kids 3, Shrek, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Lord Of
The Rings (Fellowship Of The Ring), and Lord Of The Rings (The Two
Towers). For the Two Towers campaign a re-orchestration of the Requiem For
A Dream theme was employed to lift the second half of the trailer into the
stratosphere. Three composers, forty musicians, and twenty choral voices helped
to create a powerful piece of marketing music. Our goal is to provide music placement and composition that supports and
elevates our client campaigns into the all important box office opening and
beyond." More information on trailers and the companies that make
them: Return to Vendor The dedicated trailer shops that began springing up during the early 1970s
are a vanishing breed. In their place are "diversified motion picture
marketing companies" -- their words -- that promise to do everything to
promote a movie except physically pluck people out of their homes and deposit
them in a theater as the feature begins to roll. Settling the Score Music, in the words of the Ant Farm music producer Nathan Duvall, is the
key to a successful trailer. "Try to see a trailer without music -- then see
if you still want to see the film," he says. [Read
More]
Page added September 8, 2002 |
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