Music for Visual Media: Finding the Emotion Behind the Scene

Hey y'all!

I’ve always had a littleee bit of a soft spot for musicals, film scores, and music for visual media. I had a VERY long childhood phase of thinking I was a Jedi, which involved listening to the Star Wars score for hours on end while having lightsaber fights around the house. 😂 Even though I’ve spent most of my time working on what one could call “conventional” records, the relationship between music and visuals has fascinated me since I first started making music.

There’s something so magical to me about the way music and visuals can meet and enhance each other emotionally. Music can completely change the way a visual feels, and being able to harness that connection feels like such a superpower to me.

All of this got me thinking… why not dedicate a blog post to it and get the POV of someone who’s actually in the weeds of it?!

When Music Meets the Picture

I had such a blast chatting with Grammy nominated, Emmy and Dove winning producer and composer Kris Crunk and getting his take on it. I asked him: "When scoring for film/tv, do you generally try to reinforce what's happening on screen, or use music to reveal emotions and subtext that aren't obvious from the visuals? How do you approach it from project to project?" 

Finding the Tempo of a Scene

He said: I think the answer is somewhere in between. It really depends on the director and producer’s vision and what they want the scene to accomplish. My job is to help bring out the emotion they want in that moment, whether that means reinforcing what’s already on screen or revealing something underneath it.

Sometimes it’s a gut feeling, and sometimes the scene tells you exactly what the music needs to do. People often talk about finding the tempo of a scene, and I completely agree with that. There’s usually a natural rhythm to the way a scene moves, and finding that can tell you a lot about the score.

Writing Music Before There’s a Picture

I also write quite a bit for sync libraries, where there isn’t a picture yet, so I’m doing the opposite—I’m imagining the scene in my head and writing toward the emotion and story that the music might eventually support.

Ultimately, every project is different. Some directors want the music to stay out of the way, while others want it to do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting. The key is understanding what the project needs and serving that.

Final Thoughts

I loved getting to dive into Kris’s take on this! I was especially surprised and really loved his point about finding the tempo of a scene. That’s something that had never really occurred to me before, and I think the idea of tapping into that natural rhythm, then using the push and pull of the scene to figure out what the music needs to do from there, is mega cool!

His point about producing for sync was also really interesting to me, and it made me more conscious of the similarities and differences between that and working on a “conventional” record. On one hand, sync music might need that cinematic edge, but it might not! And vice versa for a conventional record. A song can have a huge cinematic moment, a really specific emotional arc, or feel like it belongs in a movie without ever actually being written for one.

Thank you Kris for sharing your insightful POV!

Catch y’all next blog!