They are both ways to tell you how you should feel about what is happening onscreen instead of letting the movie/show itself do so
I can’t watch original series Star Trek because of the screeching sounds that happen whenever we are supposed to feel dramatic surprise and/or suspense. It’s like nails on a chalkboard.
Quick zoom in!
By that logic, characters’ clothing or shot background are ways to tell you how you should feel. Good soundtrack is a part of the media, not a forced reaction.
No, what about in horror films when the tension rises, the soundtrack and effects sometimes give the ‘surprise’ away in suspenseful screens. Less about how it feels and more about predictability. The best ones have very little backing and only subtle sound effects until something is actually happening.
Which is why I specified good soundtrack, not the concept of it in general. Visuals can also give away plot twists, when done wrong.
Yeah, you are right. But OP saying that it incites a forced reaction is inaccurate. I’ve never been pressured to laugh from a laugh track just like I’ve never been pressured by a horror movie ‘telling’ me to be scared by the rising music/sounds. Just that sometimes they give away the time of surprise. When horror movies have no bg noise for a bit, that’s when it is hard to know exactly when something is gonna happen, that’s more effective than a long inflecting violin note for example or something like the classic Michael Myers theme that tells you some action is happening/going to happen. But I would never call it a forced reaction. I like soundtracks, I see all movies as works of art rather than ‘make me think this is real’ lol. Many people these days have no suspension of disbelief.
I do not agree. If you film something to imitate life, you need to show the character’s clothing, facial expressions, backgrounds, etc. Yes, you can strategically choose what to show and how to show it to help influence the audience, but at the end of the day, something has to be there.
On the other hand, in real life, there isn’t mood music following you around. Sure, if you film a character driving a car or even just walking around a grocery store, it makes perfect sense to have a bit of background music, because that is how those environments are in reality. But having intense music playing from nowhere during a chase scene or whimsical music behind a happy character skipping through an empty meadow is just as realistic as a bunch of disembodied laughs in the background every time a character makes a joke.
But not all shows or movies are 100% realistic. That’s not how art works. It’s supposed to evoke certain emotions, by design. Not everything you watch is intended to be a documentary.
The examples you’ve described are sound design done poorly, which is the opposite of what I referred to.
Next you’re going to tell me how the actors faces look is supposed to tell me how to feel.
I disagree. Music has the potential to express an artistic idea that goes beyond what a fake laugh can do. This can contribute to the scenes mood or contradict it to create a more complex emotion than what the images would do by themselves.
The only time I remember seeing fake laughs being used in a contradictory manner is when used in the sitcom scene in Natural Born Killers.
Furthermore, music scores can be enjoyed by itself. Interstellar was for me a subpar movie, but the score was great and works for me as a standalone piece of art. A fake laugh doesn’t (for me at least)
Maybe, but at least the movie’s action doesn’t come to a complete halt for just the Score to play.
Unless it’s a musical… and this is why I hate musicals…
But… The music IS the action in Musicals, that’s why they’re called Musicals…
(Let’s ignore the Disney Musicals, those are bad Musicals in form)
