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Struggling with a cue - tips?

Atardecer

Atardecer

New Member
Hi all,

I'm working on a cue for a project and have just hit a brick wall. The scene is a pre-wedding celebration which is intercut with footage of the 'bad guy' stalking the proceedings. There's nor real rhythm or tempo to the intercuts and personally I think they edited it poorly but hey not my call. They want light and bubbly on the celebration scenes with dark twists on the stalker. Whatever I'm trying is just on the nose. The shifting between the two ideas is too stark. How would you approach this? personally I feel it needs to be more ambiguous throughout (it's about 2 minutes) but I know the film makers have asked for a particular thing. One which I cannot seem to provide right now!

Thanks for any suggestions, musical or otherwise.
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The mismatch between the two scenes could actually work to your advantage. Perhaps you could establish something "light and bubbly" for the wedding scene and maintain it throughout the cuts, but overlay something reasonably dissonant or menacing when showing the stalker. The disjunctive pacing and musical themes could increase the sense of unease and looming conflict between the two scenes, but you likely want to keep the stalker overlay pretty subtle (maybe some slow synth pad that swells in and out with the stalker scenes). Sometimes "bad" music creates just the mood needed (viz. tone clusters).
 
Hard to suggest without actually watching, but it might be a scenario where a super would implement an actual song to “vibe it up”.. something punk’ish come to mind, because that can sound like happy uptempo, while actually being dark and rebellish at the same time, and just “mess it up” without needing to slave the cuts.. or they might recut after trying it. You know.. Tarantino

Just shaking off ideas from the hip..
 
Musicians playing something light and bubbly for the celebration, same thing for the stalker except with erratic playing or mistakes? Or shifting in and out of a more sinister sounding parallel mode while playing the same patterns?

Exaggerated tape warble effect?

Col legno hits to emphasize the transitions?
 
I just saw this scenario in one of the later episodes of Mindhunter season 2. The composer was on the nose from the positive to negative changes with pronounced changes musically. It worked for a few cuts (surprisingly I thought) but there was no way he was going to be able to continue that approach without it becoming fully comedic. So he just sort of stalled the music and allowed the lighter material to hang over onto the darker visuals. It worked.

I almost started a thread here on how Hans Zimmer will go with music far more positive than the visuals if heavy drama has been going a while. It works every time and takes the dramatic weight off the audience while re-energizing them.

So, more positive music can in fact work over heavier visuals. Even if you only use this approach to transition to a more homogenous texture that works with both cuts you can go from there. Usually you can eventually go darker and stay there since it’s firmly established that evil is lurking and will soon overcome any sense of positive feelings. Try to find that place where it works to stay dark and build the dark dramatic elements.
 
Thanks for the tips all. In the end I went with something more sustained and ambient, letting it drift over the bad guy moments without marking them too much. And in the end, the producers decided they didnt need music over the sequence :)
 
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