Today we are working on the edit of the video for The Skateboard Diaries. The process is, we take a bunch of sub clips and dump them randomly into a FC time line so that we can start to get an idea of what they will feel like. Right away I am thinking about what the sound treatment will be. We go through about 100 stock music clips, and this is always the case, I end up screaming that they are all awful. Yuk. Stock music is like stock photography, I don’t get it. Right now we have some real music tracks selected that we really like, and now I have contact the bands to make sure they are cool with us using them. Almost always this works out fine. And it is real music vs whatever that stuff called “emo tracks” etc.
But then I came across the video below by Brit photog Kalpesh Lathigra. It is silent. Wow, what a revelation. And there is a power to it, it is compelling maybe because it is silent. It is an entirely visually experience, so I don’t want to look away. It is the anti John Williams approach. Ok, John may be a great guy, but it makes me insane when I see a movie he has scored. It is like he thinks I am so dumb, I can’t get the story feeling from the movie, he has to bludgeon me with the soundtrack. Arghhhhhhh.
Which brings us to Vimeo and YouTube. I guess people put bad music on their videos because they think they have to have some music. I am just as much at fault here as anyone else. I mean, if I don’t have music, it will be boring right? But there are so many more options out there. Record street sounds, static, silence, breathing, animal sounds, whale sounds, whatever. Of course, you can always find some $1.99 stock music for your work, but try to make it better. Or try silence, that maybe fantastic, who knows. I know I have become a huge fan Kalpesh Lathigra now. Check out the surfers. Love the wave sounds, and only wave sounds.
