Choosing the right music for your video
Choosing the right Music for your Video
Oh, how things have changed! The days of those un-inspiring corporate music tracks you heard on just about every corporate video are thankfully behind us. We now have a wealth of great music to use in our videos. In fact, we’re spoilt for choice.
Sites like Epidemic Sound, Artlist, and Soundstripe, to name just a few, have great music and are all royalty-free, so you can use it without worrying about royalty fees.
This is all great, but it now raises a whole new problem. With so much choice, what track do you choose for your video? You can literally spend hours looking or listening to music, trying to find the right track that works for your production.
Making the right choice has now become an art in its self.
Why we use music?
So, why do we use music?
The music we use is as important as the story and the footage we use. This is because music can greatly affect the viewer’s mood, and controlling the audience’s mood and emotion is our primary objective.
We are looking to evoke the right emotion depending upon the product or service we are promoting.
For example, if you consider a pair of running shoes, we want to make the viewer feel in an energetic mood, making them get out and run. This requires a track that is high energy and sporty. In contrast, a relaxing bath oil would require soft relaxing music and so on.
What has changed?
What has changed is that you can now choose music that will match the tempo and beat. Work with the emotion of the story enabling editors to achieve amazing cinematic videos.
Traditionally music was an afterthought for promotional video editors. They would look for something suitable once they had their timeline sorted. Something generic was easy as it could be added without affecting the cuts of the video.
If you tried to do this with high tempo music, it only makes the job harder as you are trying to match the beat with the cuts and edits on the video. This somewhat limits your choice. A new approach was required.
So it makes good sense to do some research at the start and have at least one or two tracks chosen at the planning stage.
Here, we reflect on the emotion we are trying to evoke, considering the company brand and the video’s overall mood.
We can also clear the choice with the client in advance of editing.
There is nothing worse than having to change the music because the client didn’t like it once you’ve timed everything to the beat.
Another benefit is that once we have a track selected, this makes the editing easier, and we can plan the shots to work to the beat.
This helps the final production flow, and the editor can spend more time on the visual effects, illustrations and getting the message spot on.
In Summary
Access to a fantastic choice of Royalty-Free Music has helped to revolutionise the video production industry for all concerned. Telling stories with emotion and feeling has enabled marketers to reach new audiences and improve interest in products and services.
Video is now an even better marketing tool.
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