Adding a music score is an easy way to enhance almost any production, and students should be encouraged to add appropriate music to underscore their videos. Music is a master manipulator of emotion. It can be used to elicit whatever emotion the director or editor wishes as an effective com­municator of mood and tone. Love scenes are frequently complemented by lyrical music, while scary scenes are punctuated by eerie music and noises.

Music can also convey ethnic and geographic information. Every culture has its signature music, and if this music is used in the video, the audience will identify the location. Bluegrass or country suggests rural America; rap, urban settings; sitars and chimes, India; chants and drums, Africa; and so on.

Students should match the music they choose to the mood of the video as well. Music can be used to change the mood of the video, with faster paced music heightening the energy or slower music bringing it down. The tempo of the music will dictate the timing of the cuts between images in the video.
 
Because music is such an effective communication vehicle, it must be chosen with great care. Popular music heard on the radio is copyright protected and therefore should not be used in commercially distributed videos without the written consent of the copyright holder. If there is any chance that the video will be shown on cable TV or sold for profit, proper rights for the music contained within should be secured. You can attempt to con­tact the publisher or owner of the rights directly or you can contact the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (AS CAP) at www.ascap.com to secure onetime rights to a song for public distribution. All that said however, it is permissible for students to use popular songs for their class projects if the audience is limited to their class, friends, and family. The problem arises if the students want to show their video on public access cable or sell the video for profit. I ran into this problem when I created a music video for a faculty talent show that featured the male faculty dancing to a popular song. After its debut, enough people requested a copy that it became necessary to secure the proper rights to the song, which we are still attempting to do.

An alternative to dealing with intellectual property rights is to purchase royalty-free music, which is sold or distributed in many places. Freeplay Music (www.freeplay.com) has 2,100 titles in 35 genres that may be down­loaded at no cost. The database of songs can be searched by CD, feel, style, and keywords. Digital Juice (www.digitaljuice.com) sells a 28-volume set of CDs for about $400; they contain all sorts of music from classical, to rock, to suspense, and even include wedding and sports music. Royalty Free Music (www.royaltyfreemusic.com) sells music at around $60 a CD; and Partners in Rhyme (www.partnersinrhyme.com) has CDs for about $40 a disk, as well as offering public domain sound effects. Royalty-free music is sometimes expensive, but it does allow you to distribute videos with professionally produced music.

Another free alternative to copyright music is to record original music from your school band or choir. Our fourth- and fifth-grade choir en­tered a contest for an Oscar Mayer hot dog commercial. The choir di­rector helped the students establish a treatment, script, storyboard, and score for their commercial. Once the commercial was shot and edited, they recorded a live voice-over of an edited version of the Oscar Mayer jingle. The students were thrilled to have produced and performed in their own commercial.

Next Month: Sound Effects