Music's role in enhancing a YouTube bird migration documentary

¶ … Music

Birds and Migration

Music has been utilized in various mediums throughout history. In church, for example, music is meant to elevate one's emotions and bring him or her "closer to God." In film, more recently, music has been utilized to evoke certain emotions as well, and to keep the audience interested in the subject at hand. In horror movies, for example, when there is a crescendo, it is relatively certain that something bad may happen. Music, thus, can be happy or sad, and evoke a multitude of other emotions if utilized properly. This paper will thus examine the effect of music in a YouTube video on winged migration.

In this particular video, the audience is shown, in documentary format, the migration of birds from various points-of-view. The video starts with very classical, pleasing music, and shows birds in the water, flying, bathing, seen by people, etc. For each of these scenes, the film utilizes a certain kind a music. For the flying part, for example, which is perhaps the most majestic, the music is flowing in an ever-increasing crescendo, which almost brings the audience to an elated level -- in other words, one feels wonder and joy at seeing the birds.

In the same scene, with the sound off, though the filmography is excellent, one does not feel the same way, which is very interesting. Yes, it is true that the same images are shown, but the fact is that without the music one simply cannot get the same feeling of seeing how majestic the birds are flying over the trees.

When the audience is shown, for example and to provide further justification for how music is so powerful, at the 29th minute in the movie, the wheat fields, with the combine harvesters driving up the hill, the music is quite soft and light. This almost mirrors the day portrayed in the video, which is very sunny, and one almost feels as if one is in that field, sunning oneself, and feeling the wind. In a way, that is exactly the image that the music evokes if one closes his or her eyes.

Music has been shown to have such a powerful effect that, in a paper written by Dave Munger (2008), it has been shown that music can affect perception not only during a film, but also before and after a film. Furthermore, the music that is played both before and after the film can further alter our perceptions of what has been seen or how things are seen thereafter, which is quite interesting.