Have you ever heard a piece of theme music from another film play in a trailer you’ve seen recently? Have you ever asked yourself how do those editors make that piece of music sound so custom to that trailer? Well, not too many people ask that question, and if you’re here, you must be really in to film editing!
How does that music match the video so well? And it ends so perfectly!? Well I hope this article will help answer some of those questions. As an editor for over 10 years, I have developed my own techniques in cutting royalty free music to better match my films as custom themes are sometimes too costly. This article will give you the basic ideas on how to match your music better to your videos and film projects. For those that don’t know what I mean by royalty free music, it’s basically license free music that you can purchase, or some can be opened source. Here are my techniques that worked best for me.
1) Beat Matching Technique:
Fig 1. Same music with downbeats taken from different sections of the piece and overlaying it on top of each other.
One of the tricks that I use is beat matching the same piece of music in order to change it’s length. Lets say your video is 5 minutes long, and your music is 10 minutes. Having the music stop in the middle may not sound that great. In general, the end of the music is where you would want to match the ending to your clip. This is where beat matching may help. Find the downbeat in your piece near the beginning, and another downbeat near the end of the music. Remove the middle and overlay the two files on top of one another matching it on the beat (see fig. 1). You may have to play around with the clips in order to get it right.
2) Camouflaging The Soundtrack:
Fig 2. Drum beat at end is needed to finish the video, thus transition of music is placed over voice clip
I use this technique when I cannot find an appropriate downbeat to sync the music after a cut. In Fig. 2, you can see that I needed to end the section appropriately (“epic drum ending”). However, the “film music” clip didn’t end on that “epic drum ending”, so I had to cut the music and place the cut over the “voice clip”. This way, the transition point is harder to hear, because the audience is listening to the “voice clip”. You can also see the rubber bands I’ve added (blue lines on the track). It shows that the “film music’s” volume is low during the voice section and it then rises back to normal after “voice clip” has been played.
3) Adding Extra Assets:
Fig 3. Shows several sound assets added over the music to make it sound more custom
Another way to make royalty free music sound more customized is to add more beef to the score. In Fig 3. I have added several swishes and drum beats to add more “umph” to the sound. Also on the red track, you can see that I’ve used the quick downbeat method to insure that the music ended well for that section. Over the course of a video, I will have several volume changes. For example, when someone is speaking, the music’s volume will be lowered, and after the talk is completed, the music will rise in volume again.
4) Changing Video Lengths to Match Music:
This method is used when I really can’t find an appropriate downbeat or I don’t have a voice track to hide it, or maybe the voice track is not appropriate for that section. What I will do is I would extend or shorten a video clip’s length to match the music. This method can also ruin your video as you may already have dialed in the shots to it’s frame. But sometimes you maybe able to tweak a previous shot to compensate for a shot you don’t want to change.
Most of the time, an editor will be using some or even all of these techniques mentioned above to insure that the music plays the best for their project. It’s a matter of tweaking and adjusting the music to best match your video. So there you have it, there’s no one way of making all this work, the more you edit, the better you’ll become at it, just like everything in life! Please let us know what you will want us to write about next month. Happy editing 🙂