(8) Tragedy - Tragedy is a very potent tool for winning over the hearts and minds of your audience. 9 out of 10 epics end sadly, and if your audience is crying as the credits begin to role, you will know you've done a truly amazing job and made a motion picture that audiences will revere for the ages. But tragedy is difficult to translate onto film. Too often does a script writer, director, or actor view the tragic end of a film as a true, singular emotion, and the outcome lies in the audience not being overly effected by said tragedy. Tragedy is dealt almost always in the death of the title character/ lead protagonist. In order for this to be effective, the audience must forge a serious bond with the dying character so they feel something when that character dies. To do this the character must be fallable and human- like, rather than being shown as a mortal diety as some films attempt to do. The audience falling in love with the character is key to forging this form of tragedy. Another type is found in the "bad guys win" ending... if the antagonist(s) claim victory in the end and the audience was truly rooting for the victory of the protagonist(s), the result will be a morbid mood amongst the members of the audience... IE, those emotions will be triggered and thus they will have sourly enjoyed the film. This sort of tragedy is very hard to create. If the audience has not truly formed a solid opinion of the topic and strongly supports what the protagonist and/ or their party is fighting for, then the film will have a poor ending and audiences won't be interested in seeing the film again.
(9) Moving Soundtrack - Soundtracks in films have been given a bad reputation in the past two decades, as pop culture has worked its way into films and brought an end to gallantry and respectable dramatic assistance. Take a look at two films that are not epics, but are notable examples in this situation: Die Hard and Beverly Hills Cop. Die Hard is a timeless treasure, due in small part to its anti-date-recording in the film. The music is of a classical style, orchestrated by the late-great Michael Kamen, and sweeps the audience into emotional movements. Beverly Hills Cop is quite the opposite, making numerous relations to the time period during which the film was created. But most notably is the difference in soundtracks... Beverly Hills Cop uses synthesizers to emulate its soundtrack, electronic instruments that were a "fad" in the 1980's and are never used today, and therefore, the film feels timed/ dated, whereas Die Hard, filmed in the same time period, uses the orchestrations of the late Michael Kamen to support the backdropped- mood of the film. Music is very potent in a filmmakers arsenal of tools used on the audience. Music can be powerful and striking during combat scenes and whimsical and polite during romantic scenes. But overuse/ abuse of this tool will draw away from the overall quality of the motion picture and result in an anti- climactic vibe ... music should only be used to signify important events in the film, or be layed as a backdrop for transitional scenes or shots. |
