Movie Cliché and Music.

In this post I am going to tell you about Movie Clichés and music in movies.


A movie cliché is when something is predictable to that movie. Almost every type of movie will have its' typical cliché unique to that movie type. Here are a few examples.

• Elevators. Movie elevators are always ready at that floor. But if the hero/heroine is being chased, elevator won't come.
• Apartments: The hero lives in New York City working at some okay, but not particularly high-paying job, and yet he or she has a roomy apartment filled with nice stuff, generally with a good view, and sometimes a nice, romantic rooftop to go to.
• Weather: Storms start instantaneously: there's a crack of thunder and lightning, then heavy rain starts falling and normally immediately after receiving some devastating news.
  

Music and sound

Incidental music is what we call background music. This is music the character 'can't hear'. This type of music will be added in post production to set the tone of the scene. For example: In a sad or emotional scene slow music will be added. Incidental music is primarily, but not exclusively, used in movies. If a character turns on a song that portrays the mood of the scene (a slow song during a dance), this is not incidental music as the characters 'can hear' it. (Although most times the music will be added later.)

The video below shows incidental music.


Sound
Quite often in sitcoms the producers will add 'canned laughter' or a 'laughter track'. This is a track of realistic laughter the the producers will add during post production. These are used to prompt the audience when to laugh. Sometimes, if a show is filmed in front of a live audience and the response from the audience wasn't enough canned laughter will be added.

The video below demonstrates the use of canned laughter in a sitcom. This show was filmed in front of a live audience, so the canned laughter is only used to enhance the real laughter from the crowd.