Cue Starts and Cue Ends
Added 2020-01-21 09:25:46 +0000 UTCEnterning with a musical cue in a film should always have a motivation. Starting out of the blue without any noticeable reason will create a disconnect between the visuals and the music and feel random.
Cues for a musical entrance can be quite diverse. Mostly we use visual cues which could be anything from a scene change, a cut, a movement or other action on screen but also more subtle like change of facial expression or change of light.
More rare are cues on audio events (thunder, noise in the basement etc.) and cues that enter on semantics like a big reveal during a dialogue or a realization of a plot twist.
In some cases is will also work to reveal the cue that motivates the entrance a little later. For instance a scene change might have the music start a few seconds early to glue over the change rather than to make it even harder.
Similar care should be put into the way to end cues. The common flm cue fade out with a held note or chord fading into silence is not (always) a lazy cliché but rather the most effective way to exit a musical cue that has fulfilled its function but lacks a visual cue from the movie that allows for a proper ending so sneaking out is the best way in such cases.
If you do a hard end on a cue, it will be just as noticeable as a hard start and should have a motivation provided by the movie.
Generally, it is recommendable to invest some time to find the right moment to enter and exit a cue and also try out sightly different moments. On some entrances it might feel better to give it a moment after the cue by the movie to enter the musical cue while others feel better to be dead on. Invest some time to get this right.
