The difference music can make in your video | Selecting music for video

As anyone who’s ever created a video or slideshow knows, one of the most time consuming parts to completing the video is selecting the right music and sounds to go with it. Sometimes our couples have a favourite song that they want to incorporate into a video and although it may seem to be the best way to cut your music searching time in half (and then some), sometimes… ok… most of the time… the songs just don’t work with the story and mood of the visuals (and sometimes you just can’t get sync rights/usage licenses).

Just how drastically can a song change the mood… have a look:

Minion Dave my nefarious, demonic assistant…

or Minion Dave my cute, lovable assistant.

I’ve used the same sequence of clips in both videos and just changed the music and colour effect (that’s a topic for another day). You can clearly see the difference between the two. The first has an eerie ominous, feel akin to a horror movie, whereas the second one has a romantic, dreamy mood (wistful perhaps?).

When picking music for video, you need to be mindful of the emotion you’re trying to convey and has to match the mood of the visuals. It becomes especially important in wedding or portrait video slideshows where you want the images to stand out more and the song to provide the background mood to pull the viewer in.

For our slideshows, I first go though the images selected and decide whether they’re more edgy and need a song that’s more in your face, or if they’re more sombre and need a subtler sound to them or if they’re more bright and airy and call for a more cheery, chirpy song. I try to stay away from the more popular songs because they play everywhere, so viewers may already have associations of that song with another music video, film or an ad. Those associations end up distracting the viewer from the images in your video.

Of course, the added benefit of picking unique songs… now everyone will associate that song with your video, so every time they hear it, they’ll remember the images from the slideshow and be taken back to those precious wedding day moments.