TV endings & music

Subject: TV endings & music
From: Les B
Date: 19 Jul 00 - 11:39 AM

Recently I've been watching TV (American) more than in the past decade and I've noticed a disturbing trend. The endings of shows, especially documentaries but also including dramatic fiction, seem really flat. There's no build to a climax, no swelling of music, no exiting preparation, no closure, just the credits rolling when you least expect them. Is it just me or have the new crop of writers & directors lost their sense of how to signal an ending ? Or is it some faddish new style like the quirky Nike commercials ??

And, if this is a hot new trend, will it affect the other arts as certain "new waves" have done in the past ? Specifically music. Which leads me to think about how songs are ended.

In a general sense, other than just stopping, how do you structure the end of your songs & tunes - repeat the tag line, put on a "shave & a haircut, six-bits" on instrumentals, or some other dramatic closure technique. Any thoughts 'Catters ?

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: Mbo
Date: 19 Jul 00 - 11:45 AM

I usually create little codas for the ends of songs...either that or some nice rasguetados.

--Mbo

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: MMario
Date: 19 Jul 00 - 11:47 AM

with TV I think it's delibverate. they don't want you to think of it as an ending, just as a puase before the next episode. come back, come back! They WANT you to end up feeling un-fulfilled and lacking a resolution so you will return again and agian

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: Les B
Date: 19 Jul 00 - 11:53 AM

Maybe that's a way to do those old 40-verse ballads - Pause for a commercial break before continuing !

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: Allan C.
Date: 19 Jul 00 - 11:54 AM

It is a plot. There is often a false sense that there is more story at the point they break away for a commercial. Then the commercials deliver their load and just when you think the story will resume, they roll the credits. But here is where the voices come on to entice you to stay tuned for whatever show is next. Meanwhile, you are just starting to get over the confusion about the previous show when the credits suddenly stop. Instead of another band of commercials, you quite abruptly find yourself looking at an intense scene which seems as if it belongs in the MIDDLE of the next show. This is designed to hook you into watching the commercials which immediately follow. And then the real show begins and the opening credits are splashed randomly throughout the first five minutes of the show.

All this is the reason I try to avoid watching anything other than movies. At least with them, I usually have a fair idea of when they start and when they are over.

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: Allan C.
Date: 19 Jul 00 - 11:56 AM

Mbo, do you prefer to have your rasguetados with or without hot sauce? Fried or baked?

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: L R Mole
Date: 20 Jul 00 - 11:30 AM

I thought rasguetadoes were something they ate in the Spanish part of Jamaica.

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Jul 00 - 11:35 AM

Or you can smoke them.

Spaw

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: catspaw49
Date: 20 Jul 00 - 11:59 AM

Sorry Les.....You actually bring up two points here, both of which are interesting.

On the TV issue, there seems to be less ans less music in general and very rarely used for dramatic effect. Maybe that's pendulum swing of some sort. Not too many years back, music reached a pinnacle of sorts in TV series stuff. Probably more than any other, "Miami Vice" was lauded for the use of music. If you ever watched it, you were completely taken with the well done usage of pop music as an integral part of the plot. It was indeed almost dialogue. Many series during that period used a lot more music or at least used it to end each show to some degree (outside of a theme song). "Northern Exposure" did this quite well. The last episode of the series showed small tableau type things of the principles going on with their lives while playing Iris DeMent's "Our Town."

Spaw

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: Les B
Date: 20 Jul 00 - 06:48 PM

Spaw - I'd forgotten about "Miami Vice" and its music. They did a good job.

I think Allan nailed my complaint pretty well about generally "flat" endings - it's an ungodly plot to separate us from our money by letting us think there's still more to come and then casting devilish come-ons in front of our eyes.

When films are structured around music tracks there's usually a definable end. Remember way back in the 60's - on the Smother's Brothers show I think - when they put two minutes of the world's great art to Mason Williams Classical Gas ? In Film school this used to be called Metric cutting (to the beat or meter) and is a real good exercise for beginning editors. Lots of commercials also use this technique. In fact some commercial makers believe music with the tempo of a normal heart beat is more successful at grabbing viewers.

I was more concerned that this flat ending idea would affect music as well. Real open ended type stuff... but wait a minute... isn't that called modern Jazz ... oh well, nevermind.

Subject: RE: TV endings & music
From: Allan C.
Date: 21 Jul 00 - 09:09 AM

I didn't spend a lot of time watching the TV series of Miami Vice but Phil Collins' song:

I can feel it coming "In the Air Tonight", Oh Lord I've been waiting for this moment, all my life, Oh Lord

will in my mind forever be tied to the Miami Vice movie . I consider it to be the best arranged, best engineered piece of popular music of the '80's. It has such wonderful drama built into it by way of the lyrics as well as through the musical arrangement.

Part of the beauty of it is that it fit so very well with the plot.

I've seen your face before my friend But I don't know if you know who I am Well, I was there and I saw what you did I saw it with my own two eyes

It makes me wonder if it was specifically written for the movie. But there are other stories about that. If anyone needs a refresher on the tune, it can be found by clickinghere.