Nick Werner Capstone

For my capstone, I wanted to study the relationship between film and music. Music and film are two things I enjoy and I have always been interested in the relationship between the two. I wanted to explore what techniques composers use to draw on specific emotions and connect their music to what is happening onscreen. My main goal was to get information about the way that people react to music, especially in the context of film. To accomplish this, I split my project into three different parts. First, I filmed a short video, with a couple of friends as actors. I intentionally shot this video in a way that was very ambiguous, without a clear story. The reason for this is the second part of my project: the music. I composed three different pieces of music with the goal of having each evoke a different mood or emotion. For the last part of my project, I sent three groups of people a version of my film, each with a different score. The video is exactly the same in all three versions, only the music changes. I then had each person fill out a form asking them what they thought about the tone and plot of my film. This allowed me to analyze the influence each particular piece of music had on my film.

All versions of my film:

Responses to my form:

I changed my project after I had already done my bibliography, so I don’t have a bibliography for this project. Here is the bibliography for my original project:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v8Fnk4PbAweOwRG8pwYk11ytn6q6T42VJPpMgo0H5qw/edit?usp=sharing