h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I tend not to watch documentaries because I find many of them too simplistic ... i.e. not aimed to a sufficient academic level.

However two interesting documentaries I did want to watch but I had to switch them off because of the dreadful background "music" consisting of percussive instruments (e.g. hand clapping) or loud electro-pop music. One was on Industrial Chicken Factories from the Discovery Channel and the other was on Conjoined Twins on the BBC 3 Channel:

Discovery Channel (excerpt from youtube): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl5slcDq1Ic
BBC Three: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01s5b2l/Abby_and_Brittany_Joined_for_Life_Episode_1/

My question to AskH2G2 is: has this arrived suddenly or has it been a gradual process - the inclusion of such loud funky music to documentaries and do you find it adds or detracts from the experience of watching said documentaries?

Industrial chicken factories?

I know that chickens get terrible treatment in those things, but I would not think anyone would want to *see* it in a documentary. It's bad enough to read about it .

Sometimes a documentary is about a long-forgotten musician ["Looking for Sugar Man"], in which case the music is pretty important, no?

This isn't new, but it got invasive probably during the 1990s. You can plot its course by watching episodes of 'Horizon'. This used to be an intelligent in-depth show about some aspect at the forefront of modern science. Now it's some sort of techno-rave with moving pictures.

Were the Horizon team pioneers of this type of techno-rave moving image? Some say that the Americans are normally the pioneers of this type of thing, while the British follow but lag behind.

I've no idea. It could have been the French. Yes, let's blame the French

In that case I'll have to start ordering freedom fries

Music soundtracks are very expensive.

First there's a composer's fee which has to be paid.
Unless the tune is in the public domain it will be protected
by copyright laws.

Then there's a performers' fee also protected by laws
of copyright ownership and policed by musicians' unions.

Trying to use some well-known and familiar pop recording
can end up costing millions!


One can of course hire composers and arrangers who will
custom fit music around footage and sound effects after
everything else is done. This is a very expensive deal!
It is almost a necessary ingredient of theatrical films.

But most documentary producers rely on pre-recorded libraries
of non-descript riffs and non-copywritten techo-beats. These
are often purchased outright as a library of various effects,
rhythms and moods with easy to use 'edit' points and fades.
They are also designed to be stretched or compressed for time.
From a production point of view it is very difficult to edit footage
to the rhythm of a pre-recorded tune.

A large production house like an ad agency or TV network will
buy such 'music libraries' at a cost a few thousand and hope
to use enough of the hundreds of mindless tracks over time
to recover the investment.

No doubt the Chicken Factory track was but one of a dozen
techno-rhythms available to the producer. Dismayed by having
to use this compromised robo-music the director may have just
handed a CD of pre-recorded 'light industrial rhythms' to his
editor and said, 'Make it fit."

Been there. Done that.
Of the hundreds of hours of 'music' in these pre-recorded
libraries there may be 20 or 30 seconds here and there that
might cover a scene. Repeat as needed.

~jwf~

And that's why so many landscape and history documentaries
done in the UK have so much aerial footage edited to versions
of Handel recorded years ago by the 'BBC Symphony Orchestra'
and now owned outright by the Corp.


~jwf~

I am wondering where will this all end ... Electro pop music accompanying the Professors lecture on Quantum Physics ... The Prodigy's Firestarter accompanying the Noble Prize awards ceremony for the discovery of the Higgs Boson thingy

I forgot to add the link: this is the professor inside the large hadron collider explaining his role in the discovery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmin5WkOuPw

I think it's getting worse, almost to the point of being beyond parody, especially if Brian Cox is in it.

In terms of odd/interesting choices, there was a BBC Horizon doc called "Mission to Mars" (or something like that) which made extensive use of background music from a computer game series (Mass Effect).

In Ken Branagh's version of the film "Henry V," a composer was hired to write a touching song for the soldiers to sing after their victory at Agincourt. I had been hoping that they would sing "The Agincourt carol," which was surely in the public domain, being many centuries old. There are very very few opportunities to hear this piece nowadays, and this would have been the perfect time.Oh, well!

Intrusive background music marred the film "Crash," which won the Oscar for best film in 2005. There were scenes in which I could not decipher the dialogue because the music was so loud.

Mind you, it's a great opportunity to drown out Brian Cox. Shame they don't synchronise it better.

I always find it annoying to hear a snatch of a piece I know, but played in a loop. In fact anytime the background music is something I instantly recognise it distracts me from the programme.

Otherwise I don't especially mind it. What I do dislike is the repetition of graphics with music to illustrate a point that keeps cropping up in the programme. There's far too much repetition - the intro to tell us what the programme is about, repeated after any advert break or summarised after every bit of information, then a round up at the end. I end up feeling the whole programme could have been condensed into half the time.

Don't get me going on repetition. It's a technique to save costs by spinning out 5 minutes of content to last half an hour. It's worst when they have a series which they show over a 5-day week (a cookery competition, for example). The half hour generally consists of the following:

3 minutes of trailers for upcoming BBC shows.

2 minute expensively-produced trailer telling you how wonderfully diverse BBC1 or BBC News is, or what the new season of programmes will be.

1 minute ident showing you hippos doing synchronised swimming or people kicking footballs in a circle, while the continuity announcer tells you what the following programme is going to be.

3 minutes showing you what you're about to see.

2 minutes of opening titles.

3 minutes reminding you what you saw on yesterday's show.

1 minute reminder of what show you're watching, in case you forgot.

5 minutes of actual original content.

1 minute reminder of what show you're watching (again).

3 minute reminder of what you've just seen.

1 minute reminder of what show you're watching (yet again).

3 minutes preview of what you're going to see in tomorrow's show.

2 minutes of closing titles, during which the continuity announcer tells you what's coming up next after the next 6 minutes of trailers and idents.

Brian Cox (uncut ... warning contains some industrial language): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDkVS-AN4NU

The Harry Hill skit's good too (and family-friendly)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nptDP35Tb0

Britains Got Talent 2013. I watched last nights episode and it has now added an irritating percussion background to when the judges comment on the acts, or when they run through a series of acts very quickly. It's all very strange and distracting.

Maybe in future when we have normal conversation we will have to add a bit of beatbox to it.

I want a ticket boom tugga boom to London.
Single or cha cha cha sugerboom Return?
Ba ba ba return please.
For ya ya chiggerwoosh today?
...

I am trying to watch a football match. It is the English FA cup final between the Manchester City and the Wigan football teams, held at Wembley, London.

The advertising hoardings that surround the field I am finding extremely distracting. They have what is known as an LED Perimeter Advertising System. Basically they are screens showing moving advertising images. They are using strong colours (luminous blue, white, red, yellow etc), that flash, move around from one part of the pitch to another, scroll, fade etc. I am spending more time being distracted by the blinking advertising hoarding than the game. All we need now is some base and drum. The advertisers have won, I'll do something else.