I’ve been hopelessly trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, and I’ve started to become very interested in the world of Advertising. A family friend in the business has been giving me a little crash course about it and recommended I check out some ad websites. I stumbled upon two very interesting videos that aren’t necessarily promoting anything, but are incredibly intriguing. At first glance they both seem like the normal promos for two movies I’m sure we are all familiar with. One of them is Mary Poppins and the other The Shining. However, these promos have been tinkered and toyed with and they now seem to have switched genres. By merely splicing the videos in a certain manner, and adding particular music for the desired effect, Chris Rule was able to turn a movie about a magical cleaning lady into a chilling horror film, and one of the most famous and bone chilling horror flicks into a heart warming movie that the family can all enjoy. What Rule is doing here is similar to some of the ideas we have discussed in relation to cognition and emotion. Our brains are trained to associated certain feelings and emotions with certain sounds and images. If we are watching young children merrily playing, while also listening to dark and ominous music, our brains have to quickly try and make sense of what is happening. At least for me, I tend to use the music as my deciding factor(or at least my brain seems to). I don’t really understand the intricacies of music, but I can generally tell what is a “happy piece” and what is a “sad piece.” Although I can understand music in 
more complex emotions, I think it’s easier in this case to have two extreme categories. While, images can definitely evoke particular emotions, if the music has a distinct mood it can mold and shape the images being watched in order make them conform to its feeling. I think it’s extremely fascinating to see things that we are familiar with(ie: Mary Poppins or The Shining), have a completely different feeling when the environment and context in which they are being experienced are altered.
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Professor: Edward Smaldone
Edward.Smaldone@qc.cuny.eduITF: Maggie Dickinson
Email: maggie.dickinson@gmail.com
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Music is definitely a key factor in determining the atmosphere of a movie. Sound has an amazing effect on the human body; it can give us the kind of peace that silence sometimes fails to provide, yet it can also make us squirm uncomfortably in our seats. Chris Rule understands this quite well, obviously. He also knows how narration, coloration, and scene selection also play a vital role in setting the mood for an ad. I’m sure that these projects seem easier than they actually were to make. Rule has talent for sure!
Two observations: 1) context is crucial to the way we absorb and experience images and sounds (and art). 2) you are way too young to be overly concerned with what you are going to do when you grow up. (There is an old joke that goes like this: a little boy says to his mother “I want to be a musician when I grow up.” To which the mother answers: “you can’t do both, dear.”)