I watched “Magnolia” yesterday for the first time, and was obnocted by the music (Aimee Mann singing Nillson’s “One”) at top volume over the first ten minutes of the dialogue, and generally annoyed at the omnipresence of the music in that film, but then this morning, just now, I was trying to listen to Mika Brzezinski on MORNING JOE explain to Carl Bernstein how sexist it was for media to cover the Bachmann-migraine issue at all but I couldn;t hear her because they were playing LOUD music over the entire discussion. WTF is up with that? Do people actually ENJOY listening to music over content? If I wanted to hear music, I’d put on a CD.
Of course, music drowning Mika’s idiotic points is probably not a bad idea and I don’t think I missed so much–but it did succeed in getting me to change the channel faster.
In a film, it’s an artistic choice, usually indicating that the emotions of the scene are more important than the words. In the case of Aimee Mann’s music in Magnolia, you probably should understand that her music inspired the film.
In the news example, that’s probably just a trainee on the mixing board.
No, they do this on MORNING JOE quite a lot–today’s was just particularly egregious.
As to Magnolia, the use of Mann’s music did seem a little fan-boyish to me. I mean, she didn’t write “ONE” did she? Other use of her singing struck me as weak–particularly the scene where all the characters are supposedly singing a song of hers simultaneously in several different locations. That just seemed silly to me. A three hour wankfest devoted to “I HEART Aimee Mann”? Please.
Magnolia is very different from what most people expect in a film for a lot of reasons. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “Frogs? Really?” from someone who claimed to have been paying attention the whole time.
Personally, I think it’s a brilliant work of filmmaking and may well prove to be Anderson’s masterpiece. I just wish his director’s commentaries weren’t so … difficult.
After the first commercial break, the first several seconds of Trebek’s meet & greet comments for the first contestant are always drowned out by the irritating music and applause. Always. Never understood why they don’t have AT wait for three or four seconds.
Every fourth YouTube video. For some damn reason, the first thing a kid with new video editing software does is lay down some shitty track over tv or movie clips and scenes.
In the case of YouTube videos, I’d chalk it up to the difficulty of doing a decent mix entirely “in the box”. If you want to mix, you need some actual physical faders. I’ve got one of these hooked up to my computer via USB. Trying to mix using only the on-screen mixer means you can only control one volume element at a time.
I generally agree with the OP when it comes to music over the top of dialogue, especially as I get older and my tinnitus gets worse.
But I can also chime in with those who point out that the technique in magnolia was intentional and, at least for some, served its purpose. In addition to the reasons already mentioned, one of the themes of the movie had to do with people not listening to one another, or being in situations that required the listener to pay extra effort lest the subject not be heard and something important be missed. Thus, the scene(s) referred to in the OP, as well as several others (notably John C.'s speech at the end), require special attention.
Family Guy did a clip of a mafia movie called Loud Trumpet. As the conversation goes on, the trumpet gets louder and louder and the characters end up shouting lines at each other.