Music typically accompanies film, video, and television productions. It serves a variety of general and specific psychological functions, from increasing attention to providing commentary. Because of the interaction of musical and visual experience in film soundtrack phenomena, and the fact that music and film are art forms which require perceptual and cognitive processing, the domain of musical soundtrack research is vast indeed. In an attempt to provide order among the rich diversity, three perspectives for research on film soundtracks are presented. In brief they concern an associationist approach to musical meaning, organization or structure of musical and visual material, and finally, memory and awareness for film and film music.
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A useful approach to the problem of musical meaning in film is that of associationism. Some music leads to highly specific associations, for example, the Wedding March, and Christmas carols. For the majority of film music, denotations are not as obvious. To examine the degree of consensus on denotative and effective meanings of film music, Cohen selected four short excerpts of commercially available music composed for use in film or video. Subjects who had no prior exposure to the recording, rated the appropriateness of each of the four titles for each of the four excerpts. Listeners were unaware of the correct title of the excerpt. Agreement on titles for three of the music selections were marked and corresponded with the given title. For the fourth selection, listeners unanimously agreed that one of the four titles was completely inappropriate. Therefore, such music written for film soundtracks brings denotative meanings to mind quite systematically. Associations of the music influenced both denotative (titles) and effective meaning of the film. .
Another aspect of film and music concerns the structural functions of film soundtrack.