The Missing Element of Film Music Theory (What is Spotting?)

Punches & Streamers

In film scoring, timing is everything. And the process of where we determine (With the director) where the music starts, stops, and how it functions is called “spotting”

For some reason, spotting isn’t often discussed though. It’s treated as instinct, not craft. And I think it’s time we build more theory and vocabulary around it.

In this article, I’ll attempt to explain what spotting really is, why it defines your style as a film composer, and how ideas like Mickey Mousing fit into a larger musical language we haven’t developed yet.

Film composers live at the intersection between producer, composer, and filmmaker and spotting exists right in that intersection. We may have a deep understanding of music theory and the orchestra but at the same time we also must have a pretty good mastery of DAWs, music production, and creating high quality polished recordings. On top of all that, our music serves an additional purpose: it has to tell a story, and usually along to a picture full of timings we ourselves have minimal control over. Music being an artform based in time itself, this feels even more important when you consider the timing of the music in relation to how it ebbs and flows with the picture. Silence is just as important as sound in music, after all.

All that is to say that we as film composers have additional duties and understandings that may extend beyond traditional discussions of music. Most musicians are familiar with the five elements of music: harmony, rhythm, melody, texture, and form. When analyzing music of any genre or medium, we can look at it through the lens of each of these elements and come to conclusions about the music in order to deeper understand the composer and their style and choices. Film music does not exist in a vacuum, and must be looked at in the context of it’s medium and from a long form narrative view in addition to the usual cue by cue basis.

I’d like to suggest that our “spotting” choices are just as important as those other elements and can be studied, discussed and identified with recurring devices.

What is Spotting?

In film, the timing of our music is heavily dependent upon the story and picture in which it serves. I had a professor at Berklee that would describe stories as a “series of moments”. A moment being a specific and particular point in time typically unmeasured but generally where a specific thing we can describe takes place.

If two people are talking with their faces getting closer and closer with the picture zooming in on them, the music typically wouldn’t climax until the moment the very frame their lips touch. The build up for that may be drawn out, featuring an irregular number of bars with often changing meter as we ebb and flow with our character’s flirtatious dance. To do anything different may not serve the picture. This very frame where the two characters lips touch is called a “hit point” - a moment in the picture that the music is written specifically to sync with and bring out.

This is two moments that form a scene: the build up and the kiss. Each has their own musical subtext. A screenwriter refers to these moments as “beats” and may even organize their entire script into a “Beat sheet”. Beat sheets will break down and summarize an entire story down to it’s most important events. Reading and understanding beat sheets can be an incredible way to learn storytelling and filter out what details are essential. We as composers are most often writing music around these beats to heighten the story whether we know it or not.

So these decisions of when and where music starts and stops, what it sounds like, what moments on film we choose to use music for and how it functions is called “spotting.” A composer does not typically have 100% say in this, but are often treated as the expert in the room during these discussions. What’s even more interesting however, is music can be added or dropped in the final film, outside of the composers knowledge. Yet, I believe that a composer’s spotting decisions are just as important to their style and the way they tell the story musically as much, if not more so, than the traditional five elements of music.

To offer a contrast to the scene above, what if the composer decided no music for the tension to build up to the kiss, but the second the kiss happens we get a single gentle high piano note. Same scene, different spotting, and drastically changes the feel and meaning of the scene. Same scene, same visuals, but two completely different emotional stories all because of the music.

Once you start noticing how spotting changes a film’s meaning, you realize it’s not just a technical decision, it’s an emotional storytelling device.

So spotting is Style

If we were to take a film from the Golden Age of Hollywood and compare it to a film of today in a similar genre, we can see VASTLY different approaches to music and spotting. For this example we will look at “Stage Coach” by John Ford and “Mad Max: Fury Road”. Perhaps the most obvious difference between these are their timbrel choices - Stage Coach being a full orchestral score and Mad Max being a mix of big “epic” percussion, electric guitar, and massive synths - most of which didn’t even exist in 1939 when Stage Coach came out! Aesthetics do tell stories, but this discussion is beyond aesthetic.

Stagecoach has 57 minutes of score, give or take where as fury road is much closer to being wall to wall, clocking in at around 92 minutes of the films active run time. If we continue to look at films from both eras we will see modern movies have way more music in them than in the golden age of Hollywood. This makes sense though, because music production has gotten so accessible you can score an entire 2 hour movie wall to wall “in the box” without ever stepping into a studio or hire real people for it anymore.

So if you wanted to make a movie in the style of old Hitchcock films - beside copying the cinematography, aspect ratios, acting styles etc. And in addition to writing in the style of the composer, Bernard Herrmann, it’s also important to adopt Bernard Herrmann’s spotting style.

So we’d have to watch his movies and look at what sort of hit points is Bernard Herrmann going for? Where is there silence? How is the music functioning? Is there a particular type of scene that he’d avoid music for that most composers probably would write?

At this point, I think its fair to say that spotting is an essential skill composers need to develop just like melodic development, harmony, rhythm, etc.

But… How do we get better at spotting?

So watching movies and thinking about why composers made the decisions they did is one thing, but I think we can go much deeper. A lot of the information around spotting I can find comes in the form of studying leitmotifs and how/when they occur. I believe this is a huge part of it, yes, but at the same time I believe there is so much more to be discussed.

I’ve performed my own interviews as well as listened to and attended dozens with other composers. Spotting is something that is rarely talked about. I could barely find books or academic articles on this. I am finishing up my food music book, but my next area of focus is going to be on this topic so if you have resources or would like to chat please get in touch.

Anyway, I think we need to develop a sort of language around spotting like we do for other aspects of music. There are already some common terms like hit points, mickey mousing, etc. but I think our vocabulary needs to be developed still.

This is going to be multiple videos and posts if I feel like its substantive enough. So before I jump into deeper research on this I’d like to state where I’m starting from:

1. Music should always serve the story but synchronicity does exist, and that’s where things get interesting. At some point a piece of music over film is no longer a film but a music video. Where is that point and why? And what about montages?

2. Synchronicity does exist, so all of our choices technically can work, but how can we make choices that are intentional and part of a consistent musical language and what sort of choices would they be?

3. When, where, why, and how music exists are all stylistic choices. Having language to describe these ideas beyond aesthetic, hit points, and leitmotif could help. For example, Mickey Mousing is a particular style of spotting hit points, not a genre or aesthetic of music. What are the other "Styles" of spotting that we can create vocabulary around?

4. Music has three primary functions in a movie: Physical (how the music directly interacts with picture), psychological (how music creates a mood/conveys subtext), and functional (technical details like source music or using music to help with pacing or cover other audio problems). How do the different styles of spotting play here?

5. How does spotting related to editing styles? For example, the Seinfeld theme playing over establishing shots of Jerry's apartment/the diner vs a horror film where establishing shots can be much more rare (or the music may even be silent)

6. Right now, I currently believe there are four types of hit points that I can identify: Hard, soft, negative, and deceptive.

7. How music enters is just as important as what it does. Is “fade in” and “fade out” good enough language here or can we find ways to articulate the various ways music may enter a scene?

8. How does themes relate to spotting beyond leitmotifs? The relationship between theme and image can be implicit, explicit or provide various types of subtext depending on how they relate to one another. Perhaps that's something worth exploring as well? Ultimately, this post is just another one of my thought dumps on something I'd like to explore and understand deeper as a composer. So if you have any thoughts, feedback, or questions I'd love to hear from you!