The Rule of 6 (For Film Composers)

Walter Murch laid out 6 great principles in his book, “In the Blink of an Eye” for editors to keep in mind when editing. Having recently read the book, I thought they were extremely relevant to composers as well. His hierarchy breaks down into 6 guiding principles  known as the "Rule of 6" to judge a film’s edit, or in our case: music.

1. Emotion (51% importance)

The cue should make the audience FEEL something first

A cue can be harmonically brilliant and musically flawless, but if it doesn’t emotionally land it fails. This might mean choosing less interesting music that hits harder emotionally, simplifying orchestration, or avoiding ideas that are too distracting from the feeling. The question shouldn’t be “is this music cool?” But rather “is this delivering the correct audience experience?”

2. Story (23%)

Does the music clarify or add to the narrative?

Music should help an audience understand what matters, whose perspective we’re in, what changed, what’s being hinted at, and more. For example, what if we made the music slightly more unstable as a character approaches an ominous building? Or what if we used a “happy” song over contradicting imagery? Music serves a films MEANING not just its mood.

3. Rhythm (10%)

Cinematic pacing.

Sometimes we need to delay music until a few second AFTER a big moment to really get maximum impact. Some times we need to begin or end earlier. The “rhythm” of the musics spotting is a language unique to each film, and can often be just as important and meaningful as the music itself .

4. Eye trace (7%)

How can we use music to guide a viewers eye?

Early days of scoring, particularly in animation, relied heavily on hitting every movement on screen in a style of spotting/scoring we call “Mickey mousing”. Though we don’t do it to that extreme today, we often can use changes in the music to highlight something on screen. A character appears. Someone’s eyes subtly shift to notice something. A killer is appearing from the deep background. A change in the music (or changing to the lack of music) can make us aware of these subtle visuals and help draw a viewers attention to them

5. Tonal/Spatial cohesion (5%)

Maintaining a consistent sonic identity throughout the movie. Does all of the music feel like it belongs in this movie together? Are they tracks mixed similarly and/or using similar harmonic systems, instrumentations, etc? Does the “scale” of the music match the scale of the story/film?

6. Literal realism (4%)

In the early days of film, this was a priority and soon composers realized audiences can understand that the score is a “background element” and we don’t need to see musicians on screen in order to understand why music is playing.

So with that in mind, I like to look at this last point is a little less directly 1:1 with Walter Murch, but instead look at it at how we relate themes exactly to what is happening. We may use a characters theme when they’re not on screen in order to convey a connection to them. We may design sounds that are open and spacious, with big flowing reverb tails even if the movie takes place in an empty cell (and that can be a pretty cool effect!).

Making music the most “literarily perfect” is the least important principle here, as long as the emotion is felt and the story is being told we can get away with breaking a lot of “technical perfection” and focus on “emotional storytelling!”

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