Effect of Familiar Background Music upon Film Learning

Abstract

A FREQUENTLY expressed point of view regard ing the selection of background music for education al films is that such music should be unfamiliar to the audience so that attention will not be drawn from the film content. Lindgren (5, p. 147) expr?s s ed this point of view when he said: Music in a film may call attention to itself not I only where it is too good, but also where it has a strong and clearly defined melodic line. The specI tator's attention is drawn to the melody and the com poser who wishes to keep his music in the backI ground will work rather on changes of harmony and rhythm. The use of well-known music is even more distracting, and has the additional disadvantage that it often has certain associations for the spe c ta tor which may conflict entirely with the associations the producer wishes to establish in his f ilm . The use of classical music for sound films is entirely to be deplored. I It is conceivable that there are many univers ity film producers and many smaller commercial pro ducers who would use film music if there were more latitude in the choice of compositions. Experimen tal evidence regarding the use of familiar or c?asI sical music for film backgrounds is scant, and what little there is is inconclusive (4, 9). I The purpose of the present study was to deter mine the effect upon film learning of using familiar compositions as background music as contrasted with unfamiliar music. Stated otherwise, this study was conducted to test the hypothesis thatfamiliar music distracts from the visual and verbal elements of the film. To accomplish this purpose, two exper imental versions of a factual film were shown two groups of subjects, and the subjects were tested over the information contained in the film.