AN APPRAISAL OF THE USE OF MUSIC IN THE WEDDING PARTY MOVIE

CHAPTER ONE

1.0   INTRODUCTION

1.1   BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Music had long already made its appearance in the movie theatres; “a paid pianist was present to perform at the Lumiere brother’s first film screening in 1895” (Wierzbicki, 2009). This tradition continued through the early silent films (comedies or expressionist), which had live music played mainly through improvisation with the aid of cue sheets, at each showing of the film (ReelRunDown, 2016).

Music, when properly utilized can serve several purposes including establishing: Mood, emotion and atmosphere including a sense of expectation in the audience Place/Geographic location, Period/Time references, Style and connecting otherwise unrelated scenes, and also to create contradictions, Character (character themes and leitmotifs whose flourishing can be traced back to the time of Wagner’s “music dramas”), Alternating perception of time and space Music can even be used to put a judgment on certain movie scenes (Hoffmann, 2011) Film as a medium first arrived Nigeria in the late 19th century, in the form of peephole viewing of motion picture devices.

The Nollywood movies that have any decent film score are most often created by foreign composers and sound designers. Consequently, due to the ever increasing exchange rates, this phenomenon often racks up the costs of production, discouraging film producers, and thereby making mediocrity ubiquitous. This is not to say, however, that it is all doom and gloom in the industry, as some Nigerian movie producers today, go out their way to “get it right”, even though they are just unfortunately in the minority, which should not be the case in an industry as conspicuous as Nollywood. This study attempts to appraise the use of music in The Wedding Party movie. The Wedding Party was commercially released in December, 2016.

Even though the Nollywood industry is one of the biggest in the world in terms of revenue, it is still emerging in terms of the movie soundtrack and film score. Unlike the Hollywood, the art of creating music for films has not been sufficiently developed in Nollywood. The ability to perceive emotions in music is said to develop early in childhood, and improves significantly throughout development (Dowling, 2002). However, the ability to convey emotions through music in media such as film is a much more specialized concept. Davis observed that, Successful film scoring is not a matter of just writing good music; it is writing good music that supports a dramatic situation. That means finding the heart and soul of the film and expressing it in music. (Davis, 2009)

The Wedding Party is a Nigerian romantic comedy drama film, directed by Kemi Adetiba that tells the story of the shenanigans that go on during the planning of a Nigerian wedding in Nigeria. The movie was released in December, 2016 and went on to become the highest ever grossing Nollywood movie barely four months after. A coalition of stakeholders and creative minds worked on the production of this movie that it was no surprise how well the movie did in the Box Office. Dr. Bayo Adepetun and Michael “Truth” Ogunlade collaborated to produce the film score and fortunately the score was a quite copacetic feature of the film, and most likely the most career defining score for them. Even though some critics have described the movie as an extended music video, probably due to the fact that it is a star-studded production, and its extended use of pop songs, the writer believes that the use of pop songs was quite appropriate because that is what is obtainable in a typical Nigerian wedding party.Accordingly, the above background substantiates the need to investigate how music was used in The Wedding Party.

1.2   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The study on the appraisal of the use of music in the wedding party movie came as a result of producing a movie without purposeful film score accompanying the picture to effectively communicate the story and accurately convey the emotions of the scenes. Furthermore, film scoring, as exploited by the new crop of filmmakers, directors, producers, and composers has not yet come around to be appraised for its technical advancements and aesthetic improvement from the status quo. Finally, most of the research has been carried out appraisal of the use of music but not even a single research has been carried out on an appraisal of the use of music in the wedding party movie.