The Use of Music Montages in Movies

A Short Scene Set to Music Without Dialogue Can Be Effective

The use of a music montage in feature length films has been employed with great frequency over the last thirty years. Usually such a sequence is okay. Sometimes it is gut wrenchingly awful and on rare instances it is fantastic.

There are a couple of criteria for making a music montage work. First, the song that is used must be a good one. Tired, overplayed songs will take the viewer to a different place, perhaps where they remember that song in their own life. The music video inside the film should advance the plot. At the end of it, we should be aware of something that we weren't aware of before the song started. Finally, it should fit the movie. I'm sick of seeing music montages in dramas.

The best music montage in a movie was in one of Nicholas Cage's first films, Valley Girl. Cage plays a dude from Hollywood and he woos a babe from the valley. Set to the timeless classic "I Melt With You" by Modern English, director Martha Coolidge takes us along on the dates between the punker and the hottie. We see them at various locales - eateries, concerts, etc - and they are having a good time. Great song (I actually here that song more often now on the radio than I did when it was first released) and we learn that the main characters are falling for each other, despite their differences. And whatever happened to the valley girl, Deborah Foreman?

Julia Roberts has made a lot of movies and there have been music videos in many of them. Let's look at three for examples of poor, acceptable and outstanding use of a video in a movie.