reaping the cost of solitude

Tuesday, September 06, 2016

How Pinoy Teleseryes Are Underestimating The Power of Music


I must say one of my biggest frustrations in teleseryes, in primetime or otherwise, is the way they completely underestimate the power of music. The producers only think of music as "branding" - you could even make a case that it's a blatant attempt to brainwash its audience by repeatedly playing the same track over and over until such time whenever people hear the song it immediately registers in their preconditioned minds: "oh, it's TIMY time." Even the title of the series is the title of the song! It's the complete opposite of art. It's advertising.

Personally, I think its an insult to use music in such a sleazy way, and such a waste of the potential music could play in the overall quality of a TV series. In OTWOL for example, it pains me to hear "say you'll never gooooo" for the umpteenth time when a more effective song could have been easily selected for the scene. And I know the producers, including the actors themselves, could have easily suggested the perfect song for a specific scene... but it never happens.

That said, I have to bring up Forevermore. While it suffers the same problems with OTWOL with regards to its soundtrack, I have to commend it for particularly using music to great effect in one pivotal scene in its finale episode, using "Sana'y Muli" by Pepe Herrera:


Obviously it would be costly to acquire permission to use a song like "Sparks" by Coldplay in a scene where the hero longs for his love, but why import when we have home-grown talent? Indie music is particularly effective for rom-coms and the indie music scene in the Philippines is a gold mine! Assuming the artists aren't uptight about using their own songs on a primetime TV show (which by the way is a direct side effect of the way these teleseryes have been reducing music to mere commercial clips for the show), the music supervisor could easily pitch and tap songs from Pinoy artists like Johnoy Danao, Clara Benin, or Reese Lansangan among others to add several layers and vivid colors to a scene - and most importantly only play them ONCE. The possibilities are endless. Not only will they be improving the overall quality of the series, but it would also give deserving Pinoy musicians much needed exposure.

Let me end this post with a song from Johnoy Danao:


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