A Straightforward Essay on Straightforward Syncs (Volume 1 of ???): Begin the Begin
As I’m taking time to recharge and sketch out ideas for projects, I received a copy of David Byrne’s How Music Works as a Christmas gift. This came from one of my housemates thanks to me showing her “True Stories”, “Stop Making Sense”, “American Utopia”, and the video for “Once in a Lifetime” years ago. I’m still working my way through it but there was a quote that struck me as incredibly relevant to what I do.
Isn’t music the “content” that should be guiding all this stage business? Well, it seems the juxtaposition of music and image guides our minds and hearts so that, in the end, which came first doesn’t matter as much as one might think. A lighting or stage idea (using household fixtures - a floor lamp, for instance) is paired with a song (“This Must Be the Place”) and one automatically assumes there’s a connection. Paired with another lighting effect, the song might have seemed equally suited - but maybe more ominous or even threatening (though that might have worked, too). We sometimes think we discern cause and effect simply because things are taking place at the same moment in time, and this extends beyond the stage. We read into things, find emotional links between what we see and hear, and to me, these connections are no less true and honest for not being conceived and developed ahead of time.
How Music Works by David Byrne (2012, 2017), page 63
It sure does extend beyond the stage because, for the most part, finding and watching movie syncs is a home activity.
Looking through the history of the phenomenon, we turn to online forums. The granddaddy of them all (“Dark Side of the Moon” with The Wizard of Oz) stemmed from these newsgroups, albeit in smaller spaces vs something more centralized like Reddit. This in turn was discussed in print thanks to The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, IN. Reading through it, it’s suggested that you watch at home with friends. More came in 1997 with Andrew Wendland and his friends, inspired by the idea.
The thing I noticed about DSotM was that the album had one central theme and the songs flowed from one to the other, unlike most rock albums that have distinct breaks between songs. I then realized that several Pink Floyd albums exhibit the same characteristics of one central theme, songs flowing together, and elaborate artwork. I thought to myself, if they truly created the DSotM/TWoO Synchronization, then maybe they did it again. I went to visit my friend Jeff Stillman, who knows a lot about movies, to tell him my thoughts. I wanted to create a list of the biggest, most popular, or most important movies of all time. Our list was something like this: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, The Ten Commandments, and The Sound of Music. So, I went to video store and rented a bunch of movies. The main album I was targeting was Wish You Were Here (WYWH), the follow-up of DSotM.
Andrew Wendland, “Introduction” on The Pink Floyd Movie Synchronization Story
From there, Andrew and his friends (present company included) have spawned well over a hundred syncs for various artists in nearly thirty years since he started. The vast majority of these come with basic instructions (start the album at the beginning of the film and repeat) and are as straightforward as they come. Sometimes the start point will shift, either in the film or the album, but the rules are still the same. That is, unless you have a film with a different opening than what the instructions state.
If you’ve traversed the internet long enough, you’ve probably come across the logo community, an ultraniche group of people who document and discuss nearly every company logo ever made for film, television, and more. The highest form of recognition it’s ever received was through Rodney Ascher (Room 237, The Nightmare, A Glitch in the Matrix) in the 2010 Sundance short The S From Hell, an examination of a specific design from Screen Gems and the perceived terrors. It sounds ridiculous on the surface but if you go down the rabbit hole, you’ll find a subculture unlike anything you’ve seen.
I bring this up because there is a term that is used within that community that applies to these syncs: logo plastering. It’s when a company, in putting out another release of an older movie, updates the opening logos to match their present-day identity rather than what it was when the film was first released, “plastering” over the older material. Because a good number of syncs use older films, this practice does occur and can affect the start point of a sync. For a solution, there’s the Audiovisual Identity Database (formerly Closing Logos Group) and it’s the most comprehensive site I can find that takes out most of the guesswork of figuring out the start point.
So why all this prep work? It’s so that you get the best possible viewing experience. After all, you’d get annoyed if you go to a theater and the audio was out of sync. You could always take the modern route of rendering a file of the sync so that it’s perfect every single time which is great if you’re looking for convenience. For the traditional route, get the CD and the film and try your best to match. Either way, you also need the courage to try and step into the unknown.