Why isn’t that music in the movie??

There are a lot of reasons the trailer music 95% of the time isn’t music that is from the movie. It’s really the exception to the rule when the movie’s score is used in the trailer, but lots of times when it is from the movie you usually notice the trailer has a unique sort of impact.

The reason plain and simple is that most trailers start editing before music scoring has even started. Music and sound effects are things that are usually done last when making films because if the film edit changes then the timing will get thrown off and need to be adjusted and that’s really annoying. So where do trailer editors go for their music? Just about anywhere they can find it really, details are sorted out later.

Basically the type of music used in trailers will either be: the actual film score, film soundtracks, pop music CDs or trailer music libraries.

Some examples of trailers that use music from the actual film score are Gladiator, Batman Begins (this music also used in the teaser for V for Vendetta), The Thin Red Line and Paprika. In the case of foreign films it’s very common for it to use the film’s own score because usually those trailers don’t get as much attention from the studio distributing it so they don’t want to spend a lot of money on the trailer.

There are also a lot of movies which have a selected soundtrack in them that then get used for the trailer. Movies like: The Departed, Daredevil, and The Virgin Suicides. The advantage in these situations is that the music is already uniquely suited for the movie, though the music good for the film isn’t always best for its trailer. Then of course you have movies where the musical score is already well established so it’s a no brainer that it’s going to be used in the trailer. Music like for Mission Impossible, Star Wars, Harry Potter or Indiana Jones.

These are usually the exception to the rule, most trailers use film scores or popular songs from other movies or artists. Sometimes certain songs get very popular for a while so you feel like you hear it everywhere. Usually though a trailer company will be conscious of how much a song has been used and decide to go with something else.

Every now and then you get a situation like the music used in the trailers of Romeo Must Die (the first to use this piece of music), The Patriot, Quills, The Musketeer (the song is “Escape” from the soundtrack for Plunkett and Macleane).

You used the same trailer music as me. That... was a mistake.

Or the music for the trailers of Being John Malkovich, Matchstick Men and Wall-E (the song is “Central Services” from the soundtrack of Brazil). This is used in lots of other trailers too, but these are the ones I knew about off the top of my head.

Okay one more, the music in the trailers of Dragonheart, Dungeons & Dragons, Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow and The Time Machine (the song is “Kasuf Escapes” from the sountrack for Stargate).

There’s a lot of music that gets used over and over again in trailers. Sometimes one song is just very popular at the time so it keeps coming up. One song I remember is “Rock Star (Jason Nevins Remix Edit) by N.E.R.D. which was used (in this order) Shanghai Knights, Taxi, Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

So, next up is Trailer music libraries! So when you can use all these great film scores and songs why would you do this? Well, usually the reason is cost because buying the rights to use songs from movies and/or artists can be prohibitively expensive. Actually, there’s even one movie producer that prohibits the use of music from his movies to be used in trailers of movies he didn’t produce. Also trailer music is made just for trailers and TV spots so they have a unique quality that makes them easy to edit with because usually they have very specific sounds, tempos and variety needed.

So what are these music companies? Some very popular ones are Immediate Music, X-Ray Dog and Pfeifer Broz. Immediate Music is unique because they got an actual orchestra and chorus to record basically a ton of cues that sound like Carmina Burana “O Fortuna” inspired music. You know the music when you hear it. Some examples of this music was used in the trailers for The Island, Spider-Man 2, Ladder 49, Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End, If I remember correctly Immediate Music actually has a rule where if you use one of those choral pieces of music in a trailer, other companies can’t use it for a set amount of time. I guess so the trailers aren’t saturated with one song.

Immediate Music is also the one who wrote the cue “redrum” that was so popular they made “sequel” versions of it. A small sample of trailers that used this cue include: Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within, Ghost in the Shell 2, Legend of Zu, Minority Report, The Mummy Returns, Count of Monte Cristo, and The Ring. The Count of Monte Cristo you should ESPECIALLY watch for the completely ridiculous “Count on Revenge” trailer copy. Bascially, Redrum was a fallback music cue that is kind of the sign of a trailer editor phoning it in or maybe they didn’t have the budget for better music.

X-Ray Dog has a lot of music out there, but one that’s been used quite a lot was one first used for the Lord of the Rings. After that it was used in Terminator 3 and The War of the Worlds.

One CD that the trailer industry used to death was “Unearthed” by the independent music group “E.S. Posthumus.” One of the first times you heard their music was probably in the trailer for the remake of Planet of the Apes. That cue “Tikal” was also used in trailers for The Recruit, XXX, Tomb Raider and the teaser for Minority Report. I think what made a bigger impact might’ve been the trailer for the first Spider-Man which used the cue “Pompeii.” There’s a less flashy song of theirs which I call the “affair” music because two of the movie trailers it’s used in are about someone having an affair. That cue “Nara” was used in Unfaithful, Antwone Fisher, The Clearing, and Vanity Fair.

The last category is music which has been written to sound like something else. What do I mean by that? Well, sometimes a song will be used to edit a trailer, but then it’ll turn out that the rights to the song either cannot be bought or they’re too expensive. One song I hear alternate versions of is the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. The most recent one that sounds like an alternate version I saw in this TV spot for Australia, and also a version is in the trailer for The Legend of Zorro.

So that’s all you need to know about trailer music. That’s why you might be continually disappointed that the music from the trailer has absolutely nothing to do with the music that’s in the actual film. One bit of crossover that happened though is the “Mr. Blue Sky” song by Electric Light Orchestra that was used in the trailers for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” was a bonus track on the film’s soundtrack even though it wasn’t in the film.

If you’re ever curious about what music is used in a trailer Soundtrack.net is an indispensable resource which does just that. This is where I double checked my information, but I already have some mix CDs I had made based off of overused trailer music. Unfortunately it seems like their database eliminates old movies so some movie trailers I know they used to have listed aren’t anymore.