Children's Film: Music/Sound Analysis (Toy Story)

Music and sound is really important in a film as it helps the audience to understand what is happening, the mood, atmosphere and also represents the characters. Here we will be analyzing the music/sound used and how it shows the audience genre, narrative and character representation.

Genre: The music used in the opening sequence of Toy Story is orchestral and very dramatic as it shows a boy playing with his toys. This shows us that it's a fairly light-hearted film and gives us a feel of adventure. The toy that is first shown (Mr Potato-head) is meant to be the mean 'bad guy' in his game and so the music is very dark and evil sounding. When Woody (who is portrayed as the hero in his game) enters the scene the music changes to up beat optimistic music.  The music changes through out the scene depending on the events happening. This is to portray the feeling and mood of the scene and also has a comic element about it. It is funny because it is western music when the toys are in a boys room. Most importantly though we hear the extremely famous soundtrack "You've Got a Friend in Me" which is again quite upbeat and happy, which children would really enjoy.

Narrative: The whole scene is narrated by the boy playing with the toys. He does the voices of the characters, which reminds children of what they do.

Character representation: When Mr Potato-head is on screen there is dark evil music. This makes the audience think this character is bad. When Woody appears on screen there is happy, heroic music. This makes the audience think he is heroic. By doing this it gives the audience a very clear perception of what personality the characters are, it also adds suspense and drama to the scene.