KEY MEASURES:

MUSIC AND SOUNDS IN THE MOST IMPORTANT

TV STATIONS OF FOUR COUNTRIES
Composition, manipulation, hegemony of image-sound in the 2003 year-end
review "Globo Reporter - Year of war": An analysis.

Description

In the composition and sonorous manipulation of programs and reviews of

the largest TV stations in the whole world, collective memories and
neglects, chances and also pastiches or collages emerge in some cultures
with global and trans-cultural elements. However, to weave a tram of
musical intersections that involve the virtual images of the most
controversial contemporary events, it is necessary to have adequate
technical support and a vast pool of national and global musical archives.
Not all TV networks are equipped to edit soundtracks and to manipulate the
standardized and transnational images with musical narratives that transmit
from the background to the stage front in the diverse sensorial levels of the
screen media. In the majority of the broadcasting programs, these sound
memories are systemized and decoded by means of the concept of “key”
melody or measures, which encompasses sounds, melodies and
stereotypes.
Brazil, the potential leading power of Latin America, with one of the world’s
biggest TV stations and significant export quota, for its very high audience
share, has a hegemonic influence. Since 1973, between its varied
programming, the Globo network produces the "Globe Reporter", that is
today one of the most important programs of Brazilian journalism.
Originally, when Walter Clark was the general director of the Globo, in
1967, and with the collaboration of professional filmmakers, the first
documentaries were produced that would later transform into the weekly
newscast program "Globo Reporter". In an interview of 13.08.2001, Pablo
Gil Soares, Bahia’s filmmaker and former director of the "Globo Reporter",
revealed: "‘Globo Reporter’ had in its team people who had worked in
journalism, they had worked in film, some had published books, all had
been film library rats, all had an accented humanist formation, some had
passed through the center of popular culture of the National Students
Union, some had been victims of the politics persecution of the military
dictatorship, had been through the experience of political imprisonment,
and all of them believed strongly in Brazilian culture, therefore clearly there
was an ideology and they all work with that as well. "In terms of the
military dictatorship we had a strong and respected program, it was
necessary to try all possible ways to get around the censorship. And it was
in the interests of the ‘Globo’: when we gained results the Globo was happy.
Some were annoyed. But there was happiness - worried, but happy".
This cinematic tradition, the techniques of editing music/moving images,
the cross-sections and passages of audiovisual manipulation are still evident
in the "Globo Reporter". In the year-in-review edition of the December 26th
2003 broadcast that shows the beginning of the war in Iraq with the
heading "Year of war", this trend becomes excessively apparent. While we
observe the constructed structure permeated by "spontaneous" and proven
technical ability by the "Globe Reporter" team, we compare the program
with the broadcast of its Hong Kong-Chinese counterpart in the same month
of 2003 by the ATV network of Hong Kong where the absence of music
enhances the cruelty of the booms of the explosions of that military
aggression and causes astonishment. In the specific case of the "Globe
Reporter - Year of war", music acts in a new key, not only as an
independent narrative, but as a global part of a great network of colors,
sounds, words and feelings. In this program, the sounds and the melodies
can be perceived as protagonists of an epic narrative that recreates, in
virtual space, the fabulous and distant "A Thousand and One Arabian
Nights". In Baghdad in flames, the explosions are transformed into dark
timbres of bass or in the metaphorical slamming of doors, which symbolize
the uncompromising stance of Bush, mentor of a war equally holy in which
the illusion of converting the world becomes the height of sacredness.
Finally, the spectator sees music in the rhythm of the images and
imprudently averts his/her senses from perception of the facts. In a game
of split seconds, the viewer’s attention is at the mercy of a spectacle that
revives intimate audio and visual memories. The web spun between real
images and melodic selections goes from Mozart to the popular songs of
Arab and Indian motifs. A coherent narration construed in editing and
calculated assembly where there is no improvisation, but the agile sequence
of "portraits," the fruit of decisions taken in conformance with
standardizations and convention.
This television time, far from real time, encompasses a show of fragmented
and open narrative that reaches the interest of a huge audience ready to
enjoy the spectacle and in characteristic psychological predisposition. The
analysis and description of the psycho-formative structures of this
spectacle-program pass by the observation of the group of stimuli
proportionate to the form derived from the hybridization of rhythmic, sound,
and visual elements and of the diverse Tempi involved. In the "Globo
Reporter - Year of war", the images constantly (re)form dimensions
according to audio dynamics available in diverse rhythms and keys to form
a timeless ambience for the visual narrative. It has an intense polyrhythm
of interlinked visual and audio media that offers a field of observation and
transcultural auditory perception impossible to place in a clear hierarchy.
The audio reconstructs the visual narrative and takes an important piece of
the pie in the show being presented.
Any analysis that neglects the incisive manipulation of sound and the
resulting new, dynamic structure will fall short of making sense of this
complex ordeal. The key visual is thus completed by key measures; (Trans-
) cultural melodic references from specific musical traditions where "trans"
is also physio-psychological and global. In this year-end review, the only
moment where images are accompanied by diegetic sounds (emitted by the
same environment and the people depicted within) is the segment that
Gil/Annan duo plays. The current minister of culture of Brazil (Gilberto Gil)
plays followed by a troubled UN General Secretary (Kofi Annan) that
melancholically beats on the skins of the emblematic congas. This is a
symbolic meeting where efforts are made to ease the blow of the tragedy
occurring in Iraq. Music, in its universe of the unspeakable, is the
connection between hope and fear and eases the pain, while it seeps from
the images to the ears of the audience.

2
Are these synesthetic or anesthetic modulations? Here they work interface
(into eyes and ears)!
In the yearly review “Globo reporter - Year of war” it seems to be more an
anesthesia experiment with the audience, a new “poetic” way in which this
program shows, in a euphemistic way, the brutal aggression of a
contemporary war. The music and some sound effects create the perfect
soundscape to describe an epic narrative and the program Globo reporter
doesn’t show the true sound of the war. During the entire program, sound
effects or melodious citations always envelope the raw images of the
attacks and mitigate perception of explosions and correlative informations.
The images of the night of March 20th 2003, when Baghdad was the target
of violent attacks, become pictures of an aesthetic object, a film of short
conspired duration to reach the ample Brazilian audience share and to form
its opinion. By means of melodic references and fade effects between noises
and instrumental timbres, the program brightens up the raw ambience of
the war. They are ethnic, classic and popular musical citations that envelope
the visual representation of the intense attacks, mitigating the perception of
the explosions and its correlative information. Furthermore, after many
hours listening to the audio segments of this program, something incredible
emerges between sounds, music and text; in response to the anchorman’s
question: “Does Saddam Hussein have the prohibited weapons”? Another
male voice affirms, whispering between chords, “He does”!
Is this a subliminal message to mold opinion? Or an editing mistake? Is this
program a musical show that invokes auditory hallucinations, fruit of the
hybridization of other genres? Or is it an aesthetic object using spectacular
means to achieve the attention of the audience? Considerable audience
shares, by the way, that the Globo network maintains in these "noble" time
slots (primetime). In its Chinese counterpart broadcast in the same month
of the same year by ATV of Hong Kong, no musical accompaniment is
present. Only diegetic sounds accompany the images and the information is
transmitted without any “poetical” support. The narrative is the general
confusion in the Baghdad streets and the bombs; no one is saved by music.
Only in the headphones of the American soldiers the hardcore song plays
that gives them courage to go forward, to shoot at everything that moves.
According to McLuhan, however, television images have little in common
with the film or the photograph, the TV visually provides less informative
content, the film image presents many more millions of data per second,
and the spectator does not have to reduce them drastically to form an
impression. In the TV, the illusion of the third dimension is suggested by
the studio set; but its image, essentially, is a plain, bidimensional mosaic.
(McLuhan, 2003: 351-352) Nonetheless, the technological innovations that
have benefited the TV; the resources offered by "green screen", the virtual
sets, the plain screen and the digitalizing of images has redefined the
concept of the informative content of television. Digital sound, as well as
images, transformed into calculations of complex algorithms, allows not
only for more accurate synchronization of the medias, but also for more
"ideal" equalization, that is, an effective advance in the assembly and
editing of different medias. Not to mention the technique of compression
that reduces the size of visual archives (MPEG) and sounds (MP3),
compressing them into much smaller dimensions than the original. In this
manner, it becomes possible to make available and to transfer whole
episodes of television programs from the Internet to HD or to make a copy

3
on a CD or DVD, allowing for global exchange and improvements in
comparative studies between the diverse television networks in the entire
world. The observation of intersections between planes: primary,
intermediate and background, which determine the dynamic proliferation of
the involved media, becomes a fundamental instrument for the composition
and manipulation of TV programs where music establishes a differentiated
and transforming ambience. However, the observations referring to “key
measures" and melodic references found in the end-of-the-year news
highlights review program from the Globo television network, are intended
to determine the degree of impact of trans-cultural and multimedia
manipulations and are not based solely on aesthetic concepts.
The detailed description of the parts presented in the following pages is the
fruit of a stubborn process of watching and re-watching, listening and re-
listening accomplished by the repetition of all the clip sequences of cut and
their audio segments of audio coupled with the images of the program in its
diverse rhythms. The general public rarely listens to a program a second
time. Meanwhile, the visual/musical poetry/ comedy reaches each spectator
in a standardized way and, at the same time, in one (re )presentation sends
intense new messages that touch the collective subconscious. These events
cause reluctance or confused thoughts, satisfaction or indifference, but, as
the viewer watches "passively", the public fails to perceive the majority of
hints embedded in the broadcast. The elicitation of affective states is,
without a doubt, a crucial point that aims for the jugular of the audience.
Also, a question of time can be the only difference between perceiving and
acting.

The tyranny of music in screen media

Music is certainly insidious and reaches the body even when distant from
the source of its emission. For this reason, in some countries music is not
welcome in public places, centers of purchases and supermarkets or even
newscasts. It is, however, a fundamental means of accompanying moving
images, and, in the majority of the cases, when it is absent; one perceives
its merit and influence. In Brazil, music seems to have an even greater
value. Never avoided, on the contrary, proudly displayed everywhere, this
playful and "invisible" form of communication has deep roots that reach
from aboriginal rituals to the most diverse popular manifestations, passing
from the "theater of magazine" of the beginning of the last century to mega
shows of singers and famous bands of the present times and assumes
ontological character in the loudspeakers of the trio-elétricos and in the
automobiles endowed with powerful and sophisticated sound systems
sufficient to fill open spaces and entire plazas with high decibel levels.
Nonetheless, music is also used for various interests and does not always
form the fruit of Art. Since the time of ancient Greece, when Plato restricted
the use of certain musical forms in the education of the young, attention
has been called to the transforming force that musical narratives could
influence on listeners and practitioners. An example closer to our time is the
music of Richard Wagner. His concept of chromatic sequences involving
mythic invocations of primitive Germanic times awoke the god of ecstasy
and reached intoxicating degrees of crassness.

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Penetrating and insidious, music reaches deeply into human sentiment,
becoming companion and accomplice and at the same time influences the
vital fluids that flow in our bodies. By these means it is also used in
contemporary conflicts where, in the headphone of North American soldiers,
it serves as sustenance for bravery, aggression, and death. We are
witnessing an important medium, chosen for manipulating and convincing,
and often at the service of political and military power. Even in its most
“noble” vestiges, used in religious rituals, entertainment, or education, the
implications of dubious interests can equally corrupt the idea of music as
sensitive art. The harmful use of melodies and musical pieces in public
places, TV broadcasts, films and shows, street presentation, etc., can be
feeding only commercial and electoral interests, and in this sense,
continuously manipulates the opinions of passive receptors devoid of critical
spirit.
Thus, the analysis of what we here refer to as the “Key measures” research
project of the Multidisciplinary Program of Culture and Society of the
Federal University of Bahia in cooperation with the “Key visuals” project of
the International University of Bremen, is a fundamental part of the search
to codify and comprehend the world of images and virtual acoustics
transmitted by the major television broadcasters in four countries during
the past fifty years. However, beyond the disastrous effects, which the use
of music or sound bytes used in TV programs can cause, we are also
interested in studying and comparing the favorable effects of this
hybridization. The program, which we use as an example for analysis could
be characterized more precisely and incisively as a contemporary warlike
tragedy. It is precisely by way of melodic citations and the sentimental
vehicle of music that listeners can be prepared to bear the “true” tragic
burden of disastrous events. Certainly, the program “Globo Reporter – Year
of war” displays professionalism in the editing of audio and images that, at
first glance, can appear harmful, quickly assume a familiar character for a
reliable and sound sensitive audience. For these reasons, none of the
following analyses is yet conclusive or even less, exclusive; we are
interested in the modal diversity of the use of music with moving images.
Even the most spontaneous selection, production, and editing of a program
can be communicating and providing incentives for a new form of reception.
The anesthetic character I referred to in opposing concurrence with
synaesthesia perception can be preparing bodies of this expressive audience
share for a much more painful operation that will leave deep and painful
scars.
TV music is at the service of diverse and not always conscientious or
premeditated interests, but without a doubt intended to reach the greatest
number of people possible. The 2003 end-of-the-year review of ATV of Hong
Kong was presented stripped of any “poetical-musical” citation what so
ever, the deafening noise of explosions frightens viewers with the true face
of war. Nevertheless, this does not represent the only decisive factor in the
communication of broadcast events. If they had used music, what kind of
sounds and melodies would have been chosen by the editors of the ATV
program and what specific ideas from that culture would be narrated by the
musical selections of this portion of the retrospective? Or would it be more
sensate to think that in the future all television report war scenes will be
necessarily censured and deprived of musical elements or any other type of
sound manipulation? The show must go on! In societies where means of

5
production, technology, and virtual representation reign supreme, media
will continue to experiment with the amalgam of hybridization. This
Weltanschauung that prioritizes the virtual over reality will find in music a
traditionally prestigious ally that, in fact, accomplishes the greatest feats of
illusion and raises the show to heights of pleasurable ecstasy. In this era of
domain of technology in which, after all the historical phases of production
of sound and image, since the electronic revolution with the creation of
radio broadcasts in the 1920s, one perceives that the mark of a new era of
communication deeply affects the imagination and, what we imagine is not
always confirmed.
Are we being carried away by the non-existent? Could music be converted
into an instrument of persuasion and reaction? Or do we have in music an
ally for creative and active reflections of our participation in the virtual
world? It is known that, at the service of the most disparate interests,
music has done, in other times, great deeds. In a time where one
appreciated their living Gestalt in the most diverse forms of especially
narrative and shows were done in theatres and in concerts halls. In its
present wardrobe, digitalized and deprived of noises, recorded music boasts
a new profile, perfect and at times sterile, but vigorous. Still, the human
and physical element that is perceived in shakes, excitement, carelessness
and accentuations; the dynamic body of the instrumentalist reveals little in
digital archives. This characteristic, coldly calculated and overly arranged,
could provide music with the missing weapon that could turn it, close to
visual poetry, the most powerful medium of times to come.

Instruments for analysis

Numerous and contrasting are the means which are revealed in the
observation of the forms constructed in the composition of this television
show of clearly commercial-aesthetic concerns. The visual character of the
program is completed by an auditory collage of diverse rhythmic conception
and fragmented by various clips. By means of multidisciplinary
characteristic of the study in progress, the use of our instruments of
analysis can become confusing or, at least, a delicate matter, but whose
application proposes criteria of observation, audition and reflection useful
for the reconstruction of the message and the transcultural elements
adopted by the program. Certainly, the proceedings of this analysis are
directed towards an extremely recent discourse that is still being structured.
While criteria of conventional aesthetic analysis are used, this search also
contains original observations directly linked to the angle of an
intersectional perception of the images of the screen media. The
combinations and stereotypes derived from there are (re-) organized in
various sequences that allow codifying the program in a specific way.
However, I also reveal a panorama compromised by the totality of media
involved in the reconstruction of a spectacular object.

6
Some basic criteria

1. Program format
Genre;
Composing elements;
Sequences of image, text and sound;
Categories diversity ;
Tempi e polyrhythm;
Manipulation effects.

2. Systems and themes involved

Textual narrative;
 Visuals;
 Sound and musical;
Genres of narratives;
Virtual, epic, real;
Television space and time.

3. Reading of motifs
Transcription in sheet music;
Rhythm of clips;
Rhythm of text-image-sound;
Tonalities and modes;
Diegetic or extradiegetic;
Timbres and instrumentation;
Musical genres involved.

4. Proportion between media

Relation to text;
Musical functions;
General structure of clips;
Relation between planes;
Stimuli.

The segment of “Globo Reporter - Year of war” forms part of an end-of-the-

year review of 2003, which has a total duration of 1 h. 13 min. 42 sec. This
genre of journalism reports the main events during a year. Of this program
the Globo network dedicated 5 min. 58 sec. to the subject of the beginning
of the war in Iraq. The segment acquires the characteristics of a musical
spectacle which involves culture-specific musical genres. They are songs of
diverse ethnic groups, selections of classical music and rock, in addition to
sound effects that (re-) organize the moving images and add colors to the
voice of the anchorman. The “Year of war” is preceded by a panoramic
introduction accompanied by the title theme of the program. Sergio
Chapelin summarizes the issues to be broadcast that night. A segment
about national politics follows government programs, the president and his
ministers, occupations and political demonstrations and a second block of
sports topics and third with brief topics of varying genres. In turn, after 17

7
minutes of the program and some additional minutes for commercial breaks
the segment about the beginning of the war in Iraq begins.
Its counterpart, a Chinese year-in-review from ATV of Hong Kong is
presented in two distinct parts: 1) An international review of 21 min. 7 sec.;
2) A domestic or national review of 33 min. 24 sec. Of the international
review 1/3 is dedicated to the Iraq conflict. The program begins with an
introduction by a couple of young journalists and is accompanied by the
main musical theme of the review, immediately followed by images of the
war in Iraq. In the course of the program, images are shown of the Israel-
Palestine conflict; The SARS epidemic in China; The explosion of the
Columbia and the death of the crew; Black-out in New York; heat and death
in Europe and various fires; Earthquake in Japan; The election of Arnold
Schwarzenegger as governor of California. The program ends with a
summary of the images accompanied by the musical title theme. Besides
the war in Iraq, the same stories presented by ATV are equally found in the
Globo television year in review. In the format of the international review of
ATV, one detail sticks out: The musical accompaniment is present in some
segments, but completely absent in others as in the segment that shows
the war in Iraq. On the other hand, the domestic review of ATV
concentrates on issues of national politics. It is presented by two young
journalists who show reports about: SARS epidemic; Hong Kong elections;
Scenes of the city by night; Images of the Chinese astronaut returned to
earth; Rescue of victims of a bus accident and other issues of that country.
The music varies between rock themes, solo piano music, classical
orchestral music and current songs in the Chinese language, there are
interrupted sequences since some segments have no music whatsoever.
The images without music have to do with politicians; Police and people
protesting in the street; Scenes in hospitals and pharmacies; Precarious
conditions of hygiene. The domestic review also ended with a summary of
images of the issues broadcast and the main title theme.
In the review program of ATV one notes a greater technological quality in
music-images editing. The sound archives are chosen according to the
degree of digital compatibility with the images. There is a perceptible and
refined editing job that regulates levels between media for a technological
approximation free of errors and sliding. Nevertheless, this comparison with
the group of images that refer to the war in Iraq will not be done with music
as main parameter. The absence of music, and therefore, the silence broken
by the booms of bombs and explosions in the streets of Baghdad, contrasts
with the soundtrack proposed by “Globo Reporter” for the “Year of war” and
will be one of the criteria of evaluation. The following question emerges:
Ethical obligation or aesthetic necessity? Why does the ATV network exclude
music in certain passages or entire segments? Or, what are the reasons for
editing an all-encompassing sound track, what is the motive? What, in fact,
interests us, is if the musical accompaniment in “Globo Reporter – Year of
war” uses a manipulative or euphemistic power or if, in it is, in concept, a
mere aesthetic question of images of a distant conflict without great
national interest. In the latter case, music will be used once again with the
intention of attracting as much attention as possible and, above all, for
bringing in those that are without earshot but away from the television back
to the screen, where a show, a video clip or even an epic tale in music will
provoke surprise and curiosity and maintain very high national market
shares levels of audience share, an attractive and compensating sign for

8
shareholders and the network itself. Comparison, therefore, becomes a
fundamental nucleus of replacing mere speculation, especially when
comparing different styles of presentation between television programs of
the same genre.
I will attempt, in brief, to summarize the occurrence of different discourses,
randomly combined, but suggesting common links based on standards, and
collective sound and visual memories that approach us, as beings of the
same planet, with the dominating longing for fulfillment. Media and their
hybrid fusions open the gates of the indestructible walls that separate us.
In the words of Canclini: “Hybridization has a long trajectory in Latin
American cultures” (Canclini, 2003: 326). These intersections that form the
base of the creative project of the reconstruction of agile models of media
communication find in Art fertile ground and germinate in new aesthetic
objects, at times, with grotesque forms and original traits. But the
grotesque it seems is necessary.
With the speed in which we create television programs whose main concern
is attaining the largest audience share, stereotype models are produced
without rest, and in this very (re-) composition of standardized programs
the amalgams do not resist with a slow rhythm. Time pushes the tempo to
levels of maximum acceleration and there is no way to revise or refine
periodical broadcasts in the “artistic” sense of the word. These new forms of
show in TV assume absurd characteristics open to criticism and ridicule. In
sudden manners that arise from a subconscious and global “omniscience”,
and that carry traits of common sense, teams edit programs and utilize
music to describe clips of catastrophes and tragedies with a contradictory
rhetoric. This intuition that supports serious or burlesque decisions of deep
collective memories is not an infallible “instinctive truth” and programs
become recipients of strange objects of paradoxical content.
In a live broadcast from an auditorium, for example, the title theme from
“Gone with the wind” (1939) was chosen by an Italian network to describe,
in music, the catastrophic images of September 11. As in the example of
the April 1 edition of “Globo Reporter”, where images of the pain and
saudade of the ex-girlfriend of UN representative Sergio Viera de Mello,
because she is Argentine, were accompanied by a good tango. Music, in its
original context, completes its function just as, when taken out of context, it
becomes the epitome of grotesque. However, “The grotesque is, precisely,
the spontaneous sensibility of a way of life. It is something that continually
threats any representation (written or visual) or behavior marked by
excessive idealization. By ridiculousness or weirdness, it can bring down to
earth all that an idea that has carried too high” (Sodre e Paiva, 2002: 39).
In the next pages, I will make a sequential map of the “Globo Reporter –
Year of war” year-in review program.

Content structure of “Year of War”

9
 Introduction
Baghdad in flames, bombs,
explosions, nights of panic in a land
Text that was once a scenery of dreams.
i Virtual stage. Two screen show I.ii.
Img images of explosions. Alone
anchorman (Sergio Chapelin)
Title theme: chords and coir in D minor
/ G minor. Tempo: MM = 100.
Mus
Obstinate and regular rhythm.
Duration: 0:00: 09229
Section 1ª
Frightful images. They don‘t even seem
real. This year, we live through the first
Text great war of this century. Live, in living
colors. How did we come to this?
Five image clips show explosions
over Baghdad. An armored; Bush
A Img and Blair arrive to press conference.
I.1.
Fade effects in bomb explosions
transformed into bass notes D#, F#.
Mus
Duration: 0:00: 34345
Section 2ª
January, the world asks itself: Does
Saddam Hussein have the
Text prohibited weapons? The UN
inspectors scour Iraq. The war is
still diplomatic.
Fifteen image clips: UNO meeting
discussing war; Saddam smiling;
cars of UN and inspectors;
B Img
Weapons; Bush and Blair, Chirac
and Schröder; Soldiers and
weapons.
Mus
W. A. Mozart – Symphony in g minor
KV 183 - bars: 97-109
Epic tale atmosphere:
T.ii.
“Panic nights /canary of dreams”.
Virtual stage with ambience of arena
theatre. In green, blue and cinder
colors. On two screens images of the
report are anticipated.
Title theme of review “Globo
Reporter”: 4/4 Tempo; Figures in
M.ii. regulars sixteen notes; Agitated
tempo.
“Nor seems real”.
An allusion to the
T.1. phantasmagoric character of
the explosions over an
important city in the history of
The clip sequences are in rhythm of a
diminishing tempo the larger lasting
initial clip were nearly seven seconds,
the last one close to three seconds.
D# minor in a dark and sad
ambience. Melodic/textual
construction of epic tale.
M.1.
At the end of the anchorman
question: “Does Saddam
T.2. Hussein have the prohibited
weapons?” Somebody
whispers: “He does!”
Rapid sequences of images. The
moment that Saddam is shown
I.2. smiling someone whispers “He
does”
Duration: 0:00: 19385
10
 Section 3ª
The entire world pleads. In
every language, in all creed,
Text only one single request.
Nine images clips of crowds
C protesting in various countries of
Img
the world.
Only the cries of the crowd,
beginning with the word the
world. Regular and modern drum
Mus
beat.
Duration: 0:00: 15548
Section 4ª
George Bush, gives the
ultimatum. Saddam is not
Text
intimidated.
Two image clips in which George
Bush appears with his back turned
Img after the announcement , soon after,
D Saddam Hussein raising a sword.
Sound of a slamming door plus
Sound effects that sound like heavy
Mus steps and slamming door again.
Duration: 0:00: 6543
Section 5ª
March 20th, daybreak in Iraq, the
deadline runs out. The world turns to
Text Baghdad – counts the minutes, hold
its breath. A showdown is set... With
the announcement of war.
Six clips shown war plane, the streets of
Baghdad at night, once again air planes
Img followed by streets at night, missiles are
launched from the aircraft barrier and the
E first explosion over Baghdad.
Mus
Modal accompaniment in chords without tonal resolution and that intensify the
atmosphere of suspense of the imminent attacks.
The world represented from diverse
demonstrations in various countries.
T.3.
The crow cries “Shame!”
Diverse cultures represented in these
images: Protests in Europe, USA and in
I.3. Arab countries; A woman lifts up a sign
“No war”. The last clip shows various
terrorists marching masked and
protesting.
A world music sound ambience,
a modern drum beat that
M.3. accompanies the popular
protests.
The duel personages are
characterized with
T.4.
emblematic actions.
Bush gives the Ultimatum Saddam
boasts a sword. Images that recall the
I.4.
epic crusaders.
The sound of slamming doors
M.4. creates a framework of
nervousness and defiance.
In a melancholic voice echoes
this melody of Arabic traits.
T.5.
Repetitive suspense images that
alternate symbols of bellicose
I.5. power of the USA with the
ambience of peaceful night in the
streets of Baghdad.
Duration: 0:00: 28130
11
 Section 6ª
In Washington, cameras show
Text Bush combing his hair before T.6.
the official announcement:
Four image clips: Bush being
brushed; An explosion: Bush
Img making a statement. .
F I.6.
Fade effects on sound of bombs
that became bass note D/Eb/F.
Mus
Duration: 0:00: 10698
Section 7ª
“We will accept no
outcome but victory”.
Text
Three image clips: 1) a missile being
launched from an aircraft carrier; 2)
I.7.
Img Bush giving statement; 3) A bomb
G exploding over Baghdad.
No melodic selection, only the
sound of a slamming door, followed
by Bush’s voice and another door
Mus slamming.
Duration: 0:00: 10181
Section 8ª
Explicit war, as we have never seen it.
The Operation Shock & Awe was the
most devastating attack of the war.
Text
The coalition promises surgical
precision, tries to save civilians. But
war is war. Not even modern weapons
can guarantee a painless operation.
Nine image clips that show explosions
H over Baghdad in flames; Ruins after
Img the attacks; Woman and children
seriously injured.
Mus
Tonality: D minor; Strings timbres; Tempo moderato.
Duration: 0:00: 29570
A lady brushes the president of
USA before his announcement.
Worry about Bush visual
aspects.
Altering images of the White House
and the bombs on Baghdad. The
sound of bombs is transformed by
fade effects.
Technique used to diminishing
M.6.
the impact of explosions and
to frame the sound ambience.
Official announce in
T.7. a sad character.
The missile and the explosion
receive the emblematic noise of
a door slamming violently.
Once again the symbol of
M.7. defiance accentuated by the
effect of slamming doors, while
images show explosions.
Considerations on the
surgical attacks that
T.8. injured civilians killing
women and children.
Baghdad is hit hard. Images and
text combined with music
I.8. emphasizes ambience of sadness
an pain.
12
 Section 9ª
The troops advance. The desert is hostile.
Saddam’s soldiers offer little resistance.
American soldiers are captured. In the The text narrates a
Text middle of war of images, the US rescues its sequence of images in the
T.9.
same rhythm of the image
prisoners. Jessica Lynch is the first one.
clips.

Thirteen images clips in which tanks North Americans soldiers hugely armed
and North American soldiers advance; and well equipped. Iraqi soldiers held
I Img Iraqi prisoners and perplexed
I.9. prisoner and without uniforms. Green
images of infrared rays for night raids.
Americans and in the last one Jessica
Lynch on a cot.

Mus
Once again the tonality of D minor. This time in a rapid tempo and figures in sixteenth notes.
Duration: 0:00: 23887

Section 10ª

The approximation between the defeated and The anchorman begins

the victors is not easy. American soldiers kneel to speak at the forth
T.10. tempo of the first bar.
Text down, promise to respect mosques, exchange
Suspense and rhythm
gesture of sympathy and helps to destroy the
statue of the dictator. Fragile victory.

Eleven image clips that show soldiers The clips are presented in a
kneeling and exchanging gesture of regular rhythm with the voice
Img sympathy and demolishing the I.10. and the images are of retreat
J monument of Saddam Hussein. and tolerance.

Mus
Phrygian mode of Db major, a sensual modality applied to the images of North
American soldiers kneeling before mosques. Duration: 0:00: 28961

Section 11ª

The fight against terror transforms Between words of the text

itself in an endless war. Sabotages, many confuses effects and the
assaults, enemy without faces, sound of a short musical scale.
Text T.11.
attack improbable targets.
Explosion beneath window of the
UN delegate in Iraq.

Terror takes over in the streets of

Nine image clips show suicide
bombings in the streets of Baghdad
Img
K and the attack on the UN office where
Sergio Vieira de Melo dies.
Baghdad. A young woman,
I.11. colleague and companion of Sergio
Vieira de Melo appears trying to
talk with her companion in agony.

Confusing effects at times, perhaps, diegetic sounds. A musical scale is

quickly played by a string instrument like a cello.
Mus
Duration: 0:00: 29326

13
 Section 12ª

Sergio Vieira de Mello dies. The The Brazilian UN

world is puzzled and pays homage delegate in Baghdad is
Text T.12. victim of one assault and
to the Brazilian with the honors of a
dies.
hero.

The symbol of the UN flag smudged

Five image clips in which the UN flag is out from the bombing. The smile of
surrounded by smoke, Sergio Vieira de I.12. the recently deceased. Mourning at
Img Melo is smiling, then the funeral and the UN headquarters in New York.
L mourning that impacts the UN.

A serious and painful

tonality of G minor
marks the ambience of
the tragedy. Timbres
Mus
of strings and a solo
from a nostalgic Arab
melody.
Duration: 0:00: 14481

Section 13ª

The pain is translated into a message of The pain is expressed

Text peace. T.13. in the Gil e Hannan
emblematic meeting.

Seven image clips. UN headquarters;

Hannan seated at the congas and Gil The images transmit sadness
and longing. The action
Img standing playing guitar. The crowd I.13.
M reinforces feelings of
applauds, Gil shows smiles and desolation.
satisfaction.

Koffi Annan and Gilberto Gil play

together. Music and diegetic sounds. A Only segment where
one hears the real
and G Major used for modal M.13 sounds and ambience
Mus improvisation, in the background a . of the events.
Brazilian rhythmic standard.

Duration: 0:00: 16120

Section 14ª

But terror offers no truce and reaches The anchorman follows the
the Red Cross, in Baghdad; attacks T.14. clips rhythm and gives
the Carabinieri, leaving Italy in rhetorical accentuations.
Text
mourning and doesn't spare the
Spanish soldiers.

Seven image clips. Fires in the streets Images of destruction from

Img of Baghdad; a young lady cries; I.14. the terrorist attacks; A
Ambulances; Burials in Italy and populace perplexed; the
N Spain. cries of a young woman.

Mus
B minor in a melancholy atmosphere and repetitive rhythmic waves.
Duration: 0:00: 18178
14
 Section 15ª

The world ask itself: Who are the The narrative alludes
winners? Exhausted troops. Iraqis to the fatigue of a war
Text T.15. without victors.
denounce the lack of government.

Seven image clips which are: A The placid face of a young woman
blackout; A young woman; A young I.15. and exhaustion stamped on the face
Img North American soldier; People of a young North American soldier.
protesting.
O

Mus

Timbre of strings in C minor in an ambience full of lamentation. At the end of this

section, voices of people protesting. Duration: 0:00: 17783

Section 16ª

Saddam’s weapons are not found. The

war motives are questioned. Tony Blair, The forbidden weapons,
Text and George Bush lose popularity. motive for the invasion
T.16. are not found. Blair e
Bush turns to a critics
aim.

Seven image clips showing North Images of weapons inspections.

American soldiers searching homes. Images of the streets of London
P Img Tony Blair in London and Bush with a
I.16. and a doll of Blair with a long
nose. Bush carries a platter with
turkey among the soldiers.
a Christmas turkey.

Sound effects over a rhythmic sequence of On the electric bass, a

electric bass Ab / Bb / Eb. At the end, the simple motif with
M.16 repetitive rhythm
sound of a slamming door.
Mus . accompanied by images.
Duration: 0:00: 13281

Section 17ª

But the unexpected happens: The great and dictator ruined

Saddam Hussein is found alive, T.17. and hill is examined by a
Text hidden in a hole. He turns himself North-American soldier.
in, without resistance.

Four image clips of the fugitive Saddam Hussein, long hair and
Img I.17. beard, tired and humiliated.
dictator found in a hole.
Q

Two melodic selections characterize

the desolation of the ex-dictator.
Mus
Duration: 0:00: 11781

15
 Section 18ª

A new chapter of the war begins. End words that allude to

T.17. doubts and questions.
What will happen in Iraq now? What
Text
will the world do with the captured
dictator?

Five image clips in which North

American soldiers pose for a picture
Saddam Hussein, long hair and
and commemorate the invasion; a boy I.17.
Img beard, tired and humiliated.
sitting on the ruins; A picture of the
R beardless and desolate face of
Saddam Hussein.

The same melody as the first

section, dark and deep timbres from
Mus the electric bass.
Duration: 0:00: 21347

Some particulars

“Globo Reporter – Year of War” ATV China Year in Review

December 26, 2003. December 3, 2003.

Introduction-123 image clips Intro-68 clipes-Intro-39 clipes-intro-25 clipes

Virtual set
Only one anchorman
Music and sound effects over explosions
Minor tone very common
Only one set of diegetic sounds
Decoration effects (doors slamming)
Classical, rock and ethnic music
Timbre of strings very constant
Phrygian mode for the retreat of US soldiers
Oriental and occidental melodies
Virtual set
A couple of young journalists
No music, not even in the introduction
Explosions are full-impact
No sound effect over explosions
Constantly diegetic sounds
Closed caption
Dates of events slide off screen
Silence highlights the rhythm of images
The couple of journalists says goodbye

In the year end review of ATV network of Hong Kong, entire blocks of
reports, in the international as much as in blocks denominated as domestic
or national, are absent of musical accompaniment. Nonetheless, the pause
in music is a fundamental rhythmic element. In the composition of the ATV
program, the long pauses between blocks function with a pre-established
sense of rhythm. A choice that could have ethical or aesthetic motives, but
highlights the difference between the physio-psychological ensnarement of
basic emotional reactions to the innumerable external and internal Stimuli.
In this case, television language imposes itself as a media in constant
reorganization of its circle of references. The relation with the emotional
response of the audience is concentrated in the rhythmic tempo of the
program.

16
The assumption that conventional film, TV and video are systems that reject
silence where, consequently, a void in the sound track is equivalent to a
defect (Armes, 1999: 190.) is commonplace when one thinks of the space
that moving images occupy in the intersection with other media. This is
based on the idea that visual hegemony fills the better part of available
space in screen media. This affirmation does not address fundamental
questions involving rhythm, poly-rhythm and content rearrangements of the
audiovisual composition. Manipulation of the extradiegetic elements (voice
and sound) reaches the sense of hearing and provokes innumerous Stimuli
that complete the experience of seeing, or better said, they not only
complete this experience but (re-) organize it by the rhythm-rhetoric
molded into the editing of the soundtrack. The voice attaches a rhetorical
character that is already, per se, an energetic manipulation of the sound
space. Imagine a narration of a natural catastrophe, the death of a pope or
a sporting event. Each narrator attaches a psychophysical to the program
and does so modifying the tone of his voice, but even more so by altering
the rhythmic factor of his speech. Rhythmic restructuring becomes more
complicated in the insertion of music or sound effects that, together with
sequences of image clips expands the cycle of spatial ambience of television
to a minimum of four distinct dimensions: 1) Screen images; 2) Diegetic
space; 3) extradiegetic space; 4) Receptive space. The intersections of the
media involved appear particularly by rhythmic combinations that mold and
manipulate, in fact, the content of information. There is no hierarchy here,
nor is it the most important issue, that is defined by the hegemony of any
one of the media. A pause, a “hole” in the soundtrack, it is a rhythmic
element that emphasizes the sequences of images where the visual acts on
its own accord. The rhythm of clips of these “silent” moments is also a way
of transmitting images.

Rhythm
Voice Timbre
Narrative
Meaning
Diegetic
Rhythm
Music + Sounds Rhetoric
Timbre
Gestalt Rhythm
In front of the
screen
Rhythm of clips Away from the
Content and narrative screen
Sequences Attention
Tempi images/ sound / Stimuli
voice Reception Perception
Manipulation Interpretation
Impact and stimuli
Screen images Reactions
Sentiments
Reflections
Rhythm Passivity
Voice Rhetoric Activity
Timbre Actions
Narrative
Extradiegetic Meaning

Rhythm
Music + Sounds Rhetoric
Timbre
Gestalt

17
Thus, the review of ATV uses the insertion of musical pauses much longer
than the “Globo Reporter” and this appears to be a specific musical element
of that culture. Similarly, the almost uninterrupted sound sequences of the
“Year of War” review can be seen as a musical characteristic inherent to
Brazil. We are witnessing a world of rhythmic decisions interlinked with the
conception and collective memories of each nucleus of producers of each of
these television programs. The result is not the mere manipulation of the
narrative, but an intimate approximation with the perception of the socio-
cultural subject, or better said, the fourth dimension that completes this
cycle: Reception.

All element-processes are rhythmic. In an important

sense, the study of rhythm is thus the study of all musical
elements, the action of those elements producing the
effects of pace, pattern, and grouping which constitute
rhythm. (Berry, 1987: 301)

Musical or Visual Hegemony?

The study of key images in the major broadcast networks of four countries
assumes that the codification of these images provides for comparison of
historical, socioeconomic, intercultural, and inter-media elements. With
this, the impositions and prevention of a visual hegemony can be examined
(Ludes, 2005). The intersection of media shows sound, music, and its key
measures to be a revealing element that shifts the importance of image
identity to the sequence of image-sound-voice where rhythm (re-)
establishes an interpretive order. Manipulation is an important element in
this process, but the editing of diverse musical, transcultural and global
rhythm patterns modifies intensely the synesthetic proportion of the
produced Stimuli. Here, music is the fruit of hybridization with voice and
images, and, by having the character of a collage of different styles and
genres extends towards a new aptitude of narration. The musical narrative
is transformed in a sequence of parts that construct themselves and unite
transcultural elements with facility impossible to imagine in relation to the
language spoken. The musical space that is created is global and reaches a
very different audience without making them feel alienated. This new
musical discourse thus differs from the spoken voice that, in sequences of
chronological sense and clarifications, even with rhetorical emphasis and
subliminal accentuation to mold opinions, is developed and narrated in a
single language. The new musical key allows transcultural access to
collective memories and reverts into a multimedia vehicle that dispenses
translations; it is as if the facts were narrated in various languages that at
the same time need not be distinguished. Nevertheless, this rhythmic and
vibrant body of music excludes an understanding and is formed with
superiority when cut and paste outside of its original context. The still
image of Saddam Hussein’s face captured at the end of the “Year of war”
report, for example, is resketched by a song with Arab traits that spectators
from all over the world could absorb without having to translate it to their
particular aesthetic musical standards. The Portuguese language of the

18
anchorman, however, is not accessible to everyone and forms a particular
element of the news report.
It does actually seems that a hegemonic game unfolds between the
principle media involved in TV programs, after realizing, the visual rhythmic
movement of sounds. And in the middle of the diverse clip sequences,
(images receive more clipping than music) one can still argue that the
rhythmic segments of the measures and their meter can be subdivided into
many other significant and fundamental parts for the codification of images.
By being in movement, the images equally carry the elements of an
interrupted meter at each clip. Thus, as in the editing of music taken from
different contexts and genres, the images don’t follow a “logical” sequence.
The sequential displacement of clips finds in music the ideal media for
representing the unspeakable and redesigns parts that were omitted in the
progression between clips. The structural analysis of a screen
representation tends to divide these media in the sense that they are
reorganized and characterized in search of a possible hierarchy. However,
just as dance and music are linked since the primordial and rarely are
separated, the images of screen media find in musical accompaniment not
only an ideal companion, but an explicit configuration for manipulation and
abstractions. The synesthetic perception of the color of sound (timbre) with
the color imagined and seen by the viewer whether musically educated or
not, is a sensation that completes the experience.
Generally musical symbolism has meanings that point toward concrete
objects, allegories and emotions. At the same time, a characteristic of
musical symbols is that they don’t function in a logical order from one to the
next, for example: idea, relation and end, but demonstrate a successive
flow where certain symbolic types dissolve in others. (Boccia, 2000: 313) In
the search to make sense of this continual dissolution in music, numerous
theorists, philosophers, mathematicians and musicians, among others,
wrapped themselves around rhetoric of music and emotions. Theorists like:
Joachim Burmeister (1606), Johannes Lippius (1612), Joachim Thuringus
(1624) reflected and produced important works. Athanasius Kircher (1624),
the most prominent researcher of the Affektenlehre in his gigantic work,
Musurgia universalis (1650), attempted an independent and systematical
application of this theory. A very special position in relation to the above
mentioned is taken by the philosopher Baruch Espinoza (Ethik, 1677, III
and IV).
Nonetheless, what occurs with contemporary media is, in most cases, not
directly related to musical discourse in the sense of an independent
narrative. Even for images in motion of screen media one cannot talk of
“dramaturgy” in the classical sense of the term. For a good part of the
programs that make use of musical accompaniment, a new form of
grouping and (re-) assignment of aesthetic values appear in fragmented
and reorganized pieces. We need rapid and concrete decisions for a possible
“poetry” of images and sounds where both media function technologically
pari passu with aesthetic pretensions born from globalizing standardizations
and desires. Accomplices in the most screaming examples of manipulation
and in the discourse of persuasion at the service of the largest networks in
the world and capitalist politics, the hegemonic power of images and key
measures are unified by one common objective: Domination.

19
Conclusions

At the speed in which global information is processed, there is no time for

translations. The key visuals summarize various events and music fills the
voids of the unspoken. A gigantic reservoir of stereotypes and
standardizations of images, measures and key melodies of multimedia
communication have formed during the past fifty years. What is the content
of these messages and how is it presented in the major TV networks of
Brazil, USA, Germany and China? Are the same images (re-) shown in news
and end-of-the-year reviews? Is the music used to complete the
construction of these new forms of spectacle?
The contemporary society finds in these media an instrument of unification.
Besides the similarities, each network organizes and composes broadcasts
in a different way. The case of “Globo Reporter – Year of war” from
December 26, 2003, an end-of-the-year review, because of the way it
utilizes music in the segment that deals with the beginning of the war in
Iraq, differs from the other reviews. The structural analysis of “Year of war”
doesn’t follow conventional criteria, but looks to find the motives behind this
hybridization that results in an aesthetic object and the clear intention to
elicit affective states of the large audience shares that the Globo network of
Brazil still enjoys during “noble” viewing hours (primetime). Even though
Germany and the USA, due to the growth of the internet, television
audience have fallen to levels that reach a maximum of 20% for each
network in those countries. In Brazil and China the hegemony of the major
TV networks is still an important factor that boasts a diversity of
representations. In the comparison between “Globo Reporter – Year of war”
and its Chinese counterpart from ATV of Hong Kong, music or the lack of
music becomes the great differential in the construction of the two
programs. Even though ATV uses music during the whole review, in some
segments of the same program it is completely omitted. In this case the
predominance of diegetic sounds and the musical pause that follows become
an equally important rhythmic factor in the elicitation of affective states.
This is a clear contrast with the Globo network review that, on the contrary,
fills all possible spaces with music and sound effects, leaving very little
room for the diegetic space of the reported facts. Finally, the idea of a
hegemony of moving images and music results in the concept of total
unification at the service of the large networks and political interests of
global domination. To construct technologically dominant and unified media
reasons that: The power of differences results first in hybridizations, but
later, in the agile fusion of visual and musical elements of a new advanced
technology where images, music and sound effects will be derived from
large and replete reservoirs available at networks and on the World Wide
Web.

20
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