Complaining: Wasted Song

Previous thread on this issue.

This page appears to be nothing more than Complaining About Songs You Like Not Getting Enough Screentime. The easy way out would be to simply make it YMMV, but I think a better idea would be to redefine it. To quote my post from the previous thread:

The name is also quite negative, so we should do something about that, too.

edited 13th Apr '13 11:22:56 PM by MyTimingIsOff

More like Gushing About Songs That Weren't Used.

This has 300 wicks and inbounds, for the record.

I could possibly support renaming and rewriting the description if someone could offer a draft of a newer, better description.

edited 14th Apr '13 2:21:18 PM by Catbert

On the previous thread, I suggested the name Long Song, Short Scene.

It also seems to have some wrong examples, at least one is complaining because the song was a b-side track.

This is purely complaining. I propose we simply cut it and purge the wicks. The alternative, listing every song that gets edited down for time, is People Sit On Chairs.

If were aloud a trope for animation errors, then this one's justified.

edited 14th Apr '13 6:30:57 PM by shoboni

Animation errors are a technical issue. Using only part of a full song or score? Personal taste. Unless the music abruptly cuts off or something - but that would be a different article.

They're still common enough to be People Sit In Chairs if you want to be literal, finding something without a few errors is the exception, not the rule.

And this isn't the song being short, it's when a full song was actually written but never fully used.

edited 14th Apr '13 6:32:01 PM by shoboni

So? That would be reason to delete that article as well, not keep both because of the preexistence of the other.

All I'm saying is we can't get in the habbit of fixing everything by deleting it, and is a valid trope from what I can see, it's just needs cleaned.

It's not really all that different from Scenery Porn. That's essentially about putting more effort into backgrounds than what's necessary. This is putting more efforts into songs than necessary. I don't really think the personal taste about whether or not it's a good song actually matters. What does is that they really didn't have to write a five minute song if they were only going to use twenty seconds of it.

Something being very common is completely irrelevant to it being People Sit On Chairs. The Protagonist is not People Sit On Chairs, and it's almost completely omnipresent.

Editing down a song for a shot does not convey any particular meaning, however, which is why this is People Sit On Chairs. Full songs are rarely played during movies or shows. Sometimes if the full song were to be played it would clash with what is happening on screen and/or mess with pacing. It is not a trope, it is basic editing procedure.

So why write it that long in the first place? It's a wasted effort.

Part of the process. Someone somewhere (a director or producer) decided a song would fit in a specific part of a movie or show but ultimately it is decided only to use part of it. It sometimes happens that a song is written specifically for a movie and is not used at all. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, for example.

Regardless, wasted effort or not, it is not a trope.

It's just as much of a trope as the aformented Scenery Porn, we just needs to narrow it down to when a full song was made by not used(happened infamously in Highlander, they needed a short song for a racing scene and the music guy wrote and recorded and pretty awesome full song, lyrics and all just for a under 30sec sample.)

Scenery Porn shows off something. This "trope" is the absence of something. Not the same thing at all, and as I stated before almost all songs are edited down for the movie/show they are in. Not every show/movie that has scenery has luxurious scenery shots.

edited 14th Apr '13 8:09:40 PM by EditorPallMall

And so is Dummied Out and Orphaned Reference.

No, actually. An Orphaned Reference talks about something removed from the final work. The cut content is not a trope, but the parts that talk about it are. Dummied Out content is essentially an easter egg of code left in the game, so it is not the absence of something either.

A song cut down for a film/show? That simply refers to what is cut, not what is used.

Honestly, an article for songs fully contained in a movie/show would make for a better trope.

This isn't about cut songs, it's about when a whole song is written and they use samples of it.

And that would be Repurposed Pop Song at best, not tropable at worst. In movies full length songs are common, so it might be the People Sit In Chairs trope here.

Now full songs in works that otherwise don't have long songs might be a thing(Fi M for example, Smile Smile Smile is almost 4min, while the songs are normally under 2min, or barely over that)

edited 14th Apr '13 8:37:27 PM by shoboni

Let me go over my points one by one:

• Movies/shows hardly ever use a full song, excluding ending credits. This is because what is on the screen does not necessarily reflect in the full song.
• Using part of a song, in of itself, has no particular meaning.
  • A trope like Scenery Porn does at least express setting.
• This trope mostly exists for the purpose of complaining. "This song was cut down for this scene, how dare they, someone worked hard on it and it is awesome." Sure we could fix it but then we'd have to include every song that gets shortened to fit in a movie, which is most songs.
• This is purely about the cut content, meaning it is purely the absence of a thing, not a thing in of itself. Without pointing out the song was shortened down the average viewer would not know.

In conclusion: This really is not a trope. It is trivia at best.

edited 14th Apr '13 8:47:03 PM by EditorPallMall

Were not talking about just use a snippit of a song in general, we're talking about when they write a entire song just for the work, and never use the whole thing.

The trope is about the extra work they did.

Though I do agree it's maybe Trivia.

edited 14th Apr '13 8:48:50 PM by shoboni

OK, just for the record:

My proposed redefinition is not just simply "a song gets written for a scene, but they don't use the whole thing." That's Not A Trope, plain and simple.

The proposed defintion is about songs that are much longer than than the scene's length, or in the case of a video game, how long you would be in that particular room/level/whatever. When I came up with my redefinition, I mainly had video games in mind, not movies or TV shows. For example: songs composed for level selection screens are generally short because you generally don't sit there for 3 minutes picking a level.

That doesn't necessarily mean its tropeworthy (in fact, I'm starting to doubt it myself), but I am in no way trying to pass off "only part of the song got used" as a trope.

Which is why I think Long Song, Short Scene would be the best name for the trope.

I agree, this is clearly trivia and not a trope.