In this instructional video, J. Anthony Allen explains two closely related compositional techniques used in film scoring: the motive and the leitmotif. He defines a motive as a short, recurring melodic fragment that can serve as a glue linking different sections of a score, and notes that an ostinato can function as a motive when reused in varied contexts. Allen emphasizes the practical benefits of a strong motive—speeding up the scoring process and providing cohesion—while warning against overusing a weak motive. He then differentiates the leitmotif, describing it as a motive specifically associated with a character, object, or idea, which cues the audience to narrative information even when the associated element is off‑screen. Allen illustrates how leitmotifs can be employed subtly to convey a character’s thoughts about another character, creating subconscious narrative layers. The segment concludes with a reference to the iconic use of leitmotifs in Star Wars as a concrete example.
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Okay, up next, we're gonna move on to a new topic. Not to leave ostinatos behind, because they're probably gonna come up again, but I want to talk about another technique, something totally different. And this is actually kind of two techniques, but really kind of really only one. This is motive and leitmotif. This is something you've probably experienced before. If you've watched movies, you've experienced this before. I shouldn't even probably preface that. Two very slightly different things. A motive. We probably know what a motive is. You probably. You might have a sense of what that might be. A motive is just a recurring melody, something that comes back throughout the film or the piece of music. I mean, this is not a term that's only applies to film music, but it does serve good purpose in film music. Imagine a melody that just, you know, keeps coming back to help us remember different things. It works as kind of a, you know, a glue that holds everything together. And it could even be an ostinato. Remember this ostinato that we used in this piece for our intro thing? We could bring that back a couple different times, you know, and that could be a motive that we use in different contexts. It would mean different things and in different settings, and it would be. It could be really effective depending on how we did it. You might remember that first project of mine that I showed you, that documentary. I had that little piano riff. It was just two or three chords that cycled through. It was very kind of quiet and delicate, but it worked. And I used it throughout the whole film. That's a motive. That's something that we use in film scores for a few different purposes. You know, I've said this kind of glue mentality before to kind of hold everything together. I really like working with motives. For one, it, you know, kind of makes the project go a little bit faster because you've already got a lot of the music written if you're working with a motive. But it also, you know, makes the project work really well. If you have a good motive, if you have a bad motive, then don't do this, because then you're going to be playing the bad motive, like all the time throughout the movie. And you're going to take something bad and put it all over everything, and then it's just going to be bad, bad, bad. So don't do that. Come up with a good motive. But leitmotif a little bit different. A leitmotif is a motive that we associate with a particular character or thing. Usually a character. So let's say every time a certain character enters, they get their theme music. You know, that's a leitmotif. So the bad guy walks in. How do we know he's a bad guy? Because the bad guy music is playing. That's how we know he's a bad guy. That's a leitmotif for the bad guy. The good guy music is playing. That's great. You can even do it where it's more subtle. And for the subtlety, we get into kind of opera. But imagine a scene where nobody's talking. Okay. It's dead silent. We see two characters just staring at each other. We hear the music for. Okay, so the. The camera pans in on one of the characters, but we hear the music for the other one. The one we've already associated the music we've associated with the other character. Right. But we're staring into the eyes of the different character and hearing the music for the other. Why would we do that? Well, very easily. That's a great way to show that that character is thinking about the other character. We play the other character's music while we're looking at the first character and we have this. We're now creating memories for that character and thoughts we're in the subconscious of that character through the use of leitmotif. That's getting a little deep, but it does happen where you want to do that. Okay, so let's look at an example of this and then we'll see if we can incorporate it into our project here. I don't know this movie, so I don't know if it's going to work, but we're going to try. Okay, so let's look at one of the most common, well known uses of light motif, and that is Star Wars.
