Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the narrative functions of music in an audio drama compared to a movie. For this we will have the audio drama “The Tomb of Sargeras” and the movie “Warcraft” made by Blizzard, as empirical data. We have found that there is a lack of theory in this specific case. Because of this, it has been necessary to use a theory which focuses on multimedia. In this case we found Johnny Wingstedt’s theory Narrative Music in Multimedia represent our research question with contributions from Andrew Crisell, because his theory focuses on music in auditive media and can therefore verify Wingstedt’s theory. Through a qualitative analysis we found Wingstedt’s theory to be more useful and thorough than Crisell’s according to the audiodrama. The comparative analysis showed, there is a difference in way the musical narrative functions are used in the two media. Furthermore the analysis showed that the primary focus in both media is emotion, though the audiodrama focuses more on the character’s emotions, whereas the movie focuses on mood. Another finding is, the music in the audio drama reflects movements in the narrative more often than the movie, which contribute to making the auditive media more alive for the audience. Another finding in the comparative analysis is that multiple of Wingstedt’s function are only represented in either one of the media. Regarding this the movie uses more different varieties of functions than the audio drama. Though we want to clarify that the audio drama as well has a couple of functions that is only used in this media. Regarding our own observations we found the lack of a function representing the suspense and development of the progression of music. Through our discussion we found that the storytelling of the two media are significantly different, which contributes to the question of why the music vary in the two media. Besides, we found that the movie, because of its audio visual format, has the potential for the music to be more complex. Looking at the audio drama we found that this media has the potential for the music to be more inclusive and creative for the listener - because of the ability to create visual imagery. Therefore the primary difference of the experience in the two media lies in the experience of the audio drama as being indcluding, empathetic and personal, whereas the experience of the movie is more observing, interpreting and objective. By looking at our overall findings we found it useful to modify Wingstedt’s theory to convert it to fit the audio drama as a media and have therefore made a draft of this modification.