when background music should start ?

If you're referring to the score, then it is at the descretion of the sound designer. Background music is what you hear in a restaurant.
 
Pokri said:
can someone tell me when background music should start and when it should end?
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The score starts when the film starts and ends when the film ends. It enters and exits, changes themes and mood, etc during the film as necessary to tell the story. Film's basic dramatic structure owes many similarities to opera and the musical score is as much a storytelling element as is the dialog script and the visual imagery, moving the story forward and creating the emotional experience the director is seeking to achieve.
 
Steve is right and wrong, depending on how you count. The score can start anywhere and end anywhere. Some films are wall to wall some films have no score at all. General the score starts with the film and is under closing credits so usually is is at the start and the end with comings and goings in between.

The director is the decision maker on this like everything else. He/She is often guided by the composer and picture editor and music editor. "Sound designers" have nothing in general to do with it unless your single post sound person wants to wrap that title around themselves. On big films the sound department has nothing to do with the music department and the sound folks generally don't even hear any of the score before it arrives at the mix.
 
This reference from Filmsound.org identifies the post audio process this way:

In post production that person [sound designer] would continue the fabrication and collection of sounds begun in pre-production, and would work with other sound professionals (composers, editors, mixers), and the Director and Editor to give the film’s soundtrack a coherent and well coordinated feeling.

Here's the link to the complete article.

This is the reason for me saying that the sound designer dictates (with approval of the director), when and where score appears in the film.

Noiz2 said:
"Sound designers" have nothing in general to do with it unless your single post sound person wants to wrap that title around themselves. On big films the sound department has nothing to do with the music department and the sound folks generally don't even hear any of the score before it arrives at the mix.
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I hear ya GP, that's the way things should be, but Noiz is correct; the music dept. and audio post team very rarely communicate. Sad but, unfortunately, very true.
 
gpforet said:
This reference from Filmsound.org identifies the post audio process this way:

In post production that person [sound designer] would continue the fabrication and collection of sounds begun in pre-production, and would work with other sound professionals (composers, editors, mixers), and the Director and Editor to give the film’s soundtrack a coherent and well coordinated feeling.

Here's the link to the complete article.

This is the reason for me saying that the sound designer dictates (with approval of the director), when and where score appears in the film.
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Well they are wrong. Having worked on quite a few films with budgets and in a fair number of studios I am not on shaky ground.
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OK I read the article, by my old friend Randy. He is not "wrong" (well actually Dan Dugan created the term "sound designer" not Walter but...), but you misread what he wrote. He did not say that was how it is, but how a small group of people (in the 1980's) envisioned it working. In actual fact it almost never worked that way.

At Skywalker the sound designers have nothing to do with the music. IF a sound supervisor or "designer" has a history with a director he/she will have some influence but often not much.
 
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To put your quote in the correct perspective I will quote from the beginning of the paragraph.

So, what does a sound designer do?
It was the dream of Walter Murch and others in the wildly creative early days of American Zoetrope that sound would be taken as seriously as image. They thought that at least some films could use the guidance of someone well-schooled in the art of sound in storytelling to not only create sounds but also to coordinate the use of sound in the film. This someone, they thought, would brainstorm with the director and writer in pre-production to integrate sound into the story on the page. During shooting that person would make sure that the recording and playing-back of sound on the set was given the important status it deserves, and not treated as a low-priority, which is always the temptation in the heat of trying to make the daily quota of shots. In post production that person would continue the fabrication and collection of sounds begun in pre-production, and would work with other sound professionals (composers, editors, mixers), and the Director and Editor to give the film’s soundtrack a coherent and well coordinated feeling.

This dream has been a difficult one to realize, and in fact has made little headway since the early 1970s. The term sound designer has come to be associated simply with using specialized equipment to make "special" sound effects.
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Background music?

Background music?

There’s good, useful material here. I’ll add my two cents with the hope that it helps the OP.

If you watch some films from the 1930 or 1940s, for example, an Errol Flynn swashbuckler (The Prince and the Pauper or Captain Blood with a score by Korngold) you might hear the orchestral score throughout most of the film.

In the 1960s and 1970s directors were experimenting with new techniques and new sounds. The score for The French Connection touched on experimental jazz, rock, and odd scoring (like, as I recall, a string bass section playing harmonies).

Some directors will add a score to a chase scene, especially in the last few decades, with driving technopop. Others will let the sounds of the squealing tires, screams, crashes, and explosions be the score.

There are times when the music will either start or end right on a cut. This might even be in the middle of a musical bar.

There are other times (think romantic comedies) where a score might sneak in under dialog and then suddenly blossom at the kiss, you know, harp glissandos, soaring strings, etc.

If I had a small film in the can and was looking at post-production sound, I’d probably think about the story I was telling and where sound (music, sound effects, and even background noise) would add to the content. Of course, knowing what kind of score you want will help.

Keep in mind that silence is also an important element in sound. Good luck.
 
I think it's like Walter Murch said in "In the Blink of an Eye", that our brains are ready for transitions when we blink.
In other words if you slip music segue's into emotional beats, moments when the story turns on emotion, people will be receptive to and simultaneously unaware of the addition of music.
And you can play against this concept as well, when you wish to draw attention to the music.
 
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