Chapter 5 of the second season of “The Umbrella Academy” reveals part of the past of the chimpanzee “Pogo”, regarding his journey into space as part of Project Mercury. And what a good choice for the producers to use the iconic theme from Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (coming home)", a song that is a tribute response to David Bowie’s theme “Space Oddity.”
And it is that a lot of popular music can be used to give the correct character to the scene, be it for the style, the movement, the lyrics, etc. However, before the choice of the work, it can be used as it is recorded, a version can be made or it can be edited to our needs.
It is this last option that they use to sustain the scene. I will mention some aspects of this work.
The work begins with a keyboard motif in key E minor where the other instruments are gradually added, and it occurs when Pogo touches the hand of the Doctor in charge.
Another interesting moment that makes the countdown of the launch of the ship coincide with the countdown of the song, in order to give way to the brilliant chorus, and is that when using a major chord (G) as the beginning of the sequence, it gives us a sense of accomplishment, exhilaration, victory.
G | D | Am | C | x2
However, the sequence goes from happiness to drama, generating a tension due to the expectation of how this story will be resolved. And that is where I loved that they took the fragment of the “Special Extended Version of Major Tom (coming home)” where they use the atmosphere of the verses (without leading voice), which in itself feels uncertain, since the drums go using Black setbacks in 4/4. This means that beat 1 and 3 are not played rhythmically on the drums. Something similar happens with the bass line that does not touch beat 1 either; all this in contrast to the keyboard that does support the first beat but maintaining harmony (it’s a genius), which is edited to accompany the moment:
Em | Am | Em | Am | C | Am | Em | % | Bm | % |
Finally, once the outcome of this situation occurs, the chorus is used with the final section of the song, thus closing a great job of editing by the producers of the series.
Successes
Social Media Author: Pablo Bobadilla Rider
