Study Task 6

Sound deconstruction task:

1.  Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride
Tim Burton's soundtracks are always eerie and atmospheric. This film has a similar gothic subject and dark, romantic tone of voice to my intended moving pictures animation.

The Corpse Bride is an animated musical, but even when there are no songs being sung by the characters in action, there is still music behind the visuals. The music builds a sense of atmosphere, one that can not only be seen through the cool colours, windswept hair and dark shadows, but an atmosphere that the audience can also hear. This makes the scene more believable and rich, the consumer being immersed in the world of the story through their senses.
carries the tone of the production.

The films uses voice acting. Famous actors read the lines that would be dubbed over the animation. I have access to voice recording equipment but I do worry that without hiring professional voice actors and without having authentic American accents (being set in Baltimore), this might make my sting less authentic. I also intend on constructing a very lonely, desolate feeling in the scene so I don't want to use dialogue.

Crow sound effects - Not just the crow cawing, but also the flap of its wings and scratching of its feet. With the animation form being stop-motion 3-dimensional figures, this 3-dimensional, realistic soundscape is effective. On a more simple animation (2D drawings), such great attention to little details might be overwhelming and out of place.
In 3D animation, does it border on sensory overload, bombarding the audience with all of this auditory information? This could be a deliberate attempt to make an uncanny and hyper-detailed world (i.e. wonderland/otherworldly).

The film score is orchestral and classical, which suits the context of the story (e.g. since Poe wrote in the 19th century, modern-sounding instruments and music would not be appropriate).
There's an ambient vocal choir singing the 'oohs' and 'aahs', a dreamlike and angelic sound.
The inclusion of bells and chimes add to this magical sensation.

Danny Elfman is the genius responsible for the composing of the film score for Corpse Bride, as well as many other fantastical films from Tim Burton. I've included the Official Soundtrack for Edward Scissorhands which, although not an animated film, features a really atmospheric and sensory soundtrack.

I wish I knew more about music and instruments so I could deconstruct this properly. I don't know my celestas from my harps. I know that Elfman's tone is exactly what I want to recreate. He has a voice in all of these soundtracks, a distinct and supernatural air, which can range from nightmarish to heavenly.

2. Mona the Vampire (Spirit of the Woods)
Mona has a similar target audience to that which I am aiming for, so I am investigating how they use auditory elements to compliment the visual animation.

1.05 - 1.10 minutes: Sound effects of animals, trees and the wind are built up to create the noise of the woods, alongside the animated pictures of characters moving through the scene.
Sounds overlap to communicate how the assets interact with each other, e.g. the sound of a bus engine begins at 1.10 minutes and gets louder in volume as it moves into the frame and scares off the animals that were there before.

Music is used in Mona the Vampire to convey a change of tone - when the scene should be funny it's in a major key, which makes the scene seem bright and cheerful, or when the scene becomes tense it drops to a minor, more serious and dark.
Upbeat music with excitement of the children. A piano sets the pace of the story, with the tempo rising as the characters run or with the tempo slowing as the characters move slowly.

When there's a joke they use a conventional kids' comic trumpet, setting it firmly within the kid's entertainment genre.

JUST AS FRED WAS SAYING ABOUT WALKING CYCLES, when the characters walk, a mid-shot is used instead and the head bobs up and down across the scene - rather than animating the legs walking for a whole cycle which is tricky - but the noise of footsteps is also added which makes it even more obvious that the character is walking.

As Mona's world skips from reality to her imagination, a 'cl-cl-cl-cl' whirling noise suggests that the audience are taken through this vortex. We are not only visually transported through the psychedelic distortion of the image, but the audio dictates that something unusual is happening with this unnatural, whirling sound.

3. Think about the inclusion of sound or sound production in your sting

I've used the Free Music Archive before for projects such as my Dark Crystal short film (Vis Com). Soundtracks can be used to set the scene. Sounds can give vital information about atmosphere, weather and mood. Since I am not a musician myself, I think I'll leave that to the experts... there's so much stuff on the free music archive that I can use without breaching copyright, but also a lot of stuff to sift through that wouldn't be appropriate for my tone of voice/subject.
The music I choose could completely alter the tone of my moving image so I need to make sure that I keep true to Poe on this one.

I'm using a low-key palette so I think a low-key soundtrack would complement this nicely. A low pitch, quite slow, minor key.

Sound Effects: I'd like to create a moody and tense atmosphere. Rain and wind or thunder are conventional features of Poe's fiction and of the Gothic genre.
Crow cawing.
Cat screech.
Windows rattling.

 http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Harsanyi_Laszlo/Witchcraft

^ This is the perfect album! Spooky instrumental music using classical instruments and sound effects, but also has the potential to be layered underneath other sound effects I can find.