Sound.

Unfortunately for me sound isn’t terribly important within my creative or production process even though it consists of 50% of my final film. Sound plays a tremendous role in how people interpret your film; from the emotions the sound leads the audience to feel as well as to also help drive the action within your film. Sound can be used in this huge multitude of ways, yet time and time again I throw scoring on the back burner while I continue to work on other projects. Ideally you should spend as much time, if not more, on sound and how it works within your film rather than saving it for the last minute to compile in so that there is something backing your film. What really alarms me is the fact that although I acknowledge the importance of sound and it’s effects within film, I still don’t take the initiative to work on the sound when I really should. Although this isn’t directly related to animation, it still is an important topic to bring up. First imagine your favorite animation without dialogue? (Now if your favorite animation already lacks dialogue you are one step ahead!) If you can imagine all the sounds that went into making that soundscape (ticking clocks, cars passing by, footsteps etc.) and silence them to what are you limited to? A film without sound lacks an entire layer that can be used to tell the story as well as eve emotion. Nothing is truly silent therefore our short films shouldn’t be either.

My Love for Stopmotion

Back when I first got into filmmaking around the age of nine, I had my heart set on working for Pixar, I just adored their animation (and the fact they rode scooters around the office). As my interest slowly moved to live action with CGI, animation has still always held a special place in my heart. I enjoyed making the occasional stop-motion, and experimenting with 3D animation. This has lead to a great appreciation of the art of stop-motion, knowing how painstaking the process can be.

Being a long time YouTube/Vimeo user, I've gathered a quite a collection of "favourites" over the years. Someone who I'm a big fan of, and I'm sure many people are familiar with, is PES. This video, Western Spaghetti, has to be one of my all time favourite animations.

I think one of the things which really sells it, is the sound. It's a simple, yet matches perfectly with what's being seen, and gives the video that little extra "oomph".

Sound is something which I feel is often overlooked with animations. The visuals are such an important part, so much attention is paid to it, that good sound is often missing. But when it is there, it makes for all the more better video.

Playing with the Eyes and Ears

It is basic human nature to associate certain sounds to certain actions or objects. For instance when you hear a loud bang with a sharp metallic ting to it, you can assume it was some metal object hitting concrete or some other hard surface. However through animation, we have the ability to broaden the possibilities of said actions and objects. PES's film "Fresh Guacamole" is what I like to call an audio-visual palette cleanser, because it makes you rethink how to apply sounds to actions.

Simply by re-associating cooking sounds to random objects, you get an interesting short that is much more appealing to the viewer, rather than animating actual avocados and chips.

Playing with the eyes and ears can also lead to better story telling. In the short "Out of Sight", a blind girl must find her seeing eye dog solely through touch and sound. Due to her young age many of the objects like cars, planes, or people, are reimagined into fish-cars, or whale-planes.

One of my favorite parts of this animation is when we encounter the cat. Initially it is just a blob, it rolls around until it meows, which then unravels into a cat. It's interesting to see the world building process because you become immersed in the video.  

Water + Sound = Awesome

 

What do you get when you mix Water flowing out of a tube, and a 24hz sine wave sound from a speaker? Nothing but a weird sound, a headache, and a wet floor.... BUT, what if we shot the water, speaker contraption with a camera shooting 24 fps? Well now you get a crazy looking in-camera effect that will blow people's minds!

 In reality, nothing crazy's happening to the water, it's just weaving around a bunch. In camera, however, the water isn't behaving normally. I'm not sure how this works 100%, but I think I have a good idea. Because our camera is only shooting 24 frames per second, we're not capturing all the frames we would normally see. The water is vibrating from the 24hz sine wave, and our camera's capturing 24 fps. Coincidence? I think because we aren't seeing the whole movement of the water, the water looks suspended in mid air.

This works with other frequencies as well. At 25hz, the water appears to be flowing in slow motion, and at 23hz, the water looks like it's going backwards! While this doesn't have much to do with motion graphics, animation, or post-production, I think it's worthy of a blog post. Like Arturo keeps telling us, if you can do something in a camera, do it! I think if you can use this cool trick in an animation, your end result will look amazing!

Movie Production Logos

Recently, I saw All is Lost starring Robert Redford and it was basically Cast Away without Wilson. Regardless, I started thinking about production logos and what makes them special. I watched many intros and realized at this point in my school career, I could remake practically all of the logos. The memorable part of each logo, however, is the sound. You recognize the Focus synth and the MGM lion roar as much as you remember the logo itself. Arturo stresses the use of sound in animation and it truly is important. Whether it is a song or a synth swell, the audience can associate the sound with the logo. More advanced titles are recognizable such as Jerry Bruckheimer Films and it preps the audience to expect something amazing. If you see an unrecognizable production title you may not know what to expect but if you see the MGM logo, for example, you associate it with extremely high production value. The companies have a few seconds to express the brand and need to make it memorable. Each logo requires a sound and it's usually a swell that draws you into the picture. I plan to create a powerful logo for my reel that draws the audience in through sound and simplicity.

Music Going Visual

After our latest class I got really excited about how to create compelling visual pieces that follow music. Music, as we know, is an experience made entirely for the ears. It's beautiful like that, because we can focus on just one of our senses. Music videos are nice, but much less of our attention is on the music. With motion graphics that follow the sounds of music, I believe it actually enhances our attention to it. Every beat, lick, and slide we can not only hear, but see. There was a TED Talk I saw recently (which I'm having trouble finding right now... I'll post it later if I can.) which explained how we experience thing better if it engages more of our senses. They used sex as an example, because it engages pretty much all of the senses. Now, I'm not going to compare these motion graphic videos to sex... but it's a very similar idea. These videos are engaging more of our senses!

What I really wanted to show you is this video I saw a while back. It was made to James Blake's song, "Limit to Your Love".
BEFORE YOU PALY IT, please be aware that the audio will not play properly if you listen to it right out of your laptop. The bass is at such a low frequency that most MacBooks can't handle it.  I highly recommend plugging in a sound system or some nice headphones to get the full experience. And without further adieu:

I thought this was a perfect example of how visuals can increase a song's experience. When I first watched this video I said "Wow... that's really cool." Now, I watch this video and say "HOW DID THEY DO THAT? I MUST KNOW." It seems very doable yet incredibly complex at the same time. I think I have a long way to go before I can do anything like this... but I'm excited for when I do get to that point.


EDIT:

I just learned that the original song was by Leslie Feist, and I'm a fan of giving credit where it's due so make sure you check out the original!
(Although, sorry Feist, I kind of like James Blake's version better. Maybe that's just my unnatural teenage mind.)

This week I decided to look at some audio visualization videos, because of what we did in class on Thursday. I think audio visualization is a really interesting art form for a few reasons. The main reason I think that is because audio visualization is a really weird and complex blend of both random and calculated factors. You have the ability to control what you want the audio to control and how you want it to be controlled, but you don't really know what the final product will be. this can and does lead to a lot of unique art. The first video accompanying this post contains some clips from some different audio visualizations. I think some of these are really neat, the third one in particular. The first one is a really good example of how you can mesh controlled and non controlled factors.

http://vimeo.com/groups/soundvis/videos/72643050

This next video is another example of intricate and varied art of this kind can be. It's also a really cool blend of controlled and "randomized" factors. I really liked this video because it doesn't really rely on colors as much as other audio visualizers do. The shapes and shadows are also a really cool aspect of this video.

http://vimeo.com/groups/soundvis/videos/57589053