Sound Design
During the last class activity, we were told to pick a specific topic and discuss it in terms of the animated films we watched. I just found this intriguing because my group and I spent most of our time talking about the sound design used in the films. Film scores have always been something I've been very interested in, but I don't think it was until I watched How to Train Your Dragon that I thought about the impact of scoring in animated films. The score of that film is amazing! A lot of the films we watched on Tuesday had distinct sound design as well. Pas de Deux is a great example because the narrative of the story isn't linear and clear. There is no dialogue between characters. There's obviously a story being told, but I think the music helps influence the emotion of it. It created an urgency within the characters we were watching. Another film that utilized music was "Danielle" because I personally didn't even notice the change happening in the face, but I think the music contributed to the idea that time was passing. All of these films manipulated time in some way or another, but a lot of them used sound design to help ground us in the emotions of the story. A lot them built up intensity with the music. "Baraka" is another example of that tension becoming more and more amplified through sound. I think sound design is a very powerful tool, especially when it comes to scoring, in both live action and animated films.
I like the idea of music AS dialogue of a sort (in Pas de Deux). Or at least a narrative. I wonder if it's easier to pull off something like that (thinking of Fantasia, perhaps) in an animated medium than in live action. There's a long history of music in animation, too... I forget if there's a name for the technique, but old Disney cartoons use musical instruments as sound effects.
ReplyDeleteSound is very powerful in live action, but I wonder if maybe it's even more so in animation, when you can precisely and deliberately change not only the timing of movement, but even the visual style of movement to match your score and sound design. You can really distort character models to match the sounds in a way that the rigidity of live action doesn't allow.