| Sound is the other partner in the unique co-relationship between image and aural elements that is the cinematic experience. Its canvas is just as broad as the moving images we create with light and shade.
‘Silent’ films were never silent. From the earliest days, musical accompaniment was used to reinforce the emotional content of the image. Recent research has unearthed elaborate fully-orchestrated scores which made early cinema a rich emotional experience. Many attempts were made to synchronise sound with film. ‘The Jazz Singer’ 1927 used the ‘Vitaphone’ process in which large shellac gramophone disks were made to spin simultaneously with the projector. But it was the technical development of the optical sound track (sound on film via modulating light) shortly after which finally made the publication and distribution of the sound motion picture film practical.
Special bonds connect film images to film sound. The animated film, in particular, has always enjoyed an intimate co-relationship with its soundtrack. The visual elements and the audio track seem to share a more creative partnership.
The animated film-making process itself encourages a higher degree of synchronisation than is practical within other forms of moviemaking. The animation film’s images are designed and executed frame by frame. So it is with the accompanying sound track, which can also be studied and measured with frame-by-frame precision. Hence, the inherent nature of the technology encourages a closeness between picture and sound. Walt Disney’s 1928 ‘Steamboat Willie’ was the first sound cartoon which amazed audiences of the day with its close synchronism between image and sound. This relationship was expoilted to the hilt.
Animated images and sounds also appear to share many common elements of structure. A musical tune, for example, is often characterised by a simplicity that is a lot like the graphic simplicity and the familiar gestures we recognise in cartoon characters. In many animated films, there exist close counterparts for certain musical elements. Repetition in music is like repeating a set of drawings or camera movements; tempo is related to visual beat; dynamics in musical performances correspond to narrative and graphic exaggeration; orchestration relates to the overall colouring and structure of an animated sequence.
Sound seems to work at a deep emotional level. Sound can trigger vivid recollections of past experiences, helping us to remember all sorts of little details associated with the event - even how we felt at the time. The leaps of association the mind takes when listening to sound makes it an extraordinary potent tool in the hands of the creative spirit.
Character dialogue, voice over narration, synchronous on-screen sound effects, sounds from the immediate environment, exterior off-screen sounds, general atmosphere, artificial man-made sounds, sounds from the natural world and music, are just some of the component elements that make up a motion picture sound track. Each of these components may be called on to play a dominant or subordinate role. Unfortunately our drawings, puppets or computer models don’t talk or make sounds all by themselves. A rich evocative soundtrack for an animation will have to be largely synthesized in much the same way that animated images are realised. In animated films, the world of sound is an invention. This makes the construction of their soundtracks a rather time consuming task compared to live action production where much of the sound is gathered at the same time the image is recorded. Time and energy spent in sound design always pays dividends. Starting with a completely blank slate in terms of sound is a wonderful challenge. Part of your role as director will be to have a vision for the way you want to use sound to help tell your stories.
Strong well-considered character voices can immediately establish a character’s broad personality traits which can carry much of the load when the animation is less than successfully executed. Apart from dialogue, the most important function of sound is to clarify what can’t be explained through pictures.
Sound not only helps establish the mood of a scene, but can give the audience clues as to the location and time of day. Ambience or atmospheric sounds can make the illusion perfect. The sound of heavy traffic played over an interior scene in a house will suggest it is situated near a busy freeway. Birds, on the other hand, will locate it out in the countryside without the animator doing any extra work. Sound can even tell us what our animated objects are made of. When unexpected sounds are juxtaposed against an action, it can produce bizarre results.If we can hear it, we don’t necessarily have to see it. Complex action can often be arranged to happen entirely off screen leaving the soundtrack to describe what has just occurred. In fact sound can be made to carry a lot of the ‘business’ in an animated film helping the animation look far more complicated than it actually was.
Music is a very powerful ally in the repertoire of aural textures available to the film maker. Different music soundtracks played against the same image can illicit profoundly different emotional responses to the image. It can make harmless images seem threatening and conversely, soften threatening images or it can lead the audience to completely reinterpret the image through counterpoint. Animators have used music to better help illustrate some of the subtler inner feelings of characters which are otherwise difficult to portray strongly in moving drawings. Pathos, inner pain, remorse. Music theorists have suggested that the fundamental power of music to move us as it does is a result of various psychological states we experience in listening to the music’s structure. Our natural desire to anticipate the completion of various patterns that have been fashioned from individual notes, intervals, rhythms and the like, is of prime importance. Human beings are pattern seekers. In music we come to anticipate how a familiar melody or arrangement will work out. We wait for the expected outcome. When a tune follows a pattern we’ve come to anticipate, there is a satisfying sense of ‘release’ or ‘accomplishment’. If our anticipation is thwarted, we are disturbed and our attention increases. Delight also comes when a familiar pattern is embellished in a new and unexpected way. These same effects can be created and controlled in animation through the conscious manipulation of various patterns; visual repetition and rhythm; the movement of characters and background; the predictability of a story or situation that is familiar; and the pacing and editing of the film. To the degree that animation can create a flow of patterns, the medium appears to mirror the nature of musical expression. Soundtracks in which music plays the dominant role, rather than sound effects, tends to impart a sureal dream-like, other-world quality to the imagery. The action is pushed away from the audience since one of our senses is denied access to it. Music used in this way can sometimes protect the audience from horrific imagery.
SPOT EFFECTS - ATTENTION TO DETAIL
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Sound is a part of our lives. When you consider the visual, you must also consider the sound that will accompany it and the sound of every figurative element therein. When drawings make ‘real world’ sounds as they move about in their fantastic world, they gain the physicallity and believability of real-life actors, reinforcing the illusion that animated characters exist. Attention to detail in sound is extraordinary powerful. The subtle rustle of clothing of a singular figure as it moves about a room can help contribute to the feeling of its isolation. We spend our whole lives listening to the world around us and building an inventory in our brain of not only the sounds, but consequently emotional circumstances associated with them. One should harness this knowledge when constructing a soundtrack.Interactive productions can exploit sound to reinforce the illusion that we are actually operating physical buttons on the computer screen as we explore various scenarios. Action that is synchronised to sound heightens the sense of involvement and excitement with the program. The electronic ‘beep’ each time the ball hit the bat in ‘Pong’, one of the earliest computer games, helped give the player the illusion that they were in control of something physical. Imagine how dull video games would be without their noisy, action-synchronised sound effects.
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Tips for Recording Sound
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