Assignment 1 (Sound)

Compressing and Summarizing sound:

In film, audio is often compressed and edited for a specific purpose. This technique is used in probably every single trailer or teaser for a new movie that is going to be released. To illustrate this for you, here is the trailer for 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' where towards the ending you hear Rey stating that she needs someone to show her her place in all of the chaos and you see Kylo Ren offering his hand hinting that she is going to take it and join the sith.

However, in the actual film, it is really Kylo Ren that is offering Rey to join him telling her to let everything die and go with him. The sound is compressed in the trailer to cause the audience to doubt Rey's true goals and leads to the anticipation of what she's going to do as they mute out the "join me" audio and cover it with the sound of tension-building music. Here is proof of the real clip which is edited for the purpose of the trailer:

Eliminating material:

In most pieces of film, a director/ producer can decide if certain pieces of audio are flawed, repetitive, superfluous, uninteresting or irrelevant. If found to be one of these things, they will be edited out post-production either completely or will be re-recorded by the actors until they feel it fits perfectly. This has to be done precisely, if it is not the entire movie can be ruined and the audience will lose interest in the story line itself. Here is a video explaining why the audio tracks from 'American Hustle' were not perfected enough for the movie to be entirely successful and flawless.

To summarize this video, it basically states that the editing team did not focus hard enough on all scenes to notice small audio errors that can affect how the audience receives the film. Some things caused by the incomplete editing were vocal distortion, gain hiss, incorrect microphone placement and overlapping dialogue. All of these things can confuse the audience by preventing them from clearly hearing all of the words said by a character, causing them to focus on that and lose focus on the progression of the story line as a conversation between two characters can determine the shape of an entire plot, therefore if some of that conversation is presented wrong then the entire film is affected.

Recorded speech/ inappropriate language:

The directors, producers and writers must all make sure that the speech/dialogue in a film is completely legal, otherwise it will not be successful at all as it will not be allowed to be viewed publicly. This could be if profanity is used in a film that is meant for the age rating of PG or U (for all ages) in regular dialogue or music tracks, an example of this would be if a film with a U certificate wished to use a song like 'I Like It' by Cardi B, they would need to bleep out many of the lyrics as they are very explicit, here's an example of this song after it has been edited to not include any of the explicit language:

Another factor of the legal side to things, there is a law in this country that dialogue must be at a certain volume for audiences to here. However, some exceptions can be made for the purpose of the film - 'A Quiet Place' is sci-fi film based upon a family who are living during a global apocalypse after an attack from some beings who rely on sound for their attacks, therefore there is little to know speech and dialogue. Here is the trailer which will give you the full idea of how minimal the sound is:

Changing the order of sound:

In film, sound can be used to change a chronological order of things for the purpose of the piece of film. In the Netflix original 'Bird Box', the film was edited to start with the voice of the main character years after the apocalypse had happened, despite the fact that we follow her journey from the beginning of the chaos. The editing team manipulated the sound of this film to clearly highlight the fact that we were going to switch between flashbacks and flash forwards throughout the entire film. This technique also intrigues the audience from the very beginning to the mystery of what is going on in the world and opens their minds to what could be causing the events in the flash forwards. The voice overs from Sandra Bullock's character create the continuity leading onto the intense events of the ending of the film. Here is the opening sequence to 'Bird Box' which will illustrate exactly what the producers wanted to do with it. 

Creating impact:

In all movies and television series, you will find that sound effects and music are used to add impact to what is said or done on screen. One of the most common examples i have found personally is in television shows when there is an emotional moment between a couple of characters and mood-setting music is added in the background to create the perfect atmosphere. Here is an example of where this happens in season 3 of MTV's 'Teen Wolf':

The audio track in the background is placed there to create the romantic and magical atmosphere of the moment on screen. This is known as non-diegetic sound as it does not have a source from the world of where it's happening, and to broaden your understanding of this I should point out that diegtic is sound that comes from the world on screen, for example: speech or background noise like car sounds.

Unit 24 - Sound Editing

Mood and Atmosphere:

In film, mood and atmosphere are supported greatly using the sound that is added post-production to match the theme and genre. The horror genre is a good example of this as right from the outset, they tend to include gloomy, mysterious music or omens such as the sound of crows or thunder and lightening. These omens are typically associated with horror therefore are recognizable by audiences. Here is a clip from episode 1 of 'American Horror Story' in which Tate is having a therapy session and begins recalling his dark thoughts and feelings - the music molds an idea of what it feels like to be in his mind tying in with his monologue.

Another example of where music ties in to create the mood and atmosphere reinforcing the genre is in Marvel's 'Avengers: Assemble'. In the film, there is an iconic moment when all 6 of the original avengers regroup and there is a panning shot of them all preparing to fight being more empowered by the sound track behind it.

    

Audio Fade:

Audio fades are used very commonly but are very subtle therefore are hardly ever noticed by an audience even though the effects of them are extraordinary. Personally, I feel that audio fades work most successfully during romantic scenes as they reinforce the emotion felt by the characters bringing it to the audience watching. In 'The Vampire Diaries', there is an iconic moment in season 6 where Stefan and Caroline confide in each other and share an intense moment in which they share their first kiss. The song 'Yours' by Ella Henderson slowly begins to fade in as their conversation progresses, creating a rather magical feel to the scene and hints that something is going to happen. You can watch the scene here:

                          

     

Dialogue and voice over:

Even though dialogue is just a character or narrator speaking it should still be acknowledged as a sound effect. Dialogue is a key part to a story as it can shape the narrative and make the audience feel a certain atmosphere and mood all dependent on their choice of words. An recent example of where this works exceptionally is in Netflix's new original series: 'You'. This series is about a stalker (Joe) who forms a liking towards a girl named Beck in who he obsesses over while recalling his thoughts and feelings throughout. This thought-tracking element to the show enhances how creepy the producers want Joe to appear 

    

Ambient Sound:

Ambient sound, put simply, is the background noise you hear in mostly all movies and television shows. For example, if there was a scene set in the middle of a New York street, you would hear the typical city sounds such as car engines, cars beeping, the noises of busy crowds etc. This is used in all kinds of genres yet you are most likely to find examples in dramas as they tend to take place in specific settings like cities or towns, therefore it will be easy to pick out ambient sound in these kinds of shots. There is an example of this in season 5 of 'Once Upon A Time' during the 'Emma Finds Her Armor' scene where we focus on a flashback and you can hear the city sounds of Boston which is ambient sound (also referred to as diegetic sound.

  

Sound bridges:

Sound bridges are pieces of audio which are used to move from one scene to the next so the sound of the scene coming next begins before there is a visual transition between the two. In thrillers, this is commonly used to introduce the villain or a danger coming the characters way. An example of this is in Warner Bros.' 'The Dark Knight' in which the joker is introduced to the group of characters on screen through his iconic laugh despite him not being on screen yet. Even thought the audience cannot see him, they already know who it is which foreshadows an idea of what's going to happen.

In non-fiction, sound bridges are still used. In documentaries for example, you may hear an ambient sound of a location such as a coastline before the scenery is established visually. Examples of this can be seen on most episodes of 'Blue Planet'.

Foley Sounds:

Foley sounds are sounds which are created during the production of a piece of film. For example if the films requires the noise of someone drawing a sword, the Foley sound produces will record this sound multiple times using various objects until they feel it fits perfectly. These are mostly always used on fiction and never really in non-fiction unless it was incredibly necessary. Here is a video explaining how the sound effects for 'Wall-E' are created:

Synchronous and Asynchronous:

This type of sound is used in animation for example when a voice over needs to be matched with the animated characters of screen. These audio clips will be recorded before or during the animation process and will be placed onto the film post-production when the film is being edited. The editor will have to be extra careful when placing these audio tracks in as they will have to match the mouth movements exactly as they're said. It is a hard, time-consuming process but the end products are remarkable.

This kind of audio is not only used in animation however. Sometime during live performances, singers may feel they cannot sing to the best of their ability fr whatever reason and may have to lip-sync with the music playing so that it is convincing to the audience. This is an incredibly controversial topic though therefore i will not expand more into this use.

Sound Motif:

Sound motif is a certain sound or tune which follows a certain character or event. An example of this is in 'Harry Potter'. In all of these films, whenever Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is displayed on screen, you will the iconic movie theme which is so easily recognizable by all of the franchises fans.

ADR Sound:

ADR sound is the type of sound which is re-recorded post-production if the any of the team members working on it feel that it could be better and will continue to record this until they feel it is perfect.

Stop Motion Audio

Audio

I had a struggle finding the right audio to fit with my final piece of "Junior's Journey", which led to me trying out various different songs and sounds until I found the right one. Eventually, I came across an audio called the 'Epic Build Trailer' which is a royalty free background track from YouTube which was generously given to people for free by the person that has posted it. Listen to it here:

I picked this audio over the rest as I felt that it would help the audience to really feel sympathy towards Junior's character and will realize the isolation my character is living in. 

Bibliography

Here is a bibliography of the websites and locations that I used to gather my information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqwkdlwmHig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6TOQzCDO7Y
https://www.wired.com/2012/08/quay-brothers-moma/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318/
https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/jan-svankmajer-alice/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0639891/
https://christinawehner.wordpress.com/2016/08/06/willis-obrien-and-stop-motion-animation/

Test Animation

In preparation for my stop motion film, I created a short test animation which I made in a small amount of time just to get the hang of creating stop motion.

Assignment 1 (Stop motion)

Task 1

Techniques:

Throughout history, various people have come up different ways of creating animation. Whether they were big or small inventions, they all had an impact on the animation we see today with huge companies such as Disney or DreamWorks.

The Persistence of vision was debunked in the early 1900s; this idea was first recorded by Aristotle when he noted down that the image of the sun remained over his eye seconds after looking away from it. The idea relies on the fact that the eye takes moments for the representation of an image to fade away, therefore the series of still images played together at a rapid pace moulds them together to flow as if they’re moving. This is also known as the Phi Phenomenon. This is different to stop frame, which are sculptures that are physically manipulated to appear moving in each frame.

An example of a stop frame animation is the very popular ‘Wallace and Gromit’ series which has been popular since the late 1980s. This has still been used today however with modern day technology, in the film Early Man which was brought out by Aardman in January 2018. I think this technique is still used today because there is an authentic depth and detail to it that other types of animation may lack, even small things like the finger marks on the characters (from clay) are interesting enough to draw in an audience as it’s clear it requires a lot of time and attention to detail. This leads me to believe that this technique will continue to be used in the future even with the constantly improving technology.

Frame rates are the rates at which the still images on a stop motion piece are displayed. An example of this could be the difference between showing a slower piece at 10 frames per second or a fast, flowing piece at 60 frames per second. It is clear that the early numbers of fps have impacted stop motion today, as mostly all animations of today’s time flow in a way that looks naturalistic and real in a way.

Pioneers:

Joseph Plateau was the inventor of the phenakitoscope in 1841. This device was an early animation device which consisted of two discs that spin in opposite directions to each other, this created the illusion that an object was moving and ran at about 40 fps. He was put on this path to success by his father who was a very artistic man who had a great talent in art and wished the same for his son. He was well known for his early work, known as 'Plateau Problems' which led to his creation of the phenakitoscope.

Similar to the Phenakitoscope, the zoetrope was created by William Horner. This device was also an early animation and can be viewed as a three-dimensional version of Plateau's invention even though it was created before in the early 1830s. The device consisted of a drum holding similar images, and when moved in a rapid, spinning motion creates the illusion that the subject is moving. An example of this is this device displaying a horse that appears to be galloping.

The kinetoscope is different to these in the sense that it uses images taken by a camera of a physical object instead of drawings or animated images. This was created by Thomas Edison in 1891 and was first publicly demonstrated in 1893. He was known as one of the greatest inventor of his time as he was also the man who created the light bulb, proving he's incredibly intelligent. 

Developers:

Willis O'Brien was the creator of many prehistoric themed animations, silent movies and shorts. He worked using stop motion with small dinosaur figures that he moved to create the illusion that it's moving. O'Brien's work was so popular among the public that Edison even picked him up for it and offered to hire him as a developer of some prehistoric short films. His first film that caught Edison's eye was The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy in 1915 which was outstanding seeing as he worked off of a small budget of $5000. He went on to creating the incredibly famous 'The Lost World' with Edison's company. Pieces like this were what lead to the creation of many animations and live-action movies of today, such as Disney's 'The Good Dinosaur' and the wildly popular 'Jurassic Park' series. 

Ray Harryhausen was a stop motion model animator who was most famous for his early work with Willis O'Brien on 'Mighty Joe Young' in 1949 to his late work on a book called 'An animated Life' which goes into true depth on his techniques and history. Works like these led to a newly animated version of Ray's first film in 1998 n which he appeared in a comedic cameo. Overall, Harryhausen and O'Brien most likely influenced each other great amounts before Willis passed away, shaping the look of stop motion today.

Jan Švankmajer is a filmmaker and animator of today who focuses on surrealism and, similar to O'Brien and Harryhausen, created stop motion characters that appeared in movies and shorts that were a mixture of live action. One of Jan's most memorable pieces so far is his work on 'Alice' in 1988 in which he animated all of the animals and dolls to appear to move and even Alice at some points throughout. Still to this day, Jan is working on some projects and recently received the Raymond Roussel Society Medal for his work. His early work influenced animation today as we have a very well done live action version of 'Alice' named 'Alice: Through the Looking Glass' which features many animated characters that appear to be very realistic - this will most likely continue into the future with the more advanced technology that's becoming more accessible and easier. Here's a series of clips of all of Švankmajer's animations from the 1988 version of 'Alice'.

Contemporary:

The Brothers Quay are two identical brothers who are famous for their many films, like 'Punch And Judy', 'Street of Crocodile's and 'The Comb'. They even won 8 awards and honours for their films and will continue to earn more in the future. It has been noted that they were majorly influenced by Jan Švankmajer, and even ended up making a film named after him - 'The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer' along with being noted to express an interest in Tim Burton through the years.. In the present day, they have Koninck Studios in Southwalk which was founded by themselves and Keith Griffiths.

Tim Burton is a modern day animator who is famous for his many popular works, such as the Disney classics 'The Fox and the Hound' (1981) and 'Frankenweenie' (2012). Burton's work often had a gothic feel to them, for example he worked on 'Beetlejuice' and 'Edward Scissorhands' which both had tragic, mysterious elements to them. They also often feature a character who is an outcast in society, meaning that his audience tends to be those who like a tragic story line or maybe those who feel like an outcast themselves, his work is very deep and moving to many fans.His work inspires many artists today due to him speaking at Comic-Con and his incredible speeches when he wins awards for his movies. On the present day, he is currently working on the live action version of Disney's 'Dumbo'. 

Task 2


Purpose of stop motion animation:

One important purpose of stop motion is to educate the audience. Mostly all animated movies are watched by young children and families, therefore artists and directors will work together to make their movies informative, teaching their audiences moral lessons or making them aware of real life events and issues. An example of a movie that has a moral lesson is Disney's 'Lilo and Stitch' which teaches the importance of family and relationships, no matter how different you are. An example of a film that makes us aware of real life events was another Disney classic, 'Pocahontas' which shows both sides of racism and the affects it has on the victims of it.

The most important purpose of animation, of course, is to entertain. To do this, animators work with writers and directors to make sure they have the perfect story line that is gripping, emotional, intense, heartwarming and maybe even comical at some points depending on the genre and the audience it is aimed at. This is incredibly important to make sure of for creators as animation is a hard, time consuming, expensive process which cannot be easily re-shot if they make a mistake due to time and cost. An example of how time consuming an entertaining scene can be is from 'The Lion King' in which the stampede scene took around 3 years to create, all for the iconic yet tragic scene that sets the main character on his path. Although this took so long and was s expensive to create, it helped the success of the film even years after it's release as it was discussed among audiences and the raw emotion captured from it drew in a wider audience.

Another purpose of stop motion is to advertise. On TV today, companies are more commonly using cartoons and stop motion to create a more comedic effect, making them more memorable for the audience members, making them more likely to share it with their friends and family, increasing the promotion of the brand or object. Here is an example of an Australian stop motion advert promoting 'Target'.

Different genres:

A feature film is a film that usually runs for around 80-120 minutes and is intended on being shown in theaters. An example of a feature film is Steven Spielberg's 'Jurassic Park' which originally debuted in 1993, yet was so successful that is lead to the creation of 4 other Jurassic movies: Jurassic 2 & 3 and Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Steven Spielberg was also the director of many other feature films like 'Jaws' and today's 'Ready Player One'.These films prove that most feature films are directed towards families and children based upon their content.

A music video is a piece of film that is displayed to provide some sort of background to a song created by an artist and tend to always have a message or hidden meaning even if the video doesn't appear to make much sense on it's own. These are typically viewed by a range of people, from children to young adults. An example of one of these music videos is Lennon Stella's video for her single 'Breakaway', which has a very deep and meaningful message that is portrayed clearly through the clips displayed in the video.

Another genre of film is TV, which has many different types of film ranging from series to documentaries. Television series generally consist of 40-60 minute episodes appearing over a season of around 3-22 episodes which are very popular among the younger generation of today due to platforms like Netflix where they're easily accessible. 

Techniques and formats:

One technique/format that I am going to cover is a time-lapse. A time-lapse is a piece of film where frames that happened over a slow period of time are changed to a faster speed and the events happen in a shorter amount of time. This is something commonly found in film today, typically in YouTube stars videos if they wish to show a quick demonstration of how they put something together or going somewhere therefore are more enjoyable to younger generations.

Another technique/format is Puppetry. Puppetry is movement in film which is created by a person pulling strings or using their hands to create the illusion that a figure is alive and moving on it's own. This was more commonly found in the 1980s-90s when technology was not as easy to access and view by children as it is today, therefore they would find entertainment through the illumination of puppets. An incredibly popular example of this was 'Punch and Judy' which has been a favorite by m,any for over a century, this show was shown on piers at beaches and was very comedic for the children and families that came to view it.

One last technique I'm going to highlight is human stop motion animation (Pixelation) which is becoming more popular with today's generations. This consists of a very long process in which the subject will have to move inch by inch in every frame so that when edited together it appears they're moving. This is a technique which is very popular among the younger generations too as they are mostly very comedic, short skits.