project: audio for an animation.
I have been doing some testing to make the music sound more “Sneaky”! I decided to put a Piano with a bit of delay in to resemble more of Pink Panther theme tune. Here are the examples with and without the Piano:
I definitely think the piano works! It gives off identification and a leitmotif towards the character to represent his state of mind. Here is another example, apart from the Pink Panther theme tune that I took influence upon.
There is one thing that I did not mention on my Initial Timescale and that is drafting an original piece of music for viewing and critic purposes. The first draft that I composed is as follows:
PLEASE NOTE: The following material has not been mixed and is not in WAV format due to uploading issues on the blog interface.
As I have not done a lot of compositions, and more experienced within the sound effects field, I wanted to approach the composition side by using the MIDI keyboard to get a feel of the instrument and the way the animation moves. The animation students were impressed with what I have done so far. The only critical part would be where the animation starts to play trumpets for victorious purposes. They believe that the trumpet reminds them of too much of a Medieval background.
The next step for me to do is continue the animation score and make sure that I am adding more instruments to make the composition sound fuller.
I have also managed to put up some sound notes. This is counting towards my pre-production stages, which allows me to identify how I will approach composing the music and what sound effects I will need to gather! I have done this before meeting up with the animation students; you can find the Sound Notes here.
I have now included information from my proposal for which I presented to my tutor this week! I have placed this information in the Project Proposal & Treatment folder. In the meantime, I want to express my influences towards this project:
Ben Burtt: A personal influence of mine and a big fan of his sound design work on Star Wars and Wall-E. There are several videos which are available online for which Ben Burtt describes his sound work on particular features. These are more or less going to act as a motivation on my work. Even though the animation that I am working on isn’t in the Sci-Fi element, The Sounds of Star Wars book will make an incredible impact of how I approach sound design.
Looney Tunes: When discussing with Lora and Tom what they wanted from the audio, they explained that they wanted the audio to give character to not only the protagonist, but the overall animation itself. Looney Tunes is a great example for what their expectations are, musically and sound effects wise. They are aiming for a comical and traditional cartoon style, and by researching and watching several of these shows and reading books such as Tunes for Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon, my aim will be to gain as much knowledge from these sources in order to succeed Lora and Tom’s expectations.
Greek & Egyptian Style: My first initial thought by observing the animatic was that the style was based around a Medieval knight and an abandoned castle. However, having a meeting with Lora and Tom cleared things up for me when they were describing what was happening during the animation and that rather than the character being a knight, he is more of a warrior entering ruins based in ancient times. This influences my composition ideas and arranges certain instruments for which I could use. Some of examples of these that I can think of this moment are oboes, flutes and harps.
Other Animations: One of the main things, probably most important factor is the way that animations are complimenting with the soundtrack. Throughout this project, I will be watching animations from Pixar and Dreamworks to gain a more extended knowledge of how 3D animations are using the effect of a soundtrack to emphasize the story.
Welcome! This is my first blog, hence the slow process in learning on its use… but I think I have finally got the hang of it.
I want this blog to not only be about sharing MY process of creating a soundtrack to an animation, but also a learning process for you.
Last Christmas, I met up with a couple of talented animation students who created a quirky animatic which suddenly attracted my attention (go to The Team tab to find out more!)
Over the next few days, I will be updating my research and proposal process into getting started for the soundtrack. Watch this space!
Galani