Responsive - Collaborative

The storyboard is done for our thirsty water project and everyone is happy with it, this means we move on to making the animatic. Putting together the animatic and making the sounds for it was my job however Rosie made all the images for me to use in the animatic.

First of all i put the images into premier and animated the pan shots by keying the position of the image. I gave each shot relevant time on the screen, for this i had to bear in mind how long the actual animation would last on the screen when completed. Also i had to make sure each shot lasted comfortably on the screen, what i mean by this is that i need to make sure the audience has time to digest what is happening at all times through the animation.

To decide what sounds i needed for the animatic i watched the animatic a few times and noted down some sounds i though were essential to help tell the story. For example, drumming music throughout to help set the scene of an African landscape. These sounds are the most important because they actively help to tell the story.

Some examples of secondary sounds could be the elephant noises, various different water noises and the sound of buckets filling. The reason i would class these sounds as secondary sounds is that these don't actively help tell the story by themselves. But rather are additions to the visual story. These could be referred to as more superficial sounds.

Sound design is something i haven't done that much of besides making some simple sounds for previous animations. However whilst producing the sound for this animatic, i realized i really enjoy sound design and feel like it can be a very interesting field of animation.

Sound design is also a very important part of an animated film. In the past i have often looked past it as not being very important but i now realize just how important it is. I began to realize this previously this academic year at Manchester animation festival after a masterclass on sound design and sound compositing used in the film 'Phantom Boy'. This talk really made me pay better attention to the way sound was designed and composited in animated films.

A film i really value in terms of sound design especially is 'The Wind Rises' by studio Ghibli. Despite the fact that the sound design is excellent anyway, it was mostly done by human voices. 'A bold choice was made to use sound effects generated by the human voice for this film. Miyazaki expressed particular interest in human-generated sound effects from the early stages of this production. Various kinds of sounds, from revving airplane propellers, hissing steam locomotives and car engine noises to the ground rumbling in the Great Kanto Earthquake, were performed by human voices.'

Having the sound design done this way also adds to the crafted feel of the film which is what Studio Ghibli often strive towards. This crafted style of animation is relation to sound design also related to our thirsty water project as the theme of the product is very hand crafted and authentic. This type of sound design would also go very well with the visual style of cut out animation which we have chosen to use for our medium.

Something that's interesting about sound design and something that was mentioned in the phantom boy masterclass at Manchester animation festival was that the sound doesn't have to be made with the object that actually makes the sound. An example used in the masterclass was that a fire crackling noise could be made with tin foil. This is just an example obviously and the possibilities are endless, this makes sound design a very creative area of animation.

To record the sounds i used the sound room at uni. I wanted to keep the sounds authentic as described previously, therefore i used mostly my hands, tapping on objects and a range of basic items such as a half full bottle and my keys.

Some visual aspects of the animatic didn't have a very defined conventional sound, such as when the water drips down the screen to reveal the logo. To remedy this, instead of keeping it silent, i experimented with different sounds and found what worked well with the visual display of the animatic.

Another thing i realized when experimenting with the sounds is that overlaying two different sounds changes the sound and can make it more full bodied. I used this principle when creating the soundtrack of the drumming which runs throughout the animation. I made this by overlaying 3 different sound tracks over one another.

For the water dripping down the screen at the end i overlayed a slow shake of my water bottle with the sound of me flipping my sketchbook pages. The end result suits the visual side of the animatic well.

Below is the final animatic:

References:
"Fun Facts About The Production Of 'The Wind Rises' - Academy Award Nominee For Best Animated Feature | Cinemit". Cinemit.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 15 Feb. 2017.