Category Archives: LO1

Reflective Summary

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Producing the audio for two projects has been a fun but challenging experience. My first project was a collaborative effort with an animation team called the ‘Ragtime Gals’. The second project was a self-set learning experience in which I attempted to redesign the audio for a short clip taken from the animated film ‘Heavy Metal’. Before working on these projects, I set myself some learning objectives to research upon during the process. These learning objectives had strong impacts on the development of my work.

LO1: “Learn ways in which music is used in film and animation”

I’ve found that music can be used for a lot more than just background noise – It can convey a lot of information. In the Rag Time Gals project, I used piano music as a diegetic sound effect. As a sound effect, it had to react to it’s source and surroundings. And so, the piano music can be heard changing in tempo and even stopping depending on how the character playing it is feeling.

In the Heavy Metal project, I tried to give my music multiple purposes. At some parts, I used strings and drum rolls, combined with rising dynamics, to create feelings of tense build-up. Other times, I used it as a substitute/addition to sound effects, reflecting directly what is happening on screen. For examples, crashing cymbals can be heard at various points when characters get hit by objects. I also gave one character a theme song/instrument. Whenever the main bad-guy is present, a synthesized brass instrument is almost always playing along side him. I even wrote him a motif that plays when he is first seen in the animation and then later repeats when he gets the upper-hand in a battle.

I chose to use synthesizers and digital instruments as I had easy access to them. I think they worked great because they reflected the 80s period really well. However, if I had access to other instruments then I certainly would experiment with them. Some acoustic strings could offer a lot more emotional control through playing techniques such as note-bending and tremolos.

LO2: “Learn methods of producing gun sound effects”

I’ve always wondered what makes guns sound so impactive, hence why I set myself this learning objective. This basic objective surprisingly turned out to be one of my most useful ones. I first found that sound effects can be theoretically deconstructed into a variety of layers. Once you have an idea on what layers are needed, you can then construct the sound as you see fit. After using this process to make some satisfactory gun sounds, I soon found that I could use the same process for many of my other so far lackluster sound effects. As a result, I managed to better some of my other sound effects including swords and body hits.

LO3: “Using references from other films, learn when it is appropriate to pan sound and music and utilize the stereo field”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much research material for this learning objective other than films and forums. I set it as I know that in music production, panning is used to create space and balance mixes. I wanted to know this would be similar when mixing sound for visuals. I’ve found that panning can still be used to create space but it can offer a lot more information as well including locations of objects (for example, wide panning, combined with changes in EQ, could suggest that an object is far away), what direction objects are moving in and what perspective the audience is listening from. Deciding on which perspective the audience is listening from seems to mainly come down to creativity. However, I have at least learned that too many extreme changes can become quite distracting to an audience and so it’s sometimes best to leave sounds equally panned left and right rather than have them change in a number of scenes. For this reason, I decided to keep the piano panned equally left and right throughout the entire Ragtime Gals animation – sometimes simple is better.

LO4: “Learn ways of effectively communicating with clients”

I’ve had good and bad experiences while communicating with my clients, the Rag Time Gals. At first, we had a number of miscommunications. With them not having much knowledge on audio-related lexicon, they found it difficult to tell me what expectations they had of their animation’s audio. The best they could ask for was “realistic” audio (but realistic audio is a complicated term. What most people think is realistic usually isn’t realistic at all). To get around this, I sent them renders of my work-in-progress frequently so that they could hear for themselves how the audio was coming along. Feedback was usually vaguely approving of my work. They knew what sounds they wanted in certain areas but overall most of the creative control was left to me. This could mean I’m either meeting their requirements or they’re just not too interested in having much control over the creative decisions behind the audio. The image below is a screenshot of our latest exchange of works in which they tried to send me a scene from their animation (but the link didn’t work) and I sent them my latest audio render (which was at the same level of progress as my submitted artefact).email

Although social media is a popular option for most people, myself and my clients ended up communicating via email most often as it allowed us to send files over to each other. In hindsight, I would have pushed to use Facebook more as there were many times in which the animators were quite slow to respond to emails. This often slowed down my production. I also should have pushed for more regular meetings as some studies of netnography show that social interactions over the internet can sometimes be different, and sometimes even untruthful, compared to those expressed in person.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m happy with what I’ve produced. The Rag Time Gals project is still ongoing as I am waiting for some more recent renders to sync my sound effects too. Some sound effects in my submission, such as the footsteps, will have to be completely re-synced in the near future. The Heavy Metal project was fun to produce as it offered me a lot more creativity than the other project. Creating sounds for fictional cartoon weapons and creatures offered me a chance to imagine what things could sound like rather than just give them literal interpretations.

Syncing and mixing sound effects was the most tedious aspect of the work but putting more effort into it (like using multiple layers for each sound) can be very rewarding. I’ve found that writing music for visual is a lot different to that of regular standalone music. You have to take a lot of things into consideration including what information you wish to convey, what sound effects is the music going to mix with and when the music is even necessary as sometimes, silence can be an effective feature. I’ve also found that music is difficult to sync to already-existing visuals unless you’re willing to create something with a flexible BPM and tempo.

Research and Production Post 9

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LO1: Writing Music for Heavy Metal

I’ve been writing two pieces of music for the Heavy Metal film. One piece is for a brief aerial chase scene and the other piece is for a fight scene. The first piece is being written like a standard 80s synthpop song as it has a unchanging tempo, beat and time signature throughout (It’s easy to clap along to). This style of soundtrack wasn’t unheard of in 80s movies – take The Neverending Story and Labyrinth for example. Although this piece will not strictly sync to every action in the visuals, it will loosely reflect each scene in each changing bar through changes in chords, dynamics and instrumentation.

The second piece is being written in a more classical manner. The tempo changes throughout and the music syncs to the visuals a lot more accurately (almost like foley). I’m writing it similarly to the example shown below (ThinkSpace Education, 2013). In the video, the composer is often playing music along to the visuals of the animation rather than a beat.

 

Although I’m writing these two pieces using different methods of composition, I’m aiming to make sure they share a lot of the same instruments in order to keep listeners from noticing. I’m writing in two different ways as a means of testing my writing abilities. However, I am confident that this won’t negatively impact my work as I have watched and enjoyed animations with various types of music used before. Take Thunderbirds, for example. It features a variety of easy-listening songs, which you can enjoy and clap along to with or without the visuals, as well as many strictly visual-orientated songs, which can be difficult to enjoy/understand without some form of visual context to accompany it (try listening to the song below for example).

 

References

ThinkSpace Education (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AyswacaFd0

Research and Production Post 8

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Project 2: Heavy Metal

Just before the Easter Holidays, I found myself a second animation project to work it. It is a short scene from the animated movie Heavy Metal. Shortly after, my clients for the Ragtime Gals animation informed me that they will no longer be wanting music for their chase scene. As a result, I decided I would thereon experiment with the Heavy Metal project and see if I could focus the audio as much on original music as I possibly could – similar to that of an old Tom and Jerry cartoon.

I looked back at my Research and Production Post 2 and refreshed myself on the ways in which music can be used in film and animation. One idea I thought I could utilize was to use music to represent characters. Within the video that I’m working on, there is a main villain whose presence I plan to represent through a synthesized brass section a I thought this specific synth preset sounded very dark and menacing. As well as characters, I also plan to create music that represents actions and emotions similarly like music of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Music can also be used to reflect certain time-periods. This is something that I will definitely take into account as I don’t have many VST orchestral instruments at my disposal. Fortunately, I do have a lot of VST synthesizers to choose from. Heavy Metal is a product of the 80s and so I plan to make a soundtrack that reflects on that decade by taking references on instrumentation from synth pop music.

 

 

 

Research and Production Post 5

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LO1: Piano Recording Attempt 2

The recordings taken from our last recording session contained a lot of unwanted noise such as squeaky pedals and rattling parts from within the piano. Also, my client and performer, William Healy, wasn’t too happy with his performance. And so, we decided to give it a second attempt. I first recorded the piano with a single Rode NT1-A microphone placed behind the piano, positioned low down and centre. This time, I recorded the piano with a pair of AKG C414s, both behind the piano on the left and right sides. They were placed a bit higher than last time to avoid picking up the mechanical noises at the bottom of the piano. The piano was also moved to the centre of the room so that it wasn’t too close to any walls. This was to help reduce the pickup of reverb.

Healy informed me that he’s been planning on featuring another artist’s song in the credits of the animation. And so, he wants the piano we record to end just before the credits. However, I requested that we record some of these short takes and some longer takes that could play over the credits just in case his guest artist was to pull out of the project at the last second. Overall, the recording process went well. We got some really good takes and, with the new microphone placement, we managed to avoid recording any unwanted noise.

 

LO3: Recording in Stereo

During our first recording attempt, I recorded the piano in mono without putting any thought into it. However, after further thought, I decided to record the piano in stereo during our second attempt. I wanted the song to be treated as somewhat diegetic and non-diegetic.

I got the idea from a particular scene in the movie Gangster Squad (available to watch in the video above). Within this scene, a group of men are about to raid a bar while a musical performance is taking place on the stage. The music seems diegetic as it is coming from a known source within the scene. However, it is also non-diegetic in the sense that the tonal and dimensional properties of the music don’t change as the camera transitions between each shot, placing the viewers in different areas of the room. Instead, the music is treated more like a non-diegetic background song.

I wanted to treat my piano recording similarly within the animation I was working on. I wanted it to seem diegetic and fitting with the scene, yet recorded and mixed like a non-diegetic background piece. Hence why I decided to record in stereo rather than mono.

 

References

Gangster Squad (2013) [Primary observation] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPsXWKMwfV8

Research and Production Post 3

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LO1: Piano Recording – Attempt 1

On the 16th of March, I met up with one of the animators, William Healy, to attempt some piano recording. Healy wanted to perform the piano pieces himself but unfortunately hadn’t written any songs for the animation. He had an idea of performing an existing piece of music but that could infringe on some copyright laws unless we had some form of permission to use said piece. On top of that, the performance would also require some sort of acting as the in-film character gets interrupted a couple of times throughout his performances.

We needed to improvise a song but we also needed it to sync with certain actions within the visuals. And so, within my DAW, I placed markers on the timeline to show when key events would happen. I pulled the video window below the timeline and informed Healy of what action/event each marker represented. I then asked him if he could try playing the piano while watching the markers on the timeline. As a result, he played the piano and took each event into consideration in his performance. For example, there’s one scene in the animation in which the performer gets abruptly interrupted by a man pointing a gun at him. When the marker representing that scene passed, Healy was able to abruptly stop playing the piano in sync with the animatic.

Some of the markers used to inform the performer of in-scene events.

Some of the markers used to inform the performer of in-scene events.

Our method seemed to work smoothly. However, when we later reviewed the recordings we noticed a few issues:

  • Healy wasn’t impressed by his performance.
  • The microphones picked up some unwanted noises (such as a squeaky pedal).
  • I had recorded the piano in mono.

We’re going to try getting some more recordings soon. This time, we might apply some oil to the piano pedals and/or change the mic placement to avoid picking-up the unwanted sounds. Healy also said he would practice a bit more beforehand. If all fails, we might have to resort to using either an electric piano/keyboard or some form of MIDI software.

While explaining a few alternative ways of producing some piano parts, I noticed that Healy had a difficult time understanding some of the terms I was using. He asked me what I meant when using terms like ‘EQ’ and ‘MIDI’. This leads me to my next post… (See Research and Production Post 4).