LO3: Panning My Mixes

While mixing, I’ve had to consider a few different ways in which to pan sound effects. I’ve found that sound effects are usually panned in one of two ways:

1) From the camera’s perspective

2) From a character’s perspective.

Most of the time, I try to pan from the camera’s perspective to keep the audio simple and consistent. However, I’ve found a few ways in which a character’s perspective might be more suitable and entertaining. For example, in my Heavy Metal project, there’s a scene in which a giant bat flies past the main character while staying in the center of the shot. Visually, we can see that the bat is moving left to right but the audio would contrast with this if it was to be panned from the camera’s perspective. From the character’s perspective, however, we could get panning audio that nicely fits with the visual.

However, when it comes to background/atmosphere tracks, I wasn’t sure whether to pan them from the camera’s perspective or the character’s perspective. I couldn’t find much information on the subject but I did find a forum with a similar question (StackExchange, 2011). In it, a person said that automated panning could distract a viewer entirely and that, unless it’s meant to help give listeners clues on a change in location, it’s best to just pan it center with an equal stereo spread.

References

https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions/3392/best-approaches-to-panning-backgrounds-when-camera-angles-change?utm_medium=organic&utm_source=google_rich_qa&utm_campaign=google_rich_qa

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

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.