Every person and object that holds some significant value is carefully crafted and designed especially within animated films. That means in addition to creating a fitting sound image to a situation, a character or object will be assigned physical and emotional attributes. These attributes are translated into sound properties and characteristics that are kept throughout the whole movie.
Sometimes the means of sound shaping by the character follow a physiological logic and sometimes they don't - either way characters and objects have different articulation types, that need be accounted for.
Let's take the board I created for this short film. It has 4 different articulations:
1. Rotation Mechanism
2. Engine
3. Turbines
4. Futuristic Movement
Each articulation has multiple dimensions. So for the Rotation Mechanism one dimension is the spinning mechanism, another is the air stream and another a futuristic character.
Then again each dimension is made up of multiple actual sound layers, and this is where all the wildest things come into play. For the spinning mechanism a salad spinner, a coin spinning inside a ballon and a spinning bike wheel was used to create something unique.
The Details Behind Sound
The sound of a movie isn't just some guy recording funny sounds, just as much as music isn't just some musicians fiddling around on their instruments.
Creating a realistic sound for a compelling movie is:
1.Physics: a good sound artist has to be aware of acoustical and physical laws and and apply or consciously ignore them when designing the sound. This knowledge is necessary to model a realistic sound world by quickly modeling how sound behaves over an increasing distance or in different settings.
-> in Defender this meant for example recreating the doppler effect
2. Dramaturgy: don't get me wrong - in movies or any art form we don't want pure realism. we want to create a compelling and aesthetically defined experience.
So we have to be aware what emotion should be elicited from the audience, in which exact moment and create the sound according to that expectation.
-> for Defender it was very important to comprehend Yibing Jiang's vision, and discuss the dramaturgic arc and details.
3. Psychology: eliciting an emotion in an audience also means keeping up with the latest scientific research regarding psychoacoustics, such as the emotional effect of timbre while training and trusting your own aesthetic spirit.
4. Mastering your craft: Knowing all these details doesn't translate to a beautiful sound design - only 10.000 hours of practice do.
Defender - Short Film
Job
Sound & Music
Client: Unity LTD
Unity has created many innovative, award-winning short films which also demonstrate the game design possibilities within the companies game engine.
Defender is another of these flag-ship demos, which tells a story of courage while demonstrating realistic hair-movement, accompanied by the epic music and sound design of yours truly.