Executive Summary

Within this blog you will find;

• A process for putting sound to an animated short, using a cue sheet and a storyboard, along with the finished result.
• Ideas that didn't make the animation.

• Examples of film clips that utilize an effective use of silence. 

• Some musical experiments.

Co-Workers In Higher Quality

The finished animation in a higher quality Mp4.

Ideas That Didn't Cut It

There were a couple of soundtrack ideas that didn't make the final video;

1. Vocal antagonist - The cheeky trickster was initially going to be vocal, but having put in the musical sound cues first, the silent yet present character appeared more effective and added a greater edge to the animations climax.

2. Percussive eyebrows - An ornamental Xylophone phrase was initially composed to accompany the eyebrow motions featuring trills after the shaker sound effect. Upon implementing this into the track, it lessened the effect of the following hits, and seemed to be on the "Mickey Mousing" side. Removing this helped in applying a sneakier trait to the character, for such noticeable facial gestures to make no sound.  

3. Stomach squelching - A track that featured heavily pitch-shifted shouting that created the sound of bass heavy, beastly morphing. Proved to be too overpowering and extreme given the animations context.

4. Glue - I recorded a tub of water to go along with the shaking of the glue tub, but this along with the glockenspiel "ting" sounded clumsy. The finished version with just the glockenspiel adds a menacingly innocent quality to the trickster. Along with having such light effects such as the glockenspiel and shakers aids the contrast that comes with the climax.

Co-Workers

The videos finished more or less, only problems been with exporting in m4v. 
Here is an Mp4;

I rejected my initial "exclusively musical" based soundtrack, and produced a soundtrack that featured an opening theme tune, a variety of sound effects and dialogue. All the sound is original apart from an excerpt of Zack Hemsey's Mind Heist. 
This was the sound repeated three times during the realization stage for the protagonist to create an over-the-top and comedic climax.  

It was quite a task putting things together as I was working from different locations; recording with Reason at home, then putting the sounds to the visual with Soundforge at Uni. The audio might not be the best, as I couldn't work on the fly the same, but I'm quite happy considering the narrative context and how the piece climaxes. 

Considerable feedback (and laughter) from my peers in IAMCG implies the climax was well executed.
I composed and recorded within Reason 6. 

The final cue sheet is below; 

Co Workers	Irvine Cruickshank	Scene	Sheet
Time	Sound	Duration	Directions / Processing / Source
00:00:00.000	Theme tune	00:00:04.505	Quirky, 8-bit style.
00:00:04.842	Typing	00:00:01.748	Main synchronous point last key, rhythm paramount.
00:00:05.749	Breath out	00:00:02.858	Voiced
00:00:06.994	Clock tick	00:00:02.252	Simple metallic ticking
00:00:08.977	Breath and grunt	00:00:01.647	Voiced
00:00:10.222	Computer off	00:00:00.336	Synthesized
00:00:10.793	Sigh 01	00:00:01.277	Voiced
00:00:11.029	Chair move	00:00:01.008	Bar stool spin
00:00:12.071	Grunt, chair kickback	00:00:01.042	Voice, bar stool rock
00:00:12.844	Sigh 02	00:00:01.445	Voiced
00:00:14.895	Pondering	00:00:02.118	Voiced
00:00:17.216	Shocked intake	00:00:00.840	Voiced
00:00:18.661	Ding, puzzled	00:00:00.706	High pitched glockenspiel, voice
00:00:20.645	Sigh 03	00:00:00.739	Voiced
00:00:22.125	Shakers	00:00:00.403	Vitamin bottle shake
00:00:23.167	Bwah 01	00:00:02.185	Inception score sample
00:00:25.352	Intake	00:00:00.673	Voiced
00:00:25.912	Bwah 02	00:00:02.064	Inception score sample
00:00:26.256	Intake 02	00:00:01.112	Voiced
00:00:27.824	Intake 03	00:00:00.520	Voiced
00:00:28.384	Bwah 03, fart	00:00:01.570	Inception score sample, voiced fart

Typical

Blender chose to die on me a couple of days ago, and had no luck with the Uni's versions of Pro Tools and Cubase, so I'll have to use SoundForge via the Uni computers. I don't predict the result will be great, but I'll get something to handle both audio and video playback so I can practice and get more in depth with after submission. 

Still can't believe my own version of Cubase let me down in the first place! 

First Audio Experience For 3D

A pending potential summer project, helped out my professional project artist with her awesome spatial constructs project in providing audio assets. Very rushed due to the nature of  deadline madness with lots of team based assignments along with the other written works. The vocally designed audio helps add to the creepy atmosphere.

Regarding Co-Workers I have abandoned the idea of just using music for the animations entirety to convey all the events. Instead I am utilising a mixture of music, sound effects and bizarre dialogue. The storyboard for the animation highlighting main events;

Opening with theme tune

Typing

Clock ticking

Power down computer, pushes away with chair

Shock, rocks chair, acknowledges co-worker 

Glue shake, winning smile

Baffled

Laxatives and animated eyebrows

Doomed, dominates visual focus

Sequence of "Oh Ohs"

Climax

Credits

"Audio-Vision"

With the delayed arrival of my copy of Schion's Audio Vision from the previous weekend I have managed to get stuck in! The foreword is really good, especially with how it conveys the relationship between sight and sound, and with upon further reading how sound can be viewed as the quintessential anchor in which films derive their context/meaning. 

Started producing sketches and ideas for the co-workers short. My idea for approaching this is to use an exclusively musical soundtrack. 

Examples I'm thinking of utilising in my silence essay;

                                                     
                                                            No Country for Old Men
  

                                                                  Spider-Man 2

Other effective examples include; Leon: The Professional, Se7en, Kingdom of Heaven and Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones.

Blender

Well the great and epic quest to find a suitable platform for my video editing, and on the cheap has found me in the form of Blender.
Although with a pretty intimidating UI at first glance, it is truly a very powerful and capable tool with a variety of different applications.

Trying to get something merely as simple as this, took more than eight hours, with seven different renders...

I haven't even scratched the surface.

With regards to animation, a funny example of a CGI one I had seen previously and forgotten about named "Dubstep Dispute";

A nice hybrid piece of music and sound effects that are synchronized nicely with the animation, where the music is used to convey language during the robot's "dispute". A lot of nice touches to highlight their digital nature, and the blackout for the subdrop.

Christopher Drake

Safe to say upon watching numerous titles from the DC Animated Universe that Christopher Drake has become my favorite animation composer. Particular highlights include; Justice League: Doom, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. 

"Dead Island" Trailer Music Experiment

Here is the video link for the alternative "Dead Island" trailer I created;

Really enjoyed writing the music for this and was able to get in the ballpark for a suitable pace really easily. Without actively watching and matching, I picked a tempo of 82 BPM, but upon writing the music and playing them both back together this seemed a bit too quick, but only slightly. I then reduced the tempo by 6 beats and that just happened to fit perfectly, by my view anyway.

The heartbeat bass drum was going to be featured from the offset but upon writing more so to the visual, I placed it to begin from bar 9 and from there works really well with the third flashback of the girl running.

Presentation Ideas

Well, a wee bit of a shame that I didn't get to do my presentation in the end, but on a positive note I picked out a lot of examples of clips that I found really effective in terms of their use of both music and sound, and in end I wanted to talk a bit about all of them.

My initial example from the offset was going to be the shoot-out scene from Sam Mendes' "Road to Perdition".

This excerpt deals with the final confrontation between Sullivan and Rooney with Sullivan taking out all of his men and finally Rooney himself. The music from the film was scored by my favourite film composer Thomas Newman and adds a lot of poignancy to the visuals. 

The most important thing I noticed (when watching with the analytical eye) was the how the sound effects and music were balanced during the development of this scene, more importantly with the music against the rain sound effects / layer. Upon their leaving of the diner, we hear both the rain and the music begin to swell. The rain layer then fades as the music gains prominence following the gangsters approach to the car. 
It is hear we get our first obvious sound cue comprising of Rooney failing to open the car door and in turn, starts frantically shaking the whole car where upon the drivers head dives upon the horn, yet we still only continue to hear the music alone.       

It is in this moment the gangsters know that they are not alone in the rain.
Rooney's men then begin to fall as we see the flashes of machine gun fire in the distance. Rooney stays still as the camera pans around him, along with the glistening bells and descending piano echoing his perceived stillness in time. 

(Currently devouring a lot of Batman animated media after revisiting "Rocksteady's" Arkham titles!)

*Particular favourites;

- Batman: Under the Red Hood

- Batman: Year One 

- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns 1+2*

Productiveness

I have for once been busy with some productive procrastination and produced an alternative soundtrack for the innovative and hard hitting trailer for Dead Island. This soundtrack features only music as both a personal preference and as an experimental feature to see what effect (if any) it would have on the visual presentation. I shall post this up soon...

Here is the original -

Cubase has also decided that it won't import videos.

Goody.

Welcome!

Well greetings and welcome to my audio production methods blog! 
I'd like to open by saying that I am a very keen enthusiast and lover of music, film, animation and video games and like to consume as much as I can when I get the opportunity!