Week 5: Sound and Politics

Sound

To study sound we must learn to listen to films and animations.

This week we are learning about sound in animation. In order to study sound we must take into consideration the different types of sounds in an animate: voice, music score, effect and sound mixing. However, it is important to note that dialogue (voice) may not be the most important type of sound in an animate - as they are all as important as each other.

Norman McLaren is a notable individual who was intrigued in the analysis of sound and animation. He was particularly interested in synesthesia - where sound has the ability to stimulate more than one sensory or cognitive pathway. This led to his creation of an animate called Neighbours - a piece with no dialogue, but just music that plays in correlation with movement:

As you can see, the piece is entirely led by sound and we can 'see' this sound via the movement of the characters.

This is something I may want to consider in my assessed project. Before this lecture I wasn't aware of the vast power that sound has in terms of leading a narrative, but I can see now that it has the ability to be more powerful than dialogue (and can make an animate much more interesting!).

Above: an example of synesthesia.

Politics

When creating an animation, we must remember one important rule: they shouldn't just look aesthetically pleasing, but should connote ideas and values too. It's important to note that whilst many famous animations may look good, they contain a lot of political ideas and historical values too.

Disney is well known for this. Several of their shorts, films and animates contain some sort of political message - some more prominent than others. As one animator said:

'I think animation, particularly political animation, it essentially shows what's behind the scenes and people aren't get that either in the newspaper or cable news or the radio. You know you are able to bring people in with cartoons, with the fun but then serve a dose of opinion and news as well'

- Mark Fiore, online animator

The above video is a notable example of this.

I must take political and ethical values into consideration when creating my assessed project. I need to ask myself: 'How will I portray William Blake's poem 'The Fly' with meaning?'. It can't just look good, it has to contain meaning too.