What role does music play in a scene? Is it important?

Let me start by saying that I have never had the opportunity to actually animate to a music track. For that reason, I am not going to try and explain the process by which animators will work to a pre-scored track. I highly suggest you read the chapter on “Disney Sounds” in The Illusion of Life if you want to get a more concrete idea of how to animate to music.

There are some films that have such an impact on us that even decades after seeing them we can easily hum the music before recalling specific images in our minds. The amazing music that helped to make some films famous becomes ingrained in our consciousness. To quote The Illusion of Life, music “becomes the soul of our memory, forever coloring our impressions.”

I remember when I was nine years old and living in the Bahamas, on the coast of Nassau. There were only two VCR tapes where we were staying: Rock n' Roll High School, starring the Ramones, and Jaws. While living there, and even up until this very day, I have had a fairly strong fear of the ocean. Actually, just this past year, while living in New Zealand, I got my scuba diving certification specifically to combat my fear of deep water. You see, I blame that fear on the movie Jaws. When I'm in the ocean, I can hear the film's score in my head, and it sends shivers up my spine. I don’t think about the images of the shark killing the woman at the beginning, or the little boy with glasses disappearing in a pool of his own blood in front of all the people on the beach. I hear the music. Anyone who has watched this movie can quickly start humming the music. Go ahead, do it right now. Bom Bom......Bom Bom......Bom Bom Bom Bom....Ban na na! So thank you, Mr. Spielberg. This is what your film did to a nine year old boy living on the coast of a Caribbean island.

Music in a film, when done right, has the power to become its own character. As a tool it serves a number of important roles. Music is given the job of emphasizing critical points in the narrative, such as love between the heroes, for example, when Jake and Neytiri fly for the first time together in Avatar; or the death of a major character like when Angie Dickinson gets sliced up in Dressed to Kill; it could be an amazing accomplishment or pivotal feel-good moment, like when Daniel kicks Johnny in the face and wins the Karate tournament; or a very special kiss like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach in From Here to Eternity. Music also serves to enforce the overall ambiance or theme of a film, and therefore connects strongly with the film genre. If I play you the music from the movie Suspiria by Goblin, I guarantee you will know Suspiria is a horror film. There are countless films that have successfully used music to elevate the emotional impact of the entire film. The Godfather (Love Theme - Nino Rota), Laurence of Arabia (Maurice Jarre), Rocky (Gonna Fly Now – Bill Conti), Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Battle Without Honor or Humanity – Tonoyasu Hotei). In films such as these, music is used in an almost Pavlovian way. By first associating it with a character or a strong emotional moment, it will later be repeated at critical moments as a way of re-introducing the same emotional arcs to the audience.

Another important device for music is to be associated with a particular character. “1, 2, Freddy's coming for you...” was Freddy Krueger's theme, or Darth Vader's theme (The Imperial march – John Williams). One of my favorite films of all time is Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time In the West. In that film, each character has their own music. Whenever Charles Bronson is in a scene we can hear the soft hissing of a harmonica. When Henry Fonda shows up, the most menacing music is introduced. The heroine Claudia Cardinale has her own music, and Jason Robards has his. Like Fantasia, the score was written and composed before filming began, and Leone would play the music in the background during shooting so the actors could feel the emotional arc of their character.

What are some other examples you can think of where the music, first used as a tool to move the narrative forward, can become so powerful that it takes on a life all its own. How about Hitchcock's Psycho? Anyone who has seen this film had shivers run up their spine when they heard the sharp scream of the violin while “mother” stabs away. In fact, for many of us, the sharp repetition of that violin is the first thing we recall when thinking about Psycho, not the images themselves.

So where does that put music when we think about animation? Well, like any live action film, animation is about narrative and performance. So in the same way, music's role is to enforce the power and emotional impact of either the character, the scene, a story point, or an all-encompassing theme. Music can even be associated with a physical action in the animation, such as Tom the Cat tip-toeing across the kitchen floor as he hunts little Jerry. Each step he makes is accompanied by a musical note, increasing in pitch. “dum dum dum dum dum.”

When I think of music associated with certain animated characters, I think of the Seven Dwarves “Heigh Ho” theme and how beautifully it painted the persona of the dwarves; or the French accordion-style music associated with the romantic Pepe Lepew; or how about Sebastien's pseudo-Jamaican rhythms. Music is so woven into the fabric of Disney films, that the animation performances, while still brilliantly executed and capable of pushing the narrative forward all by itself, are elevated to a much more powerful emotional level because of the music and lyrics. In fact, music is so intricately woven into the characterization and emotional development of the narrative of so many animated films, that one could hardly even imagine watching Beauty and the Beast without Belle or Lumiere singing. Imagine other animated films with music intricately woven into the emotional arc of the narrative, such as Mickey Mouse in Fantasia which was animated entirely to a pre-existing score.

Music is a directorial device that connects us emotionally to a scene; Walt Disney believed its importance was paramount. Historically, it has been a part of film since almost the very beginning. I hope one day I'll have the opportunity to animate to a music score. If anyone has had some experience animating to an existing score, please leave some feedback and let us know what kind of experience you had doing it. I would love to hear from you!

Guest Blogger Aaron Gilman

Do You Have Any Tips on how to Take Good Video Reference?

Here are a few tips:

1) Try a few takes, but try not to overdo it. In my experience, the first few takes will feel more natural and spontaneous, but if you record the same reference 20- 30 times, it will start to feel repetitive and the acting will not flow.

2) Sometimes I ask friends to do a take or two for me. Sometimes other people can come up with surprising acting ideas for a shot, things I would not think of by myself.

3) The other important thing is to get all the technical stuff out of the way: make sure the camera is well positioned on a solid tripod, the angle is good (similar to the shot), there is enough light, etc. It's hard to get good acting when you have to stop all the time to fix the lights, the camera angle, the tripod, etc. Take enough time to set up well, so later you can forget about it and just focus on the acting.

4) Try to get some acting experience! It can be a lot of fun. Improv is probably a good way to start, but there are many ways to get some acting training, which can help an animator hugely! And it's also fun!

Guest Blogger Raquel Rabbit

Can You Discuss the Pros and Cons of Being a Specialist such as a Character Animator, Versus Being a Generalist?

When I started working at Rainmaker, I was told that they didn't have the luxury of hiring specialists and that everyone was expected to be generalists.

My first task was texturing teeth. I had no idea what I was doing and I nearly lost my job. No kidding. Fortunately for me, as talented as the artists at Rainmaker are, I learned what generalists generally lack are decent animation skills.

Animation is just such a demanding discipline. Movement is something that is either right or wrong, not much room for artists who can “kind of animate.”

That said, there is nothing wrong with building your skills across the board. I don't agree with the idea that artists can't learn how to script, for example.

Guest Blogger Mark Pullyblank

Can You Provide Some Tips on Animating Secondary Characters?

There is a tendency for animation students to forget the importance of film theory. Animation is of course about movement, so we often look to animations created in the past as our principal way of learning. But the ideas about animation that occupy themselves less with core physical mechanics and the nuances of motion, such as narrative, composition, staging and timing, are first and foremost rooted in the language of film narrative. So if we are to understand the creation of animation not for itself, but for a greater whole anchored in the language of film, then we can look to the entire history of live action film to gain a greater understanding of how to approach various obstacles in CG.

When we refer to secondary characters, we are often just speaking about the characters occupying the background. These are characters that are not directly involved in the performance of the heroes or principal characters in the shot. Background characters fulfill the critical task of making the scene believable. So just to be clear, don't think of a secondary character as someone that is less important to the story than the hero (for example, the hero's ugly twin brother that only shows up once in the film). A secondary character is like an extra or a background character. Their performances are a critical aspect of a shot, and require just as much love from the animator as the principals. In live action film, a great deal of importance is placed on the composition and direction of the extras in the scene. Quite often, when I watch a film for the second time, I will look exclusively at the background characters in a scene as it unfolds, to see how the extras were directed. You can sometimes catch an extra doing something odd or performing in a way that is inconsistent with the scene and the other extras surrounding him. When this happens, if the viewer catches it, the believability of the scene is breached. While this may only be in some small way, depending on the nature of the performer's action and how close to camera they are, the fact of the matter is that background characters must be handled with care, as they can serve to either enforce the story or have a negative impact on it.

There have even been some films where this notion gets turned on its head by the more masterful directors. Take for example a truly brilliant scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, where the insane Bruno Anthony (played by Robert Walker) sits with a large crowd who are watching a tennis match. Every extra turns their heads from left to right, left to right, in perfect unison, watching the off camera tennis ball getting hit back and forth over the net. But as the camera pushes in, we notice Bruno sitting right in the middle of the crowd. He does not turn his head, but instead stares menacingly at his co-star who sits across the court. One person, performing out of character from the rest, can draw a huge amount of attention to the viewer. In this case, the character out of synch wasn't an extra, but a main character. Hitchcock used this to create a feeling of ominousness and insanity, revealing to the viewer that Bruno is not like everyone else.

Let's look at another example. Imagine watching a movie about a high school football game. In the fourth quarter, the score is tied and there's three seconds left on the clock. Now imagine that the stands are filled with........no one. Imagine the stadium is empty. No one is watching the game. This would have a dramatic impact on the believability of the scene. No boos, no cheering, no ambient motion filling every shot, no cut-ins to reactions when a goal is scored, or when a pass is missed. The scene would be flat!

Some directors have completely mastered the use of extras or background characters in their movies. I think of Robert Altman films like Nashville, or Stanley Kubrick's epic masterpiece Barry Lyndon, or Laurence of Arabia. These are examples of films with hundreds of extras performing in a way that enforces the narrative but never dominates or overshadows the principal characters unless otherwise intended (as we saw with Hitchcock).

From an animation standpoint, background characters can often provide the animator with an enormous amount of creative freedom. Most often, background characters won’t be as rigidly directed as the principal characters. This means that the animator can experiment in many different ways. Quite often, early motion tests, either for rig development or as a means to understand the way the character moves and expresses itself, will find their way into the backgrounds of a scene. Because so little direction is often put into background performances, animators may go straight ahead in the creation process, animating as loose and creatively as possible. Background animation opens the animator up to the whole gambit of possible actions that character might perform in the scene. Going back to our crowded stadium example, you could animate a little girl eating a hotdog and the wiener pops out the back of the bun and lands on her dress. Or maybe you'll need to animate 10 different ways characters might clap their hands. Whatever the scene might be, background animation can be super detailed, refined, and creative.

There are, however, some limitations both creatively and technically when creating background performances. Some background behaviors may be required to cycle, or conform to the requirements of a massive pipeline (crowd simulations that plug and play different cycling animations). As with live action, when animating background animation, the performance should never be so big as to draw attention to itself and possibly remove focus from the heroes. Nor should the actions be inconsistent with the tone of the scene, nor should the style of the animation diverge from the general style of the project. Often you may not know where or how your background animation will be used, so you can end up sort of animating in the dark. Inevitably, someone will need to customize the performance to the shot for a number of possible reasons. The animations may need to conform to certain frame ranges, or the performance may need to be altered for uneven terrain or camera angles specific to the shot they are placed in. The eyeline of the character may need to be changed, foot contacts, a character's silhouette or orientation to camera, or a “big” action in the animation may be landing in sync with an important moment in the hero’s performance.

You can have a ton of fun creating animation for secondary characters. Keep things loose and creative, and remember that they are there to enforce the narrative qualities of the scene, so they serve a critical importance in the language of film.

Guest Blogger Aaron Gilman