This is my 2nd assignment for the Illusion of Life course. It’s really a big project for me that I tried many ways to finish it. I have freehand drawn the basic character’s motions and have scanned those into computer. Then I used Photoshop and Premiere to make the mouse move. It is really a good chance to familiarize myself with those software. The background music has been added in this video as I was considering that was necessary. Thanks for the lecture and the tutorials in last week, I have got basic knowledge of soundtrack. I downloaded a free background music from audio blocks and placed it into my video. The previous video looks like an old fashion silent film before The Jazz Singer which is the first movie with synchronized dialogue sequences in the world. I want to combine sound with my video simply because the sound can make my video more attractive. In addition, adding sounds into a film can create an impression of reality to audiences. A film editor, Walter Murch, who is also a sound designer, remarks ‘the most successful sounds seems not only to alter what the audience sees but to go further and trigger a kind of conceptual resonance between image and sound: the sound makes us see the image differently, and this new images makes us hear the sound differently, which in turns makes us see something else in the image, which makes us hear different things in the sound, and so on’ (Graeme 2009). Combining Sound and Image together may create a new horizon as well as a different meaning. In my opinion, a successful movie should have its own background music which is just fitting with to express a certain atmosphere or a spirit. Take the Pirates of the Caribbean 3 for example, when I heard the background music Drink up me Hearties, I found that it is quite difficult to describe the state of my mind, but whatever it is, it helped me to focus on the scene and elicited my feelings. Moreover, the song brought me into the film and made me feel the aggressive, powerful and strong enthusiasm to win. However, in my greedy mouse. I chose a brisk and lively music with the slap-happy sound effects instead of an exciting background music and believed that it can effectively represent the characters of the greedy, smart and tricky mouse.
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Reference:
Graeme, H, Ruth, D & Jochen, E 2009, Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: A critical overview, Bloomsbury Academic, New York & London.