Fully synchronized sound was used in Steamboat Willie, which was the first film Mickey Mouse starred in. The music is used to set a certain mood in the film. For example, the main melody of the film is jolly and jovial, which presents a lighthearted tone. The music intensifies whenever there’s a strong action that’s occurring, such as an impact or a chase. The use of brass is prominent when portraying an intense action. The octave of the sound effects is also very important for showing character. Mickey uses higher octave sounds because of his smaller stature and playful nature, while Pete’s sounds are more beastly and lower octave.
Seven Dickens
6 posts
The short film I’ll be focusing on will be “Shop: A Pop Opera” by Jack Stauber.
I was drawn to this one specifically partially because of its unorthodox style, its animation, its music, and its themes & message. The other part is because of the creator’s most well-known work, Opal. I was going to talk about that short, but I went with Shop because of how many people already talked about Opal online and the lack of discussion around the latter.
I particularly want to talk about the themes and animation of the short the most, but I’m going to try to see if I can find anything revolving around the actual production of the film, which might be difficult since I’m not sure if the creator really talks about the behind-the-scenes aspects of his work.
I will be choosing The Cameraman’s Revenge by Wladyslaw Starewicz. I was interested at the very unique approach to creating the puppets needed for the film, as well has how that could tie in to whatever theme there could be.
I will be focusing on: The story, the theming, the production and inspiration, and potential impact it might’ve had on stop motion film-making.
I think the reason why a lot of companies tend to base their movies off of printed media is because of the well known IP and the fact that the already existing source material gives filmmakers a better visual of how the movies should look like in live action, while also giving audiences an easier time to get familiar and be more comfortable watching the movies. Since comics and graphic novels are more visual mediums than regularly printed books, they already have the framework of what they could do, whether it’s a comedy, action, suspense, horror, slice of life, etc.
There is a wide pool of stories and characters that filmmakers and creators can pull from when talking about comics and graphic novels, some can be very well-known like Spider-Man, X-Men, Superman, Wonder Woman, or Batman. Others were not as well-known or very obscure, like Guardians of the Galaxy, Ms. Marvel, Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, Blue Beetle, etc. And there are some indie comics that have a cult following that has grown in popularity over time like the Archie stories, or Scott Pilgrim.
Shadow puppets and stop motion both have similarities to one another. Both use physical objects to create motion using either light or a various amount of pictures in a sequence. They also have the advantage of being tangible, so you have more control over what the viewer sees at any given moment. However they differ in what they can show visually. With stop motion, you really aren’t as limited to what you can create compared to shadow puppets, where you have to create the puppets so they can work best when cast with light.
My name is Seven Dickens, and my major is Computer Science. I chose this course for a couple of reasons. 1: I’m interested in learning programming, mostly for game development purposes, but I’d like something practical. And 2: I was previously majoring in Animation & Motion Graphics, but it was burning me out from my own personal stuff, so I figured learning on my own was the better call for now.
I’ve been really interested in eastern animation ever since middle school I’m pretty sure, and I’ve had a recent strong interest in 3d thanks to Spiderverse in 2018, but I could never sit down and understand how the workflow worked. I’m still not sure about my career goals at the moment, but I’m trying to shoot for something in either animation or programming.
Something about me personally is that I really like to draw. I’m a digital artist and have been for about 5-6 years now. I’ve tried animating for myself a good number of times in the past, but again, I haven’t been doing so well in 3d. I’ve been doing some light practicing for 2d. I also like playing video games, preferably rhythm, action, platforming, and fighting.
