Animation: A Guide To Animated Film Techniques, Roger Noake

Chapter 3: Sound and Image

The animators of films usually create the visual images after the soundtrack has been recorded, which allows them a lot of control over synchronization. Like previous readings on the subject, this sound reading delves into the history of sound recording in combination with visual arts, namely animated movies. It talks about the different types of sync movies can contain, such as 'parallel' where sound and image run in parallel, or 'printing sync,' when the sound is advanced slightly to make an allowance for screen projection logistics, or 'lip sync' which is the synchronization of lip movements with speech. The reading was a bit dated because it talks mainly about recording on physical film, while nowadays most animation is finalized digitally. It is interesting in terms of a historical learning perspective, but not particularly useful. One term popped up here again that I remembered from a reading previously: Mickey Mousing refers to sound matching perfectly to the action on-screen, which can appear mechanical and forced. Instead these days it is common for sound to occur a minute second after an action, as we would hear it in real life.
this reading adds another category of atmosphere to the already existing three sound categories.
A point brought up that had not been mentioned before in our classes or readings was using a documentary approach to character voicing; that is, instead of recording voice-overs for existing characters, instead animating sourced dialogues. I can think of two prominent examples of this that I have watched. The first is Brown Bag Films' 'Give Up Yer Aul Sins' which reenacts original recordings of children in Dublin schoolrooms in the 1960's.



The second is 'The Ricky Gervais Show' which is a TV series released by HBO, which is animated to original recordings of Gervais and his friends for an online podcast.



This chapter went into great depth of detail about the technicalities of sound recording and syncing, which although interesting and useful for the future, I did not find particularly relevant to my studies at the moment.