Sound Production Animation - Evaluation

Evaluation

We were given the task of producing a soundtrack for a silent animation using Foley Sound. We had to create our own sound that was appropriate for the animation we chose (we chose Princess Mononoke), and add them in editing. We also choose an appropriate soundtrack (Prelude and Action by Kevin McLeod) to accompany the video.

What We Did Well

The foley sounds we created were fairly simple (blowing through a pen lid for the effect of arrows zipping through the air, tapping against wood for the effect of the horse's hooves etc.) but worked well when synchronised with the visuals as they were timed perfectly and gave the illusion of being the actual sound.

The soundtrack we chose to accompany the visuals was a piece of music called Prelude and Action by Kevin McLeod. This is a very fast paced piece of music that uses Drums and woodwind instruments. This is appropriate as it fits the tone of the visuals. Because of the location and time period the animation is set in, it wouldn't be appropriate to use music that uses any instruments like electric guitars, synthesisers or other technological effects as these are a lot more modern and wouldn't work alongside this clip.

The audio we recorded was synchronised well with the visuals (the sound effects of the arrows were placed exactly when the character's fired their bows). Our aim was to sync the sounds we recorded with the visuals so perfectly that viewers wouldn't be able to tell these are foley sounds as opposed to being the acutal sounds of horse's hooves, arrows being fired or swords clashing.

What Could Have Been Improved

One problem with our final video was that there were some sounds we could not produce ourselves. For example, we could not find a sound to match the visual of one of the soldiers slashing a woman with his sword. Although we created the sound of the sword swinging through the air, we could not find a way to mimic the sound of the steel cutting slashing her. This would be a complicated sound to create ouselves. Given more time, we may have been able to come up with some creative way of creating the sound, but we ended up needing this time to edit our video. This is something that, if we could repeat the task, we would give ourselves some time to improve upon.