Winnie Xue

Week 12

For this week, we are reviewing for the upcoming exam, which includes all the topic that has been discussed since the first week. 

they includes:

-key chion principles of added value

-materialisation  / dematerliasation

-synchresis

-sd principles

-empathetic vs unempathetic music

-extension of screen space / focalization

-circumplex model of emotion

-diegetic / non-diegetic sound

-sound vs score

-music can change perspective, emotion , perception of time

-huron’s misattribution

-anchorage

-sd breakdown

-earned rights

Week 11 

“A 4D is an entertainment presentation system combining a 3D film with physical effects that occur in synchronisation with the film. 4D is most often presented in custom-built theatres at special venues such as theme parks and amusement parks. Effects in the 4D may include vibration, air jets, water sprays, and leg and back ticklers. Hall effects may include smoke, rain, lightning, air bubbles, special smells, and pre show space. Despite the growth of 4D technology, the effects of such contents which help users to be more immersed into the contents or give users more fun have not been studied extensively. “ -  SooTae Kwon1, GwangShin Kim2, SoYoung Chung3, SunWoo Ko4, GeunHo Lee5 

4D is related to storytelling, software, hardware and 4D effect design. 4D data is usually complex. 4D world implies that there are infinite 3D space adjacent to our 3D world.

What is the physical effect of 4D to the users?

 = An experiment has been conducted and participants showed more fun on the neck air blast, seat back vibrator and seat bladder.

For immersion, reality and sensibility, participants rated 7/10.  Immersive visualization systems provide large workspaces, allowing great perception of huge 4D objects. Big size high resolution screens, multiple screens and stereoscopic vision increase this feeling.

4D encouraged participant to forget about their realworld and totally immersed to the world they created. And the movement, 4D effects,sound makes things more believable and realistic. 

The argument that heightened aesthetic experiences may be directly related to sensory absences (manga vs anime): Anime is the addition of movement, music and sound. After anime has been developed, many people in Japan still reading manga. Why? Manga has no sound, no movement or animation, and only graphics. In terms of price, readers and viewers don’t have to worry since it might be available for free in the internet. But why do people still read manga? Because there is still aesthetic experience in reading and looking at the drawings. You still have the feelings of your own, the feelings that isn’t manipulated by music, movement or sound effects, but merely the drawing itself. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yMl43vmnlQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxLpQvVJ39s

Week 10

Foxtel is the role of indents. We identified a similar video trailer of program called ‘Showcase’ but with different type of sound design. There are some good and bad examples that is shown by lecturer in the class. Score is to keep people happy, leading people’s emotions. Sound design is to make things interesting and less monotone.

Identifying the demographic and speaking to it

The brief - what they say they want vs what they actually want

Sometimes what client wanted is different from what they said. For example a client come and wanted a designer to do music for contemporary dance. They said they want it to be beautiful and elegant. But the term beautiful is kinda relative. Things that are beautiful to our own ears might be different to others. So make sure to ask questions that let the client to speak more detailed keywords about : fast , slow or moderate, intense or relaxing, etc.

The costs and benefits of the choices you make - The reason they’re paying you so much vs the reason they’re paying you so little

Sometimes a work in music or sound could be paid for an huge amount by the client. Why ? Because their demand is high too. Consider the time of the project is 3 months, then they bought your time and your 3 months freedom with the payment. Why are the payment sometimes so little? Maybe the duration of the project is longer and then the demand is not so high. 

In freelance, talent not as important as the perception of reliability, your work ethic, and them being happy to work with you.

Week 10 Exercise 2

We are doing the one page scroll, with text in the middle.

Week 9

Suture connects the notion of unheard music. Suture has been a significant topic in meditations on the representation of subjectivity in film narrative; the process of editing, of stitching together pieces of film, became, in the hands of suture theorists, more than simply a device of continuity editing, that is, more than a subset of conventional editing strategies for telling stories efficiently in film time and space.

Gorbman refers to suture and «unheard» music as a means of concealing the fictive nature of cinema and lulling the spectator into a state in which he will be less critical and less alert to the fictionality of film and disregard the fact, that he sits in a darkened room while watching a fictive story unfold on screen.

Music is a vehicle that is often inaudible (Gorbman 1987) much as the font of this page in transparent until I draw attention to it.The viewer/listener accepts the musical meaning, but acoustical properties of the music itself seem to function transparently as a kind of acoustical font.

Suture is really about much more than shot/reverse shot cutting. Suture functions in a “multiplicity” of “layerings and times and advances” (of which multiplicity shot/reverse shot sequences are only one example), and the deeper function of suture is to articulate “the organisation and hold of the look and looks in film”.

-Notes: suture is about layering, shot editing, to tell story in film time and space. it is to let the spectator less alert of their surrounding environment and totally immersed to the film space. 

http://academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/frames/editing/Butte08.pdf

http://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/6016/97122214.pdf?sequence=1

Week 8

Dynamic Range

Audio levels (such as programme loudness, peak programme levels and reference levels) are typically measured as a decibel ratio.

 Dynamic range is the difference between the quietest and loudest sound in your mix. A mix that contains quiet whispers and loud screams has a large dynamic range.

Theoritically, maximum dynamic range for human ear is up to 140dB.

Rescoring music

changes its focus from the original one to another

changes mood (from reflective sacred to celebratory)

changes perception of time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngElkyQ6Rhs (original)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff0QZ9-YM4E (rescore)

For the original star wars, it's more to mystery and they used more sound effects, background music is gradually getting louder when the trailer almost reach the end. The music is more futuristic type.

-Notes: For the rescore, there are more to orchestra in the background. I personally prefer the rescore version. The music is more complicated than the original one, and I think it affects my mood more than the original version. The music is more to classical orchestra type.

Week 7

dematerialisation (dreamy dreamlike) : not hearing something that should be there.

sound designer choose to not let the listener listen to sound that is supposed to be there.

dematerialisation : dreamy nightmare which makes you feel weird.

https://youtu.be/FXMJTGna_xA?t=1m41s

materialisation involves high frequency sound, details.

materialisation gives information about the concrete materiality of sound production in film space.

They give information about:

-what causes the sound? - wood, metal, papers,etc.

-How the sound is produced? -friction , impact, uneven oscillations, etc

High quality sound contain more information in high frequency.

materialisation gives more realistic feeling.  

-Notes: dematerialisation is more into dreamy like mood, something that viewers know that is unrealistic. Materialisation is the more realistic sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmgMCwVWI5E

Week 6 

Synchresis is forging between something one sees and something one hears. It's mental fusion between sound and picture that occurs in the same time. Picture and sound comes hand in hand to intensify on another. Synchresis added depth to flat pictures of the movie.

We all know that sound is recorded separately in order to be freely edited or mixing.

Chion’s basic theory is that the movie and its viewer sign an audiovisual contract implying that the audience “agrees” to ignore perceptual inequalities between film and reality. The moving picture on the screen and the sound from the loudspeakers is perceived as one indivisible unit. This is not a matter of course. In the childhood of the sound-film such a convention-contract was not established. The audience could feel that the people on the screen were moving along with the synchronic sound as in a ballet.

So if the picture shows a door being closed and the sound from the loudspeakers presents a heavy bang the audience imagines having witnessed how the door is in fact slammed.

Perceptual Synchresis

Film makers often want to elucidate and strengthen silent movements. The whining of a karate kick is in reality barely perceptible. But in filmic situations it is now an accepted convention to accentuate the movement with volume and force

Emotional Synchresis

Sound-naration are manipulated in certain way to achieve the mood the filmmaker want. For ex, In the warm and gentle woman every harsh sound in her voice is taken away to give the voice a pleasant flow

"An example of heavy synchresis is found in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, 1935. The sound we hear of a terrified woman screaming, at the finding of a corpse, comes from a howling steam-whistle. Since drama and intensity are great, we would not have thought her scream unrealistic had Hitchcock not shown the source of that sound by cutting in a steam-engine afterwards. "

Music Synchresis

This is more known in cartoon, where music act as accompaniment of movements.This is also known as mickeymousing. If an animated figure climbs steps, stairs or a ladder the orchestra plays an ascending scale. If he falls to the ground you hear a whistling pipe in a descending glissando and then a cymbal crash.

Humor Synchresis

Sound and music sounded improbably to the movement. The sound and music are to be used to indicate jokes in heavy and surprising way creating comical effect. This is mostly exaggerated and unrealistic.

Horror Synchresis

This involves a lot of heavy sound,and sudden rapid movement. Sound designers are looking for new sounds to create horror or creepy feelings that make listeners run away.

https://vimeo.com/41195693

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TtJM39JjnM

-Notes:

Synchresis is forging between something viewers see and something viewers hear. It is used to intensify image and sound. There’s perceptual synchresis (intensify something silent) , emotional synchresis (narrator were ask to match their voice with the mood in the movie), music synchresis (especially in cartoon like mickeymousing according to what character is doing in the movie), humor synchresis (exaggeration in sound)  and horror synchresis (creating a new horrorly sound that scare the viewers).

http://filmsound.org/when_picture_and_sound_merge/

Week 5

Empathetic sound

Sound effects in the environment reflects the overall mood of the scene - sometimes it even shows the characters inner feelings(mood matches the mood of the action).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrCiM3rSKnc

An-empathetic sound

Consists of music or sound effects that exhibit an indifference to the current tone, emotion, or plot-point of the film.  creating a strong sense of the tragic.

As when a radio continues to play a happy tune when a character dies

".. a scene with indifferent music has the effect not of freezing the emotion but rather of intensifying it on a cosmic background ..  

.. Anempathic music conjures up the mechanical texture of films tapestry of emotions and senses ... What does anempathetic music do if not to unveil this reality of cinema, its robotic face? ..  " Audiovision page 8-9, 221-222 and Ron Bochar in E Weis: Sync Tanks, Cineaste 1995

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWq_Ys3DvCo

-Notes

Sometimes in killing scene, instead of horror music, the sound designer chose to use upbeat rock music. The misattribution instead, let the viewers feel the mood more. Like person died while showering, the sound of the water still there, giving a strong sense of tragedy, which is an example of anemphatetic sound. While emphatetic sound, is the sound that matches the movie. for example, in a scene where there’s a couple went on date, a slow relaxed and romantic music were played.

http://filmsound.org/chion/empath.htm

Week 4

Richard Wagner

Wagner has been called the “last great romantic,” following in the tradition of composers like Beethoven, but is also known as the father of modern music, experimenting with dissonance and the leitmotif.No composer could escape his influence, and unquestionably, he was a leader in telling a story through music.

In his later operas, Wagner would use a reoccurring theme of music to symbolize themes like love or redemption, or would attach musical cues to characters.

This experiment in opera was not new—as Wagner was writing his opera, Verdi was using the idea of the leitmotif in his I due Foscari. However, Wagner’s leitmotifs were not just “calling cards” to identity themes or characters. Rather, he used them to advance the drama and get to the heart of the story.

Wagner continued his exploration of the leitmotif, making his melodies more complex than in any previous opera. The first notes heard during the prelude make up the “longing” motif, conveying the passion of Tristan and Isolde. The “longing” motif reappears when Tristan and Isolde drink a love potion and are instantly filled with desire, when the villainous King Marke prevents them from being together, and when Tristan and Isolde die at the end of the opera.12 For the first time, Wagner used leitmotifs so that if a listener was familiar with them, he could follow the story of the opera through the music, without having to look at the libretto.

His development of leitmotif opened new ways of using music in storytelling

Leitmotif

a leitmotif (leading motif) is used to refer to characters, objects, emotions, or ideas

Each character has at least one motif (though many of them have multiple motifs), and as the characters become tempted toward love or power, their motifs entwine with the motifs of the corresponding side.

Recognising leitmotif can give a listener a greater appreciation of a story and connect a listener with a work of art on a deeper level.

Examples of modern leitmotif:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIDtKYCzwqo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F57D6q1JCj0

-Notes: 

Wagner introduced leitmotif in his operas, but the difference of wagner’s leitmotif with others are he used it to advance the drama and get to heart of the story. Leitmotif is also used to identify characters because each character has their own theme. 

https://kathonline.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/tolson2015-richardwagner-amirabou-jaoude.pdf

WEEK 10 (exercise 1)

We learned about transporting files from ai to css by using css properties in adobe illustrator. 

We learned about animation timing, animation duration, animation iteration count, animation fillmode, animation direction.

WEEK 9

We learnt about adaptive layout, which make the image or the whole website to stretch if we drag the window of chrome/safari/etc. We did the adaptive layout with mediaqueries in css by setting the website width. if the website width is A px, then the view would be like A. if the website width is B px, then the view would be like B.

Week 3

Foley’s importance in animation and movie production has been widely recognised. Jack Foley is a sound editor who invented this craft. The person who does foley is called foley artist.

Foley artist has to pay attention on what actor’s behaviour on screen, environment (as the sound during the day and night is different) and sound option to produce a proper sound for the screen. While foley artist is doing their job creating sound effect, foley editor records the custom effects that are needed to be performed on the foley stage.

Foley sound is always better than real ones.

Diegetic sound is sound whose source is originated from the screen. Diegetic sound is the actual sound. (voices of characters, sounds made by objects in the story, music from instruments in the story)

While non-diegetic sound is sound whose source is not on the screen. This includes narrator’s commentary, sound effects which the source of sound is not visible on the screen, and score.

Diegetic sound:

On Screen

Off Screen

Transitional

Differentially audible

Inner voice

Remembered sound

Imagined sound

Distorted sound

Spoken Writing

Non Diegetic sound:

Narrative voice (narration spoken by a voice of the viewer does not perceive as belonging to a character in the fiction, or any narrator built into the fiction)

Non-diegetic music

Sound inaudible to the characters in the fiction but understood by the viewer as not stemming from any apparent source within the story space.

-Notes: Sound from the movies aren’t recorded immediately, but instead it is recorded separately. Sound that is performed is called foley, and performed by foley artist. Diegetic sound is sound originated from the screen world, for example character’s voices, objects in the story, and musical instruments that is played in the story). Non-diegetic soud is sound not originated from the screen (mostly score that leads the viewers to the movie’s mood but then doesn’t seem like anyeone is playing the music on screen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_4hOY-9nKA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KUZVwsjTvw

http://smcnetwork.org/system/files/smc2011_submission_111.pdf