Bleatings from the Sheep

"Every Child"....Sound and the Amazing Ability of the Human Voice Box

Right, so...that title is a little wordy. Hmm. Oh well.

At any rate, today in class we watched a short animation called "Every Child." Only, instead of watching it to analyze the story, we were watching it mainly for the quality and creativity behind the sounds used. And with good reason, I suppose; it was a very interesting approach to using sound. Instead of "professional"-type effects, the two guys made all the sounds themselves. I've never been very good at mimicking different sounds using only my voice, but I find it thoroughly entertaining and fascinating to be around someone who can. Just as a side note, for any of you familiar with the comic book character Nightcrawler...my dad can say "BAMF" perfectly; it's amazing, and I imagine that if it were a real sound that is exactly what it would sound like.

Anywho, I digress. I just wanted to write about how I was pretty impressed with the way the audio was done in the short. Granted, not every movie can really work with sound effects made only by the human voice. For a high-budget blockbuster, some high-budget audio would be perfectly appropriate. But for a simple little film like this one, it’s completely appropriate. And it’s fairly encouraging, as well. After all, we’re all starting out here, and I’m sure that we’ll be needing to use whatever resources we have available to us. Not just for audio, but in other aspects as well. We will need to be getting creative. And the nice thing about what we watched in class today was that it shows an example of just how well low-budget yet effective methods can work in a project. Not only was it fun to watch the animation and listen to the sound effects, but it was also inspiring to see just how much the human voice box -- and some creativity -- can actually accomplish.

posted by Caitlynn @ 3:57 PM