Live action, animation, music and sound design : functions and effects in new compositions

Abstract

Sound has always played an important role in film-making. As early as the 1890s, at a time when films were silent, musicians performed in accompaniment to such films using the piano. This dissertation involves a study focused on sound design and music, their function in the moving picture, and the effects of sound on the viewer. For this study three short films portraying different emotions, including an original animation, are being presented. An original score (composition) was composed for each of the short films for the purpose of showing the importance of sound in conjunction with a moving picture. The style used for these compositions was inspired by modern contemporary film composers (hence the term ‘new compositions’ in the title). This dissertation is structured in three parts. The first part begins with an introduction, followed by the tools used and the process for creating the compositions and concludes by stating whether this study has reached its aim, suggests improvements and how the proposed ideas can be developed further. Part two contains the musical scores for the soundtracks followed by part three: electronic material with all the films containing all sound elements compiled in three DVDs. The DVDs can only be used with a laptop/PC since they were optimised to maintain the films’ high resolution.