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Global Sonic Cultures

The Interview

The task we were asked to do before we broke up for Easter was to interview someone and try to make it relevant to our essay; however, I only decided on my essay title the week we broke up, and while I did have a small interview that touched more on coding with a friend I know who makes GUIs for various programs, I decided to do another one that was more relevant to what I’m doing now.

I can’t post the recording of the interview as the person I interviewed is someone I only know from church and I don’t know too well, and they weren’t comfortable with me posting a voice recording of them.

So here is a transcription of the interview I conducted with an animation student.

Q: “Hello, today I’ll be interviewing an animation student who studies at UAL, Angelica. Thank you for agreeing to this.

So, to start things off, how important is sound in your own craft? And on top of that, how important do you think sound is in the field of animation?”

A: “As someone who specialises in creating moving images, I find that sound is very important in conveying a story, and builds onto the images that you already see on-screen. I’ve used sound to accompany scenes to emphasise certain emotions, as well as to continue narrative plot points; sounds associated with a certain theme or character can help the audience identify that in scenes where that may be more subtle, allowing layers of meaning to be built.

Sound is also important in setting the tone of a film, as the same film with two different sound designs can produce two very different effects, based on the atmosphere and emotions the sound produces.

I find that engaging both sight and sound within a piece allows the audience to connect to it more, and allows artists to receive more powerful reactions.

Sound goes hand in hand with the visual aspect of animation in general, and in whatever field of animation, sound helps audiences feel more attached to the stories they are seeing.”

Q: “Very interesting to hear, can I can’t help but agree! Following the topic of your own work, recently, I got to go to your end-of-year show, and the sound design in your animation interested me greatly. I wanted to ask could you give us a small synopsis of what it was about, and then also how you used sound to play a role in the story of the piece?”

A: ”My animation was an exploration of past memories and how we can fixate on small moments enough for it to overwhelm our present selves. The main feeling that I wanted to create was this sense of fear and anxiety so building up the sound throughout, and layering different timbres was really helpful in creating that atmosphere. Playing around with dialogue that repeated also helped grasp the sense of fixation on a certain memory.

Overlapping sounds from different scenes also helped create the sense that the different memories were all mixing together, to create this large overwhelming feeling that was the climax. The sound was especially important in my film, as I was portraying a feeling rather than characters.”

Q: “Okay, I want to move onto a different topic now. Angelica, how versed are you in comics, manga and anime? In those mediums, what ways do you feel like they utilise sound with effectiveness”

A: “I definitely enjoy consuming animation in the form of films and tv shows, including anime; I would say I prefer watching anime to reading manga, and I think sound plays a large part in that preference. From the soundtrack to the voice acting to the sound effects, sound design for me is able to create an experience for a viewer and allows them to be more immersed in the story.

For example, anime openings are very well-known amongst fans, and I’ve seen multiple shows where motifs can be repeated within episodes to emphasise a certain climax point for a character, for example, which is one way sound can be used.”

I then tried to ask a question about their background and whatnot, but they told me not to include that in my blog.

For this interview, I did attend Angelica’s end-of-year show to help me understand how she uses sound in her work as well as to get some ideas for questions for this interview. Out of many I saw that day, her animation was probably the only one that used sound design in an unconventional way so I did want to pry a bit into what led her to that point.

The last line of the answer about her piece really stood out to me, “Sound was especially important in my film, as I was portraying a feeling rather than characters.”. This articulated why her animation was so different from a lot of the other animations I saw in that show. The sound design made sense within the story being told in the piece, not just the scene being shown. It also put you into the mind of the main character as, in her animation, everything is seen from the perspective of the protagonist, something that made complete sense when watching it but also something I am only consciously realising now I’m reviewing the interview.

It was really useful for my essay to get the perspective of someone who focuses on art in a visual way instead of my own perspective that focuses on the auditory side of things because reading more on Japanese onomatopoeia, I found that there’s a whole array of onomatopoetic words that focus on non-sound forms of onomatopoeia, which usually refers to thoughts or feelings. However, I’m still unsure if the interview will make it into my essay as I do write a lot.

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