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James Scurr, evaluation (Sound and edit)

Thorough-out this course I have been attempting to create not only an animatic for an animated documentary based around the theme of ‘Body Image’ I have also been attempting to recreate the opening musical score for the opening of Batman the animated series. The animatic did have various unforeseen difficulties both in planning and how to present such an idea. The idea behind my animatic was to inform the audience from the perspective of our internal organs about how they work and function to keep our bodies in order. I chose the digestive system specifically to be discussed in this animatic as it not only establishes why we need substances such as: Vitamins, minerals, fibre, fats etc. This is why the animatic is actually longer then that was to be expected, the reason behind this was that I wanted to lay out everything I wanted to talk about and that I wanted to present to the audience. There were also plans to add a cutaway segment of a diagram of the body so that the audience gain a much more clear understanding of how food is broken up in correlation with how the organs explain the system in tandem. I myself provided all the voices for this animatic on the basis that I had nobody I could rely on to help me provide voices. The second task was to recreate a piece of animation’s sound so that it can have entirely new meaning as it were. I chose the opening to Batman the animated series, the opening score as well as the show was composed an orchestra conducted by Shirley Walker. This turned out to be a much harder endeavour than the animatic as I couldn’t find all the appropriate sound effects I wanted to use for the opening intro. It ended up by having to download at least 3 sound bites from a website which turned out to be highly useful if not a bit forced as I am trying everything to correct pitch and make the tune work. Looking back over the intro it works a little better especially as the tune is a lot more flowing and impactful as DC’s animated series’ has always had a great selection of musical scores. The major problem though with recreating this intro is that re-making a soundtrack involving an orchestra is that it comes across as cheap and a knock off as such I chose drums as the main background sound as I feel it works for a dramatic series as Batman the animated series. Not to mention that drums are especially good to use in the background as they can be made to be very fast, the pitch can be slowed to create a drum roll sound in the background. To conclude, I feel that I could have made a lot of improvements such as adding more interesting scenes to the animatic and extra musical instruments for my BTAS intro.

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‘Function’ script

Functions

 Int. Computer lab

 James sits alone at his desk with the sounds of furious typing in the background. His eyes are heavy, his expression is dull as the camera swivels round from the left-hand side of his face to get a clear view of how dull his face truly is.

 Heart: Bitta’ slow day today isn’t?

Lungs: Aye, so bored it’s unbelievable.

Eyes: I don’t know this lot up here is canny interesting!

Bladder: Aye it would, ya little show off.

Liver: Now now let’s not kick off with this again, he works as we do all really.

Small intestine: I divin’na this guy don’t smoke, you got it easy, you have any clue the things I feel going through me every day?!

Liver: Now hang on, what’s this bout me not pulling my weight?!

Small intestine: Well I think at 1 point what is flowing through me is food, then Bile from the Bladder, my mate next door, then it’s my job to break down and separate nutrients, such as; Carbs, Proteins and fats through the use of Enzymes made by my good mates in the intestinal cells. They have their share just fine, I know I wouldn’t want to do that! Now those guys are essential in absorbing those nutrients together with vitamins, salts and water, including the afor mentioned nutrients. They then enter the bloodstream to people like you to where they are needed. That is what I do all day long! Do I get a thanks? I don’t think so!

Liver: What about what the body doesn’t need?

Small intestine: That’s got nothing to do with me, that’s my brother’s job, the large intestine to do the rest.

 1.

Large intestine: You think processed food is all bad, at least it contains all that goodness if you have a healthy diet you can get to live longer and you don’t have to watch your mates die from horrible diseases when you don’t get what you need: Type 2 diabetes, Gout, various cancers, Strokes, Osteoartitis and the worst part is that because Junk food almost goes straight through you, all the waste my brother doesn’t absorb goes straight through me as well which leads straight to the rectum then just straight out through your anus.

Liver: I don’t think I want to know that feels like.

Large intestine: Through word of mouth the smell and the overall squelch is so rank it nearly made the ol’stomach throw up on the spot.

Bladder: I can relate, I have to force out waste like urea, chloride, sodium and potassium ions through to make urine! You don’t want that clogged up in ya!

Liver: Now I don’t even wanna ask what will happen if that happens!

Bladder: When you eat so little protein and vitamins it comes out faster then when it comes in! Not literally but what use is it if there’s no goodness to absorb?

Liver: Yea, why does this guy do that? It can’t be healthy, even he must know that!

Heart: This guy has his reasons he’d rather keep to himself, away from all of us. But in short it comes down to his mental wellbeing which could alternate between how he eats on each day depending almost entirely on his mood. One of the consequences of these moods is that it can lead to comfort eating. This can also occur in people who may otherwise not have self-esteem issues as much as for people who do. For all we know this could be a spiral manipulated by his self-esteem into tricking him into believing that he can feel satisfied that he has something he considers delicious in his possession.

Small intestine: Mind with that said, I heard from someone that people can have problems with their system.

Liver: I believe it’s something called, Crohn’s disease, it’s some kind of inflammation of the lining of the digestive system itself.

 2.

 Bladder: You mean like the, ‘Oesophagus?’ or the intestines?

Heart: It actually can be any part of the system itself. However this guy is ok, Crohn’s disease is long-term so we would have known by now if he wasn’t ok. Everything he feels, we feel.

Liver: That’s why it’s very important he looks after us.

All: Hear! Hear!

Eyes: Now hang on, if he knew what he was doing to himself why would he dare do this to the lot of you? Besides it’s easy for you’s lot to say we can see perfectly well what this guy’s done and what he will continue to do. He’s only recently started to have a change in his diet.

Stomach: As much as I hate to admit it, but he does have a point. He goes through like 1 litre of carbonated drinks like a month ago which comes up to nearly 5000 calories daily excluding all those sandwiches and crisps he eats as well.

Bladder: Mind it’s hardly like he can’t have fat in his body or even his diet, we all know that!

Heart: Absolutely! Which I think brings us to a large misconception, (No pun intended) about fat or carbohydrates in our diets. You see ‘Dietary’ fats are essential to give your body energy such as: Calories or Killajewles are largely used to support cell growth. They help protect your organs and helps the body in maintaining our crucial temperature of 37.5 degrees. If that figure was to increase or decrease by even 0.1 we would be at risk of hypothermia if we become too cold and we would be suspect able to fevers if we are too warm and could make us very inactive. Fats stop these scenario as they absorb vitamins A, D, E and K which form a thicker layer of flesh to insulate us and too keep us warm.

Liver: Wow! That was actually very well thought out. Mind I suspect having excessive amounts of fat can lead to diseases and the like.

Stomach: Mind you there are quicker and nastier ways of becoming sick. Anyone remember last week’s food poisoning fiasco?

Bladder: Oh yea, how could we all forget! I don’t ever want to go through all that again. The longest 6 hours I can remember of being sick 5 times!

3.

Lungs: Well that was the Eyeses’ fault. The box clearly said, microwave for 4 minutes. Prawns or any seafood should never be cooked longer especially in a microwave. That could have killed someone!

Eyes: well you managed to stomach it for 9 hours! I don’t understand how it took that long for the big guy to become sick. We still don’t know anything specific yet, E-coli, Salmonella, campylobacter or listeria.

Heart: Perhaps the longest 13 hours I can remember for a good long time. Too weak to stir for the fear of being sick again. I’m more surprised he could go into uni the next day. Let’s face it, he had seen better days.

Liver: Even now he hasn’t regained his good appetite.

Large intestine: I suspect it could be something severe, like anorexia, lately not much has been passing through, only primitive things like dry toast and crackers.

Stomach: I don’t know, maybe he sees this as a great opportunity to pretend or imitate that he is in fact starving himself to death.

Heart: Now that is a very serious accusation to make, if he’s not hungry then he shouldn’t be stuffing his face now should he.

Stomach: But if he doesn’t eat enough, where is he going to find the energy to function? Make his way to Uni? Go to the Gym? Or even get up at 5 am to do his paper round?

Lungs: He’s not been to the Gym in over a week. So he’s storing all the energy he can get just to get though the day, in spite taking in less than 2000 calories a day. Nearly 1000 less for a young man not even in his twenties yet.

Liver: I don’t even know if he’s taking more than that this last week!

Bladder: He has been feeling tired all week, also if he was trying to lose weight it’s not working to the very last atom of his strength. He needs to keep a hold of his calories so that his body temperature won’t decrease to dangerously low temperatures.

  4.

 Bladder: He’s gotta be hungry no matter how much he doesn’t think he is.

Stomach: Not to mention, especially for a student with the pressures of exams and all that means that he is almost constantly under enormous pressure so he has been known to snap at people. Well, more and more anyway.

Heart: ‘The like’? He does nothing accept work at the gym or uni I’m more surprised he can find the time to rest and relax. No wonder he’s always on the edge. Still that’s not an excuse, everyone needs time to rest and relax.

Small intestine: I don’t know if he can hold out much longer. I mean a whole week on so little food will bring anyone on the brink of either something very serious. Or he may just gorge on a 10 course banquet all on his own.

Heart: At the end of the day however he knows fine well he’s not intentionally going to starve himself. He has more common sense to realise this and that he does learn from his mistakes. Mainly food poisoning is something none of us want to happen again anytime soon let’s be honest. Either way, the most important thing is that he feels ok, physically and mentally so that he doesn’t have to worry about his figure 24/7. He’s doing grand on his own.

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I have attempted to recreate the environment from my allotment which often involves making boards in order to cross large bodies of soil with ought walking on any of the Strawberry plants. This explains the tat-a-tat hammer and nail sounds, and the rustling of metal is searching a large bag for, said nails. 

(James Scurr) 

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Through experimentations on Adobe audition I feel that choosing the intro music to BTAS will mean using or coming up with a very distinctive, subtle and foreboding soundtrack to be mixed and presented. The reason is that the intro is composed by an Orchesrtra and the commissions to recreate that kind of sound whilst remaining the original tone to the opening intro will prove to be interesting as to decide what sounds I will need to record to replicate the original Shelley Walker score, loud orchestrated bangs ideally something that will provoke an atmosphere.

Starting point for Exercise, 01 with Sound design and editing

For my first exercise in sound design and editing I have decided to use the opening sequence to Batman the animated series, famous for its opening consisting of an orchestra composing the music by Shirley Walker. My intentions are to utilize other orchestra’s from various television series. In order to create a very dramatic soundtrack to accompany the intro to BTAS, however this may present some difficulties as the volume during certain dramatically moments will need to be altered as well as the possibility of including a second piece of music to work alongside the first piece so that they will work in tandem as supposed to being painfully distracting to the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlLODaZWP2M

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(James Scurr) 

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Body Image, research/ unifinished 

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This rotoscoping style of animation is something that intrigues me because it shows a rougher and more interesting art style that i think is closer to imitating real life as no one truly stays still. whilst drawing in backgrounds may prove to be trickier I think will highly influence my art style as i like to utilise a lot of black and white and grey to keep the animation fairly consistent. Whilst watching the internal organs talk can be highly amusing and could involve very well made conversations depending on location and the context of the situation, somewhat similar to the conversations in the ‘Ricky Gervais show’. As for animating this, I may be inclined to actually filming my self on location with proper film equipment in order to improve the quality and then draw over the footage as closely as possible.

Skateboard Rotoscope Animation