Film Analysis: The Mask (1994)

This week I looked at a clip from The Mask (1994) with the focus of sound design, particularly the SFX stem. I watched the clip with no sound a few times to make a list of all the sound effects I would have put in. Here’s a picture of my list.

Its a good exercise, but I’m not going to write out the whole thing. I feel like that would be redundant and a waste of both our time. In short many of the effects I listed were used in the shot with slight variation on some of the more cartoony noises. For example, where Stanley (Jim Carrey) is falling from the apartment building, I noted a wind sound layered with a glass falling sound. In the film, the glass falling sound was apparent but the wind sound was replaced by sort of a siren or alarm generated by Stanley.

 

The only sound I heard that I didn’t think to note is the giggling and screaming sound that the alarm clock makes. It’s an effective tool to make the clock anthropomorphic. It is also an example of how not all the sound is apparent. This extra layer of sound adds depth and humor to the character of this alarm clock.

The sound effects I would have used for the alarm clock mostly involved the ringing and the sound of it’s impact on the ground. When it gets scared I would have shot those bolts off of it and added the noise of the bolts hitting the floor. When it gets smashed, I would have played up the sounds of springs and bolts shooting from the clock, motors dying down and glass shattering.

In this scene, ambiance isn’t necessary. It would detract from the action at hand and take away from the cartoon quality of the film. The music track plays a big role as it imitated Warner Bros. cartoons. Had the scene been in a dramatic or suspenseful film, the ambiance would play up the suspense, but that is clearly not the goal here. The ambiance is part of the SFX stem because it doesn’t fit into dialogue or music. It is a part of the diegetic sound and is part of the scene. It also gives a base to all the other sound effects if music isn’t present, making sure the sound is sweetened.

    

Film Analysis: Charlotte’s Web

This week, I studied this clip from Charlotte’s Web (2006). I’ll skip the shot count today because I think we all get the point and the emphasis this time is not the editing but the sound design. Another thing I’ve been asked to emphasize is anthropomorphism. These things go hand in hand but I’ll get to that later. In this scene, Templeton the rat is stealing a rotten egg to eat while Avery (the boy) is trying to attack Charlotte the spider. There are a lot of fast cuts as this scene has a lot of action. I have to admit this was a very confusing scene the first time I watched it because it was out of context. I didn’t know the egg was rotten so a lot of the scene didn’t really make sense. Even when I got context for that, it seemed rather arbitrary in the acting. Avery just appears and wants to catch the spider.

It’s a tad fast and doesn’t feel motivated. In the 1973 animated film of the same name, the scene felt less arbitrary as Avery seemed more motivated and the smashing of the rotten egg was more directly related to his actions. I wish I could find video or an image of it but alas there isn’t much of that movie on the internet.

The focus of the sound design is to sell the anthropomorphic animals to the audience, mostly through dialogue. Anthropomorphism is depicting non-human things so that they appear to be human, or at least more human. This often used in film to make an animal more human like Templeton in Charlotte’s Web or Number 5 from Short Circuit (1986).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjeptaI2T8E

There is a wide range of anthropomorphic characters that are more or less human. There are important visual aspects like clothing, posture, and expression. Audio aspects like voice, dialogue, and accent. And content aspects like purpose of action, content of dialogue, and role in a story.

Visual aspects can completely sell anthropomorphism. Humans are very self centered and want to see themselves everywhere. Even by arranging two dots and a curved line, we see a human face. This even applies when we turn it on it’s side. :) Here’s an example of how inanimate objects appear human with no dialogue or even movement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFhHRYJsjgI

It’s this element of psychology that allows us to accept stylized figures as human. If you read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, he goes into great detail with how we as humans identify human traits on a scale. To sum it up, we pick up specific patters in images to create a human being. We can obviously look at a film of Brad Pitt and see that he is a human, but we also see Naruto as a human despite his stylized proportions just as well as we see Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny as human despite the fact that they are stylized animals that don’t look like anything that exists. The biggest cue we get from these characters is facial expression. That’s how we saw the faces in the commercial above. It’s also how we identify Templeton as human-like in the clip. His face has a huge dynamic range in expression, much more than a real living rat. Subtle expressions like a sly smile or smirk sell him as more than just a rat but a character on which emotion can be projected. In addition, by giving human poses or actions to animals or inanimate objects we can see them as human. For example, the Ent race in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTFP9QQzEL4

Or the main characters of Disney’s G-Force (2009):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bVY_UspXyc

In the last example we also saw animals wearing clothing, or rather accessories of clothing, which is an exclusively human trait. When we see these traits, we no longer see animals but human-like characters. These traits can sell humanity alone but they don’t always do so. Characters like Pluto have a great range of emotion but he still registers as an animal.

Despite this, the focus of this week’s analysis is sound. There are also a lot of audio cues that add to anthropomorphism. The primary tool is speech or dialogue. In the Charlotte’s Web clip, Templeton is talking. By giving him that trait he is a much human character because he talks like a human. This clip isn’t the best example of this trait because despite the animals voices being supplied by humans, many of them are just making animal sounds because Avery and Fern are around. Templeton doesn’t have much dialogue either and most of his lines are bad puns. An earlier scene in the film exemplifies this trait more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoEU1L2kueo&feature=relmfu

But that’s a lot of information to analyze, so I see why it wasn’t picked for this analysis. However, this scene from The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) draws attention to the speech of a non-human character:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn0lJnt9PZ8

The tonal nuance in voice acting makes a huge difference in the way we view the character. In this clip, Templeton’s voice is provided by actor Steve Buscemi. His high, nasally voice is a good match for a scheming rat. It’s something we would expect. If James Earl Jones were to have this role, it would be surprising, probably funny. We know as an audience what we expect for something to sound like and we are ready to believe in characters that sound as we expect. There’s a range that we are willing to expect, but we know when something is a little off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYUjNQrokeg

Here we have three other rat characters (one is always off-screen) with different voices. They have a different vocal range but they’re also within the realm of belief. The voice can also say something about the character. For example, Steve Buscemi tends to play similar roles in most of the movies he’s in. T hat’s partially due to type casting, but it is also because his particular voice is resonant of a character.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0s6zZJdsZo&feature=plcp

Sorry for the language in that clip, but it exemplifies another character with similar traits and the same voice. You can see the same thing with James Earl Jones as his very deep voice is used strategically to portray powerful, strong characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S17CeXaFBlQ

I couldn’t find this joke in high quality but it quickly makes my point. All those characters shared similar traits and were all voiced the same way.

I’ll skip now to content of dialogue for the sake of brevity (as if this entry is brief in any way). The content that the character is saying increases the human quality of it. This also varies quite a but. In Charlotte’s Web, Templeton uses a lot of puns. This plays up that the character is clever, or at least believes himself to be clever (his plans rarely pan out the way he expected). He also is vain in his own unique way as he compliments himself while looking in a mirror. Yelling out in surprise is a reaction that we expect from people and by doing so, Templeton seems more human. This also applies to Charlotte in this scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0mHRQn_YrI

From this scene we can see that she is very intelligent and educated by the language she uses. Some people don’t use language this sophisticated let alone a spider. It brings a lot of potential depth to her character which makes her more believable. The reason content is important is that we can use the same principle the opposite way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=CErapf79rqM&NR=1

In this ad for dog treats, the dog has a voice, but the repetitive focused nature of the content makes the dog even more dog-like than if there had been no voice. That is, we read it as a dog’s state of mind rather than a human-like dog character.

Finally, content of action is a major part of anthropomorphic characters. Even without dialogue, animals or objects with human motives will seem human. Even if it’s the natural behavior of the animal, if it resembles human behavior we will personify the animal that’s doing it. That’s why there are so many cat videos on the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J—aiyznGQ

Everyone personifies cat behavior. In Charlotte’s Web, Templeton looks in a mirror to admire himself. This is not common rodent behavior, but rather a human behavior we can all relate to. In addition, all the animals in the barn react when Charlotte is threatened and Wilbur comes to her aid. Having behaviors that are motivated this way is something we all relate to and can project on non-human characters. Portraying complex emotions in content also has this effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRBLeqsoRew

In this scene from Babe (1995), there is a lot of emotion portrayed through dialogue and action. We identify these motives and are able to relate to them, making the object portraying those emotions seem human.

Now if I haven’t already repeated myself several times in this I’ll recap. By adding human-like visual features and expression to a character, we naturally read them as human because of our psychology. By adding dialogue to a character, they gain depth and history which we attribute to humanity. By giving characters human motives, emotions, and actions; we are given a point of reference to project humanity on on them. The same techniques that we use to give non-human objects or animals humanity can be used to emphasize a lack of humanity. I’ve deviated quite a bit from the standard analysis but this is a very broad topic and I felt this clip wasn’t the strongest example.

Film Clip Analysis: Requiem for a Dream (2000)

 This week I looked at this clip from Requiem for a Dream (2000). In the scene, Sara Goldfarb is taking her diet medications for the first time. This uses several really fast cuts, utilizing a lot of jump cuts. There are 21 shots and 50 cuts (counting each cut on one side of the splitscreen as a cut and without counting the cut to the next or previous sequences). This scene uses a splitscreen effect in order to show us Sara’s expression as well as having a shot from her point of view.

There are also numerous jump cuts where Sara moves around within the same shot to both show the passage of time and to create a neurotic feeling as the drugs take affect. (The following images are all in sequence with a cut separating the movement between them.)

Interesting as the cinematography is, the focus of this week’s analysis is sound. This scene has a major shift in sound. It begins with all linear diegetic sounds as Sara is reading to herself and talking to the refrigerator. These continue as she takes a pill and prepares a sandwich. As she begins to eat the sandwich, a non-diegetic sound-track begins to play over the sound of her chewing. There’s a cut to the master shot and all diegetic sound is gone in favor of the music. Diegetic sound returns as Sara prepares coffee and watches some TV. During this time all ambient sounds are gone. When the coffee is prepared, only the sound of the coffee maker are heard. As Sara watches TV, only the TV can be heard while Sara’s constant movement is silent. The TV sound is an example of a linear continuous diegetic sound that spans over many jump cuts that suggest the passing of time. This smooths them so that the jumps can easily register as jumps over time. Though that’s the primary intention, the cuts advertise themselves by being seemingly out of order, which confuses us and puts us in that neurotic state they are aiming for. These audio effects are made possible by the use of audio elements. By using separate elements of audio, the sound designer could put in just the TV sounds without any other sounds in the room. The sound designer also uses elements to layer the music track to the full diegetic tracks to smooth the transition from when Sara starts eating and when she starts dancing around the room.

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(These shots are in the order in which the occur in the film. The shot preceding and following have been added to establish the context. They seem to be out of chronological order which adds to the neurotic mood of the scene.)

The most advertised transitions are all on the insert/cut away shots that look at very specific actions up close. Loud, short sounds draw attention to the action so that it can read in the extremely short amount of time that they are on screen. Sounds are even put to exaggerate actions. When Sara picks up the remote to turn on and off the TV, there is a whooshing sound to help it read. It isn’t very realistic but it makes it easier to understand what’s going on without interrupting the flow of the scene. All these quick cuts add a lot of detail to the action and the scene.

There are several points of contrast in the scene. The first bit is the contrast before and after Sara takes a pill. The cuts are slower and there’s a transition between ambient and diegetic sound to the music track. The contrast picks up the pace and is rather fun. For a while there is only music then another point of contrast is reached when loud abrasive noises are added in, making the scene feel more neurotic and claustrophobic.

These methods add interest by showing the scene as a subjective drug trip. It’s not an intense trip, but the unintended effects of the diet pills become more apparent in the way the scene was cut and the way the sound was edited. The filmmakers could have shown everything realistically, showing us every moment as if we were sitting in the room, but that would have been boring. By playing the music and showing us actions really loud, short and close up, it puts us in the mindset of the character and delivers an experience that is more interesting and ultimately feels more true than a realistic depiction.

Film Clip Analysis: The Godfather (1972)

There is a lot going on in this scene from the Godfather (1972). This is the pivotal scene where Michael, despite himself is becoming the ruthless godfather he wanted to avoid becoming at the beginning of the film. In my memory, this is the climax of the film because it is where Michael officially makes this turnaround as his enemies are killed and he becomes godfather to the baby. As such there is a lot of fast cuts and numerous shots from different scenes intercut together. There are twenty four shots in thirty one cuts. When I say intercut, I’m talking about how many scenes in different places and possibly different times are cut together in one sequence, connecting it all together. A shot of Michael in the church is followed by a sequence where one of his enemies is murdered in an elevator, followed again by a shot of Michael and then another enemy being murdered while getting a massage, ect. This connects these events together in a unique way. One of these events doesn’t lead to the next. Instead they all occur as the result of the previous scene but are connected by a common theme: Michael transforming into the ruthless boss.

The pacing is very fast. No shots are held for more than three seconds. The murder scenes are paced a little differently than the church scene. While the church scene is mostly one shot of Michael, the murder scenes that are the fraction of the time have many shots. The whole church scene is four shots, while one of the murders that took a fraction of the time had four shots in six cuts. This emphasizes the brutality of the murders which plays up contrast to the church scene.

The emotional impact of this scene is one of disgust and tragedy. This is done through the intercutting of scenes. The church scene by itself would look rather ordinary, even with Michael’s half-lit face it wouldn’t even register as sinister. But with the incredibly violent murders occurring in the sequence, we see just how dangerous Michael has become. The brutality of the murders reinforces the tragedy as we are disgusted that Michael has become this when he worked so hard to avoid it. This isn’t a glamorous moment for him. This is also how the story is advanced. He is becoming Godfather in name in the church, but the murders show what becoming the Godfather means to him.