Production: Sound

Sourcing the Sound Effects and Non-Diegetic Music

Diegetic and non-diegetic sound was included in my storyboard, so I had to source both sound effects and background music for my animation. Though I began looking for single soundtracks to layer over my entire animation, I found that smaller sections of several pieces of music worked best to capture the atmosphere and mood of my stop motion.

I used Incompetech to source my non-diegetic music, as it had a wide range of works available to me, and were separated into categories of mood (e.g. suspense, wonder) which proved helpful in directing me towards what I was looking for. The pieces of music I decided on were all licensed under Creative Commons, meaning I, as a creator, could use the music provided I give appropriate attribution to the composer.

Finding sound effects was more difficult for me, as I had never out-sourced them before. After looking through several different websites to see what sounds they had relevant to my project, and the licensing accompanying them, I found FreeSound. This website offers a wide range of sound effects for free under varying licenses after you sign up to their service (this is to keep record of the ways in which their work is being used). I had several different sounds I needed to use (including footsteps on leaves, an axe in wood, a wolf's howl etc.) and FreeSound was able to provide me with multiple options for each. Again, most of the sound effects were licensed under the Attribution Creative Commons (some commercial and noncommercial), as well as the Sampling+ License, meaning I could use the work for noncommercial purposes, or transform it in some way for commercial purposes.

Terms for Creative Commons: Attribution NonCommercial License

Terms for Creative Commons: Attribution (Commercial) License

Terms for Creative Commons: Sampling+ License

Recording the Dialogue

Canon recording simultaneously with GarageBand.

Originally I had planned to have consistent voice-over and dialogue throughout the whole of my animation to mirror the traditional fairytale aspect mentioned in the brief, however as I created my stop motion I realised that the narration I had written in my storyboard was too long to fit over the film - and potentially distracting from my work as well. I still felt that some dialogue would ease the storytelling of my film, so decided to condense the script to two small sections of dialogue between Red and the Wolf.

I was familiar with the style of fairytales from my childhood, and so was able to easily cut down my original dialogue to fit with the timings of my animation. I had my actress for Red (Saskia Steene Faulkner) record the voice-over for her character, as well as that of the Wolf's, which I then planned to overlay with sound effects of growling to add to his persona and differentiate the two tones.

GarageBand, the script and my draft film.

Due to availability of my actress I had to record the voice-over in my own time. If I were to redo this project, I would organise a separate studio space where I could control sound more effectively to record my dialogue - instead of using my own equipment in my bedroom. I recorded two versions of the voice-over: one on GarageBand on my Mac, and another on my Canon EOS 70D using a Takstar Stereo Shotgun Microphone. This made sure that I had a backup if any files became corrupted, and also gave me the opportunity to learn which gave me the best quality recording (unsurprisingly, the microphone on my Canon, though GarageBand was a lot more convenient to transfer to my edit).

Saskia recording the dialogue, alongside a still of my screen during recording.

Record of Sounds Used

Music:

"Crowd Hammer" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Serpentine Trek" Kevin MacLeod (incompetent.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Sneak 'n Get Caught" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Sound Effects:

"Locking a door" Dymewiz (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Footsteps, Dry Leaves" InspectorJ (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Birds" Julian Nicolas (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Woodcutting" ryanconway (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Axe Chop" yadronoff (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Twig Snap" earthsounds (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Wolf" y89312 (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

"Wolf Howl" Robinhood76 (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution Noncommercial License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

"Sunetul de lup" viorelvio (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Sampling+ License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/

"Werewolf hit whirrs" Robinhood76 (freesound.org)

This work is licensed under the Attribution License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Production: Filming

I shot my stop motion animation on a Canon 60D Digital SLR, and used the program DragonFrame to collect my raw footage (I then used PremierePro for post production, see Editing & Sound).

The final shot of my film.

Whilst filming on my stop motion set, there were several things I decided to adapt from my initial idea in order to simplify my project: it was important to me that I created a high quality animation, so removing unnecessary elements from my ambitious plan would help achieve this.

Canon 60D set up to DragonFrame.

• The idea of The Wolf's form being primarily a silhouette proved to be difficult in the facilities I had available to me, as the lighting I used was not quite adaptable enough to project a distinguishable shadow onto my set. I therefore used the blurred shape of The Wolf's head for his first appearance, to keep the mysterious element involved. Separate figures were used on the set with Red for later scenes.

• In my pitch I mentioned a plan to alter the lighting intensity along with the tension of the piece, however because of the light sources I was using (a pocket torch on the lens of the camera and the natural lighting of the classroom) this became very hard to play around with. If I were to redo this project I would perhaps try making colour filters for my pocket torch to affect the light projected onto my set.

Checking Red's position between the set and DragonFrame.

• My storyboard shows everyday items scattered through the forest, and props such as a matchstick bed and a silhouetted fire for the Grandmother's house. Though I still like this idea and would've liked to incorporate it, I found it confusing during my production, and decided to instead focus on telling the story through movement and narration effectively rather than add poorly executed complications in. Likewise, my idea to 'move' real props on the stop motion set into the photographic frames became difficult and I again cut this out of the project so as not to be too ambitious with the connections between my set and the photographic frames

The low opacity of my current frame let me match positions.

• I decided to cut down the amount of shot types when I began filming in order to efficiently use the time I had available to complete the project in: because of the fiddly nature of stop motion animation, every time I changed the positioning of a shot I had to carefully rearrange both the camera set up and often the photographic frames and/or The Wolf. Shots were still changed as regularly as possible, however I did not achieve the shot-reverse-shot conversations I had proposed in my pitch and storyboard; this was also due to the fact I did not want to rely on the pacing of narration that I had not yet recorded.

The final pile of used photographic frames from my filming.

• My storyboard shows The Wolf's disguise as the Grandmother to be a little pyjama hat above his ears, however after receiving casual feedback from other students that it wasn't immediately clear what it meant, I decided to change the disguise to a shawl around the card figure. I feel this worked far better and also incorporated more things into the stop motion set as opposed to having all the action taking place in Red's photographic frames.