{Audio post: FX 2_Animation (pt.1)}

This week we're going to continue to work on our audio post skills by doing all the sound for a short animated clip. Cartoons are another special category of film/video from an audio perspective because there is no original sound to work with, or try to imitate. You get to make up the whole sound of the world from scratch! There are no real rules and you are basically trying to make things sound even bigger and crazier than they do in real life.

Here is a clip of the Disney film, "Steamboat Willie" the first animated short to have a completely post-produced soundtrack (music, dialog and fx)! Pay attention to the kinds of sounds that are being used and try to see if you can think of what sorts of objects were actually being used to make the sounds you're hearing:



For today's assignment, you're going to be working with a modern piece of animation.

Please do the following:

1. Look on the Shared Media folder and copy the file called dpaa_audio post_fx 2 to your hard drive. (Shared Media>Class Materials>dpaa_audio post_fx2).
2. Create a new Pro Tools session. Name it: your name_audio post_fx2
   
3. Import the Quicktime movie to your session.
4. Right-click on the audio track and click on Delete to get rid of it.
5. Watch the whole movie through once to get a feel for the storyline and the tone.
   
6. Now watch it again and as you go through it, drop Memory Locators (ENTER key) at all the major actions.
7. Label your Memory Locators.
8. Now start importing the FX you need. Import them to the Region List.
9. Drag your sounds into the Edit Window. Take care to make sure they sync up with the actions in the clip.
   
10. Remember, if you can't find a sound you need, you can always use a microphone to record your own original sounds (grunts, human noises, etc.) You can borrow a mic and record at your desk, or transfer your Pro Tools session to the Shared Media drive and come record in the vocal booth. Remember that the goal is to make this as convincing as possible!
11. Do some mixing. Concentrate on balancing the volume of your different tracks and pan the sounds to match where they are on the screen.
12. Save this as your name_audio post_FX 2 and have an instructor check it.