Assignment 3: Animation Basics with Sound

10 seconds. Thats the amount of time we have to tell a story through a basic digital animation. Initially, we did that by only having imagery to convey that story. For this third and final part of our animation basics project, we get to take our animation a step further by adding sound!

The sounds that we were expected to use needed to be a combination of sounds we recorded ourselves, as well as sounds ripped from videos on YouTube (or elsewhere online). We used Audacity to record and sequence the audio. We then united the visuals with the audio in Adobe Premiere. This is the final result.

Admittedly inspired by The Day the Earth Stood Still (the 1951 version), I brought in a theremin. This ghostly electronic musical instrument set the tone as the UFO entered our peaceful world. You can hear seagulls in the distance as one meets his maker. "PEW" is the sound of death, can't you hear it? Sounds terrifying.

The self-made sound effects for this assignment were one-off vocalized creations. This was inspired by Pitch Perfect and Boyz II Men. I felt that through the power of our mouth, we can make sounds not often found in quality cinema. I'm not sure why.

The end result is a combination that appeals to almost all of the senses... or well, at least 2 of them - sight and hearing. In a future digital media project, I'd like to try to tackle the other three. Maybe next semester?