Summarize of Ken

Ken gave us the music of animation overview in this speech.

First thing he mentioned is the power of a musical score. Music can create the lots of motion of the screen. It can make your film better or worse just depending on how you set it up and when you do it. Someone said that music can save your bad acting. Second, he talked about location, time area. There are three basic functions: one is play what you see; second is play subtext (not what you see) of character can be. Third is play against the action of a scene.

Ken also talked some worst things to music. For example, music can not be done to save a scene. Never too early to bring in composers. When talking to your composer, try to using emotional terms. Don’t try to speak in musical terms. What you need to do is let your composer know what you emotional feel or you think the audience should emotional feel about the scene. That is you talking about music for. Maybe play a CD or other scene from other picture but don’t tell them you want that music. Tell them this is emotionally what you feel. Give your composer a chance to react that and come up his/her idea. Never try to explain how they should do it. Let them work with sound.

Song of the story can set up your movie. Playing a song in the beginning and it can be considered a whole movie and develop your movie underscore. Never discount how you set up your first scene of movie. The same music can be playing as different things as tension, as trace, as love. There is no exception that all forms music is emotion.

Ken showed many clips of movie to explain what he talks about. He showed “Sum of All Fears” to mention first introduction of other sounds to the score. He showed “Mulan” to talked about the experience as a musical. Finally, there is one tip of animation about music or lyric Ken gave us: Do it. Animate to a piano, animate to what going to be, what tempo going to be. Write it down when you got some idea and you can trace that later. Don’t use material that you can’t use. That is a monster.