Anyone who has ever responded to a call for papers has, at one point or another, experienced the perverse pleasure of stubbornly latching onto a topic that was not mentioned therein and running with it. It was in that contrarian…
Indexes, icons, and symbols. According to Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic theory (1974), we can identify three basic types of signs: indexes, icons, and symbols. Indexes, such as photos, videos, and films, have a factual connection with their objects since they…
When designing sound for animation, especially when you have some latitude in interpreting the visuals against your fully designed soundscape, there can be a tendency on trying to match up everything you see on screen with a direct sonic match.…
Animation always had close links with sound and music. Synchronism provides a means of rich formal experimentations. It is particularly striking in the field of the music video where the progression of the music itself often determines the progression, the…
Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized animated film that also introduced Mickey and Minnie Mouse, was first publicly presented on November 18, 1928, at Universal’s Colony Theater in New York City. Unlike all other iterations of Disneyland around the world,…
Most people think of each classic commercial American animation studios as having their own distinctive sonic style. Warner Brothers had the postmodern, action-driven sound developed by Carl Stalling. MGM had the classically trained Scott Bradley pumping out modern, occasionally atonal…
Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th June, Derek Jarman Lab The 2019 Essay Film Form and Animation: Intersectionality in Motion conference held in London last June was well attended. The conference was supported by the Arts University Bournemouth, the Society for…
Forty years after the release of The Muppet Movie (dir. James Frawley) in June 1979, it seems fitting to celebrate the lasting contribution of Jim Henson to puppet animation by considering the Muppet Babies: Play Date shorts on YouTube in…
Review of Daisy Yan Du. Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation 1940s-1970s. University of Hawai’i Press, 2019. Daisy Yan Du’s excellent Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation 1940s-1970s is essential reading for anyone interested in Chinese or Japanese…
Jim Henson’s 1986 production Labyrinth holds a special place in the Henson canon (as well as in the hearts of many children of the 1980s). Its inception came after one of the first critical misfires of Henson’s film career, the…
