eunjig
Film and Game Music by Eunji Gong(Xueyan Gong)
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Blog Feed Annotated Bibliography Critical Analysis
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eunjig · 4 years ago
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Annotated Bibliography
1. Balkwill, L. L., Thompson, W. F. and Matsunaga, R. I. E. (2004) Recognition of emotion in Japanese, Western, and Hindustani music by Japanese listeners. Japanese Psychological Research, 46(4), pp. 337-349.
This book contains a review of emotions that can be found in Western, Hindustani and Japanese music. The authors have focused on music used in television, advertising, movies and how the music elicits emotions in listeners. The authors had selected a sample of 147 people to associate emotions with music. The findings reveal that emotions like joy has been associated with music of a fast tempo and simple melody, emotions like sadness with music of a slow tempo and complex melody, emotions like anger had been witnessed while listening to loud music and complex melody. The strength of this study is that it had made use of samples to toil real life results and not solely relied on past researches. The limitation, however, is that the sample is quite small to make any generalisation. This article had helped me in my research as it explores the emotional content in music.
2. Bartsch, A., Appel, M. and Storch, D. (2010) Predicting emotions and meta-emotions at the movies: The role of the need for affect in audiences’ experience of horror and drama. Communication Research, 37(2), pp. 167-190.
This book reviewed how audiences are attracted to horror and dramas irrespective of the negative emotions they experience. This study aimed at evaluating the emotions and thoughts that are experienced by audiences in drama and horror movies. A sample of 119 movie goers had been selected to explore the emotions that they felt while watching movie belonging to the genres and how their emotions differed from one another. The findings reveal that some of the audience had experienced high levels of negative and ambivalent emotions. The strength of this article is that it had made use of samples to toil real life results and not solely relied on past researches. This is why it became a relevant material for my research. The limitation, however, would be that the selected participants already emotional towards the movie, so it cannot be claimed that their emotions were because different scenes in the movie.
3. Baumgartner, T., Lutz, K., Schmidt, C. F. and Jäncke, L. (2006) The emotional power of music: how music enhances the feeling of affective pictures. Brain research, 1075(1), pp. 151-164.
In this article, Baumgartner et.al. explore how musical excerpts and emotional pictures are blended in movies for an increase in the emotional experience. They focus on a brain imaging study for examining this enhancement effect of a blend of affective pictures and musical stimuli. They mention how most spectators do not watch scary movies for the emotional baggage that forces them to turn the TV off. A sample of 9 participants, had been selected for this study. The findings had revealed that emotional pictures evoked more emotions with the congruence of emotional visual and musical stimuli. The strength of this article is that it discusses on the effects of both music and pictures together and provides a detailed insight. The limitation, however, is that the article had only made use of a single musical condition which makes it hard generalise the findings for every piece of music and musical stimuli.
4. Chu, E. and Roy, D. (2017) Audio-visual sentiment analysis for learning emotional arcs in movies. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) (pp. 829-834). IEEE.
This article by Chu and Roy conducts an analysis of the audio and video pieces that are used in movies and how they contribute to generate emotional elements among the audiences. The authors claim that this trick is being used in Hollywood movies to predict audience engagement. The more emotional the content is, the more engagement is witnessed. So, to make the content emotional, variety of music excerpts are used. In this study, about 600,00 audio samples from Spotify had been collected for classification into different categories according to the emotions it stirs up. The finding of this study is that the emotions from the music allows audience engagement and improves the ability of storytellers in communication. The limitation of this study is that the authors had not inculcated the chosen music samples in movies to analyse whether the movies are able to make an emotional impact on the audience.
5. Ellis, R. J. and Simons, R. F. (2005) The impact of music on subjective and physiological indices of emotion while viewing films. Psychomusicology: A Journal of Research in Music Cognition, 19(1), pp. 15.
This article by Ellis and Simons investigates upon the involvement of music in films and also about its emotional impact on the viewers. The authors had conducted this study to learn about the ability of music in binding people to the visual narratives of a movie. They mention about the emotivist position of music where they talk that labelling of music as for instance, “sad”, is because while listening to the music, the audiences move towards experiencing emotions like sadness. Similarly, when the authors mention the cognitivist position, they state that when audiences label music as “sad” recognise sadness as an expressive property of the music and do not usually move to any place of sadness. The limitation of this study is that it had included only 36 participants to analyse whether classical music is able to generate the same emotions as it is claimed for other forms of music.
6. Harper, G., Doughty, R. and Eisentraut, J., eds. (2014) Sound and music in film and visual media: a critical overview. Bloomsbury Publishing: USA.
This book explores the types of music that is employed in films and visual media. It discusses about the evolution of soundtrack throughout the years and mentions how musical narration tends to be more persuasive in conveying the story of the movie to the audiences. This book explores the different music excerpts used in horror, science fiction, musicals, comedy, rockumentary etc. This book is a source of guidance for me because it provided an understanding of the types of music that I can use while making different scenes on whatever project I am working on. Reading through this book, I understood that audiences approach television and films in different ways, which is why the music to be selected for both needs to be different too. Furthermore, I also learned that science fiction, disaster movies and horror movies make use of a lot of unidentified sound objects to stir emotional responses.
7. Heldt, G. (2015) Music and Levels of Narration in Film: Steps Across the Border. Intellect: UK.
This book by Heldt explored the use of music in movies and also the levels of narration in the same scenes to examine the emotional effects. In this book, the author has talked about horror films and how the music used gives a sudden bump in the minds of the audiences. In comedy movies, the music or the laughing track that is used in the background is believed to make people laugh. Further, the author mentions how music is indicative of a movie character’s emotions and even if we are not aware of the storyline, we can still figure out the positive or the negative intention of the character. By providing such instances, Heldt mentions how music is placed in movies to insinuate the story and the role that the characters take throughout the movie. With the help of this information, I managed to take a professional approach towards composition.
8. Rozin, A. and Rozin, P. (2008) Feelings and the enjoyment of music. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), pp. 593.
This article by Rozin and Rozin elucidates that music is valued by people because of the emotions it evokes. Music is generally about feelings like pleasures and moods which is central to the enjoyment. If people feel pleasure or sadness while listening to music, that means the musical excerpt is able to bring music and emotion in a single place. This is why, the temporal sequence and the flow of the music matters when it comes to the generation of emotional feelings in the audiences. From this article, I had learned that loud and fast music helps in making people happy, but more importantly the structure of the music gives us the intended intensity and character. This article was a great help for me on my project as it allowed me to judge which piece of music and with what intensity would have what type of emotions on the audiences.
9. Kärjä, A. V. and Donnelly, K. J. (2010) British Film Music and Film Musicals. Popular Music, 29(1), pp. 163.
In this book, the authors explore the British film music category and provide a diachronic understanding of the changes that have taken place in it. This book is very essential because it explores the pop music genre and tells us how the pop songs have become a part of films. The authors mention Madonna of the Seven Moons to talk about the stabbing effect inculcated in the scene where the knives are being stabbed with aggression during the murder scene builds up a pitch of emotions. They state that by doing so, blend of the music and the visual scene leaves an emotional imprint on the audiences. They try to shed light on how movie-makers make use of these music to create impactful scenes. I found this book very helpful because the authors also include the use of background musical instruments and how important those are to create a scene.
10. Kulezic-Wilson, D. (2009) The Music of Film Silence. Music and the Moving Image, 2(3), pp. 1-10.
This article explores the music used in films like The Matrix, Atonement, and Babel, about which the author mentions that the kinetic, rhythmic and affective elements are cultivated by the music. This book was very helpful for me because prior to reading this article, I had never paid attention to how silence is portrayed in movies with music. The author mentions that there is a background music of silence that is used in films for dramatic function. By raising the tension of the audiences with the background sound of silence, a movie manages to achieve its full dramatic potential. Further, for portraying the sense of isolation, the author says that loud and lush musical soundtrack must be merged with dramatic scenes. Such descriptions of the scenes that portray sadness or isolation along with the background music has helped me a lot in gaining insight of the emotional quotient of music.
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eunjig · 4 years ago
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Music and sound in the films and games
As you can see from the last blog, I'm not very familiar with the film music side of things, so why would I choose to go to graduate school in this field?Today I'm going to talk about what films soundtracks mean to me.
The first time I had the urge to join this industry was when I was playing a game. People often think that the characters in a game have a bad feel to them because of the game's production, but it's the sound that affects them.
So this time I'm going to focus on the music. I feel that each song is a story of its own, and I will build the atmosphere of the story in my head because of the melody, and the lyrics will make the show. It's the same with music in filmss. When a high scoring films loses its music, chances are the films will be boring as well.
Take the very famous Harry Potter for example, when the Hedwig theme plays, people can enter the magical world with the music for a moment, but when people try to turn off the sound and review the films again, they should understand the magical world it's about, but probably feel a bit less spiritual and magical.
“...People are often surprised to learn that the first score specifically written for a film was by Camille Saint-Saëns! The film industry was in its infancy, and it was a major coup for the producers of “L’assassinat du Duc de Guise” (1908) to hire France’s most famous composer to write a score for their 15-minute historical drama. Saint-Saëns composed the music scene-by-scene, in front of a films screen. The first frame-by-frame film score was written by the composer of the ever popular Gymnopédies, Erik Satie. The year was 1924, and the film was a dadaist silent production called “Entr’acte”. Satie devised an ingenious system of synchronizing his music to specific frames in the film, a first in film music history. The technique of syncing music to film was to evolve steadily all the way to today’s efficient computer aided approach....“- quote is taken from redlandssymphony.com(Wilson, R., 2016.)
The 1930s and 1950s were a unique period in the history of film scoring. The music created for the film exploded with creativity, always matching the artistry of the film itself. During this period, composers came primarily from a background of concert music and wrote almost exclusively orchestral works. Knowing 1950 ushered in a sign: the release of film music. Little by little, as different genres of music were added to film music up to the present day, presenting a picture where the director decides how the music should best serve the film(Paris, O., 2018).
Some of my favorite composers are Hans Timmer, and I have a strong xi for the industry after his several-step film scores and his game scores with the Chinese game King of Glory.Hans Zimmer said in the interview:“…when making game music, it is exciting. Because composing music is very close to playing games, to enter another world, be a hero or character” (V.qq,com,n.d,). In this interview, I feel once again that Hans Zimmer will find the connection with himself in his works every time he deals with composing. For example, in an interview, the reporter asked how Zimmer conducted such research and turned it into music? He replied,“There is an overall design of what is the best thing for the overall film, but you very quickly go into the characters. And really, if you think of all good films, that usually holds true. ” (The Talks. 2014. ) Bring your feelings into it. I think that's the critical point of Hans Zimmer's music. His music is emotional. When people are listening, feelings are put in.
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And this video below, a panoramic view of the personal studio and creative process at Hans Timmer and Clint Mansell,They went and designed an independent sound especially for the film, which was very cool.(Youtube.com. 2015)
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The Talks. 2014. Hans Zimmer | The Talks. [online] Available at: https://the-talks.com/interview/hans-zimmer/ [Accessed 13 November 2020].
Paris, O., 2018. Know The Score: A Brief History Of Film Music - Film Independent. [online] Film Independent. Available at: https://www.filmindependent.org/blog/know-score-brief-history-film-music/ [Accessed 13 November 2020].
Wilson, R., 2016. How Classical Music Influenced The History Of Film Scoring. [online] Redlands Symphony. Available at: https://www.redlandssymphony.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-film-music#:~:text=The%20first%20frame%2Dby%2Dframe,first%20in%20film%20music%20history. [Accessed 13 November 2020].
Youtube.com. 2015. Hans & Clint | Masters At Work [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdG5dEfAcxQ [Accessed 15 November 2020].
Youtube.com. n.d.《王者荣耀》汉斯季默(Hans Zimmer)作品 [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im9SxtoB054&t=20s [Accessed 13 November 2020].
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eunjig · 4 years ago
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New understanding of Foley
In the first week of school, I was upset about my postgraduate life. Maybe English is the second language relationship, or it may be because of the epidemic. I haven't been out of the door for nearly seven months. I have had a day of an online class in the first class. It is not a simple thing for me. The efficiency of an online course is not as good as when I sit in class. It's not easy to be high and focused from morning to night. Especially after a few months
 The assignment for the first class is to record a piece of noise at will to create your voice. When the second class, I knew that I had made mistakes in the understanding of the last lesson, so I began to learn a lot about repeated thinking. What kind, of course, is sound design? I opened Studynet and began to study again. I started to read the materials in module one by one. And record my questions and understanding, and then search for information from the Internet or online library.
 After reading and understanding, Foley became the topic of my first blog post. After reading Roberto's Ted speech, he asked me to.
 After reading and understanding, Foley became the theme of my first blog. After reading Roberto's Ted speech, I had a completely different interest in my new ideas about this major. Just like after reading the speech, I felt that I had so many "lies" when I created the voice. After the subjective assumption brought by vision, people had different interests. Subconsciously believe that what you hear is what you see. From Bacon's lie in the beginning to Ttasos fratzolas "( "Soundsnap.com" And he created it by recording people jumping into the pool. They control the sound through time stretching and pitch switching, which eventually sounds like a submarine (Fratzolas, T., 2016. ).
 I was inspired to find Foley Grail: the art of performing sound for film, games, and animation in UH's online library. My English reading speed is not fast, so I found out a few points in the catalogue that I was interested in reading. Noise vs Sound: Foley As It Is Used in the Various Genres and Styles of Film, Animation, and Games.
 The author writes in this chapter: "...the best Foley artists learn to be discriminating about what should be heard and what should be ignored...“ (Ebookcentral.proquest.com. 2009).Like when I was making my first assignment, I did not think about it at all. Just thinking about addition, often many times, adding is not the most difficult, the most difficult is good subtraction. But in the first week, it was not too bad to see the problem. I think it is also learning to be aware of your issues and start to implement solutions. 
 Ebookcentral.proquest.com. 2009. Foley Grail : The Art Of Performing Sound For Film, Games, And Animation. [online] Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/herts/reader.action?docID=421219&ppg=1 [Accessed 6 November 2020].
 Fratzolas, T., 2016. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDy5j0c6TrU [Accessed 6 November 2020].
This video mentions the "lies" of 10 different voices. In fact, it is how to make 10 different film sounds: Youtube.com. 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hWbmn7GtDE [Accessed 6 November 2020].
I think Foley is here instead of language, completely relying on sound designers to express all the feelings or thoughts that Wall-E wants to express
Wall-E Animation Foley and Sound Design: Youtube.com. 2017. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IPxIvbc_cs  [Accessed 6 November 2020].
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