The Man in the Moon - 2:14

Collaborative project with an animation student for a masters project focused on scoring animation - I also worked on the foley, sound design and ADR/Narration mixing for this project

For this piece I composed all of the sound sources except the narration which was provided by the animator. I started this piece by moving out of my comfort zone and composing the main theme on the mandolin directly instead of at the piano. I felt that this would result in a folk music sound to the music which suited the style of animation and the story. As this project was completed during Covid, I had no access to a real violinist so had to settle for using a midi violin instrument for the ‘cat with the five stringed fiddle’, which with a bit of careful mixing and midi manipulation turned out well. I created the interior Inn ambience and hubbub by recording my family and some groups of friends at dinner time, removing any particularly loud peaks and overlaying 3-4 of these recordings to create an ambient hum of human voices, but with no individual words intelligible so as not to detract from the narration. In this piece I wanted to create a high level of synchronization between the narration, the animation, and the music. To this end I used the instruments to create sound effects for the different characters, a technique commonly used in children’s animations and tv shows.