Audiences forgive a weak image much sooner than bad sound. A slightly soft shot goes by; a voice with noise, a song in the wrong place or a silence that lasts too long pulls anyone out of the story. That is why film has whole departments for it: dialogue, foley, sound design, score and mix, each with its own specialists. In motion design and advertising, sound is often chosen in the last hour. It deserves better.
In 3D animation, the image is made in silence. For months, Fala, Vô! had no sound at all: the characters moved and talked without voices, and the rooms were mute. The film only started to sound like a film after the voices were recorded. It is a strange way to work, and it teaches you quickly how much of the emotion lives in the ear.
185 songs and none of them
I started looking for music at the same time I started the script, in February 2022. Licensing commercial tracks was out of reach, so I searched for music that was free to use, mostly on YouTube, and built a playlist that grew to 185 songs.
The first cut with my favorites did not work. The songs were beautiful, but none of them carried what the film needed: loneliness, anguish and, at the end, hope. The playlist was not wasted, though. It became the brief. It said, in music, what I wanted people to feel.
Then, luck. During the voice recordings, at the music studio at UFES, I met André Akira, a producer and pianist. In March 2023 we started an original score, with a clear influence from Hans Zimmer's Cornfield Chase, from Interstellar. A score written for the film does what no found track can: it breathes where the image breathes.
Temporary sound, then real sound
Before the final sound design, I made a first pass myself, with temporary effects and the actors' voices, just to feel the timing. Then Gabriel Tosi recorded the foley and did the final sound design: steps, clothes, objects, the small sounds that make a virtual room feel lived in. The mix came last, after the final edit, because every sound is tied to a frame.
What this means for motion design
- Choose the music early, even as a reference. A temporary track gives you tempo, and tempo gives you timing. Animating in silence and adding music at the end almost always means redoing the cuts.
- Count the beat in frames. At 24 fps, 120 beats per minute is one beat every 12 frames; 90 is one every 16. Durations that are multiples of the beat feel intentional.
- Cut on the beat, move around it. A change of shot or card on the beat feels tight. A movement that starts a frame or two before the beat feels alive.
- Leave silence. The quiet moment before the last card is what makes the last card land.
- A playlist is a brief. If you cannot explain the mood you want, collect songs until they explain it for you.
Next time, before the first keyframe, press play on a song. Let it decide the timing. Then, and only then, start animating.
This text comes from Felipe Risallah's undergraduate thesis on the production of the 3D short film Fala, Vô! (Cinema and Audiovisual, UFES, 2023). More about the film at the link.