VIAL OF YOUTH

SOUND 4 ANIMATION

Adele K Thomas is an Australian producer, art director and illustrator working in concept art, character design and environments. She is currently working as a designer on a Nelvana/Studio Moshi series and in 2012 she produced a pilot for Cartoon Network (Asia Pacific). Adele has also made occasional appearances in TV commercials and shows and enjoys dressing up as Wonder Woman, Rogue and Lara Croft at conventions. As with Rosa Hughes and Katie Babkoff, I was introduced to Adele during my honours studies at uni by Mark Tweedale, and I completed this sound track for her during that time. In 2006 'Vial of Youth' won an award for Best Animation at the PFTC New Filmmaker Awards and screened at the International Student Film Festival in Argentina. In 2008 it also screened at the Brisbane International Animation Festival and the International Animation Day line up around the world. To find out more about Adele and her on going work visit www.adelekthomas.com or adelekthomas.blogspot.com.

VIAL OF YOUTH

It was fun to work on the sound design for this animation, because it reminded me of an animated short that I had admired for years, the 1953 UAE production 'The Tell Tale Heart' featuring one of my all time favourite actors, James Mason, as the narrator. UAE also produced the Gerald McBoing Boing and Mr Magoo cartoon series. In order to tell this story in such a short length of time however the story needed to be edited down and one of the criticisms that I did come across was that it was too short to fully realize the true creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale. For me however it is perfectly creepy and James Mason's voice goes along way to achieving that effect. The only reason that I mention all of this is because possibly the most difficult thing to do with this sound design was in relation to the narration dialogue. I actually culled and rearranged quite a bit of it so that it could be a little more effective in terms of creepiness and to her credit Adele didn't seem to bat an eyelid when she heard it (Great Gal to work with!). I also messed around with the consonants on the words so that the narration was as clear as possible, as well as the tone of the voice to give it a more James Mason / Vincent Price quality. The most drastic change to Robbie's voice (Robert Jozinovic www.robertjozinovic.com) however was to the Count Thurzo dialogue.

Originally Adele also had a piece of music playing throughout the narration. I thought it might be more effectively creepy using mostly sound effects with only the occasional interjection of music which in this instance I composed myself.