Do you know where you're going to?

a Design SOUND TALK

In the SOUND 4 ANIMATION post OUCHIES, I alluded to the idea that Warner Bros. Cartoons play games with expectations. I didn't explain however, exactly what I meant by that, or how those 'games' actually work. So, if you've got nothing better to do, read on Macduff.........

Warner Bros. Cartoons have a whole host of characters that they've set up patterns of behaviour and outcomes for, which are rarely deviated from. For instance, Bugs Bunny is always the charming wise guy who usually wins, Daffy Duck is the manic narcissist who always loses and Wile E Coyote is the hungry mastermind whose plans fail, all of the time. How each character reaches their particular outcome is where playing games with expectations happens.

To help with cartoon soundtrack designs I often refer back to the ACME Bat-Man sequence from the Chuck Jones 1956 Wile E Coyote cartoon Gee Whiz-z-z. In this sequence Wile has purchased a green suit with bat like webbed wings to fly fast enough to catch the Roadrunner.

The suit will fail and he will fall,

comically crashing into the ground once more.....

Wile tentatively tests the suit's wings. Satisfied he strikes a pose in preparation to leap of off a really high cliff. His animated actions, the fanfare music, the background and the way the whole shot is framed place this moment within an heroic context. It's also very reminiscent of a child wearing a cape, getting ready to jump out of a tree and has about as much chance of working. Still this is a cartoon.....

At the end of a drum roll and his leap from the top of the cliff, Wile is momentarily suspended in mid air. Will he fly or will he fall? .... He falls, head first. Pausing the action allows the cartoon to play with the expectation that the suit won't work, by putting forward the possibility, if only for a few seconds, that it might.

Because of the clouds rapidly passing by, the wind sound effects and the descending musical motif played by a flute, you know the Bat-Man suit still isn't working and the Coyote is falling, heading it seems, towards his usual comical crash into the ground. The trouble is Wile, motionless and calm, doesn't seem to notice his impending doom. Perhaps he knows something we don't? Suddenly, Wile's calm demeanour does switch to panic. Desperately he starts flapping the suit's webbed wings. The descending musical motif escalates, changing from a flute to a piano. Perhaps Wile doesn't know something we don't....

The shot switches to the ground. It's covered in jagged, sharp rocks. All previous sounds have gone, replaced by a single sound effect, a descending jet plane. The Coyote appears. The jet plane sound belongs to the suit. It's finally started working. Unfortunately it's driving Wile relentlessly down towards the jagged, sharp rocks, instead of up, up and away into the clear blue skies. Is the Coyote really going to be impaled upon the rocks? Of course not. That would be uncharacteristically gruesome. It isn't however, until the very last moment, when the suit suddenly arcs and flies Wile into the sky, that you really know that for sure.

The suit does work! It didn't fail!
Perhaps, afterall, he will prevail?

Wile is now flapping the wings of the suit in a calm rhythmical manner. His eyes are closed and he has a grin on his face. All the dramas of the previous events have gone. There is no music. The jet sound has been stabilised by turning its volume down and removing the Z and the M from it's ZOOM. In the tightly framed shot of the Coyote, only clear blue skies are visible. It would seem, in this instance, Wile's ACME gadget has come through for him. It looks like he won't crash and that just maybe, his plan to catch the Roadrunner with it will actually work! Wile looks happily into the camera. A cliff face appears. He crashes into it, then falls and crashes into the ground.

Does Wile fail? Yes! Does he fall and crash into the ground in a comical fashion? Yes! But, he hasn't failed, fallen, or crashed how or when you quite expected him to. That's what a game of expectations is, brilliantly conceived and executed.