weird animation short... (music by me)

[Nikolas]

Ok guys... I think that this thread bellongs here.

Any feedback is appreciated, and all opinions are accepted, but I don't think I'll be changing anything in the music... Since I'm asking for feedback and not only showcasing the short, I guess it's valid to be here...

anyways.

For a couple of months there's been a competition on a different forum, with great prizes (totalling around 2500$ for the first winner!!!!) I took part and didn't win (!! :p) I wasn't even on the top 6. But then again there were 179 entries, which is a large number.

I know pretty well why I didn't win.

1. My entry was totally unorthodox, weird, and almost obnoxious at parts!
2. The competition was run by EWQL and I took their sounds, which I totally destroyed to create my entry. This is not what they wanted. They were looking for entries to showcase their great products, not how to destroy them...
3. It does appear that my take on the film, was different to the other peoples. I was going for calm, weird, maybe a bit of agony, while most went for epic (which I cannot see for the life of me).

The reason I'm mentioning that I won't (probably) change anything, is that the competition is over. There's no reason to change anything, but of course a great idea could be put at test... Additionally I really want to see the reactions/feedback from other people, except my wife 

Enough talk:

http://www.cgempire.com/music/EWcontestNikolasSideris.mov (large QT file, 61 MB)
http://www.nikolas-sideris.com/stuff/EWcontestNikolasSideris.mpg (smaller mpg file, simmilar quality though 35 MB)
There is also a smaller size version in my site at samples->commercial->visual, it is an flv version at 15 MB, but it's limited in size and cannot go full screen.

animation short creator: Zennor Alexander

I assume that, due to the size, it's better to download, instead of stream...

Looking forward to your comments.

[CaptainBinky]

Well if you ask me, I thought your soundscape pretty much fitted perfectly. The video was quite weird and your music kinda heightened that sense.

I would be interested to see how these "epic" pieces worked with the vid, because to me something grand wouldn't fit at all.

CB

[radiowaves]

I love it! Music score fits perfectly in my opinion. Only crit is that its a bit hard to understand what is exactly going on, but it is designed to be a very bizarre video anyway, so... Although I would have added some rhytmic animations to the lone piano part at the end, but that is just me and my little side effect.

[cobra79]

I received a call 2 minutes after watching this and I somehow expected a voice telling me that I had 7 days to live. Anyway it was just my mom...
I am not sure what it was, but it was nice. Now I would like to see the winning video. 

[Nikolas]

Thanks guys.

Here is the winning video: http://www.tranceparent.de/EW_Contest/derRing_Egolution_lrg.mov.zip

The main issue with my entry was plaing simple: It could not be used to advertise the sounds I used. And the competition was run by the company which made the sounds. So, by no chance someone would choose me to "represent" the company... It's like having a 10 megapixel digital camera, and on purpose creating burned film picture, or awfully altered in photoshop to become totally unrecognised. It's not the best way to advertise the product... let's face it.

Plus it was, maybe, too... artistic. don't know...

Thanks anyways. Looking for more posts

[Jens]

Well you asked for opinions, so here is mine: When I watched your mpg-movie I felt a bit lost with the visual movie contents... but I also felt that the music/sounds did not reflect properly what was happening there. To me it was like watching a film and listening to different music, that only sometimes was accidentially fitting to the movie scenes (sorry).
Still not understanding the short-movie, I became curious about the winner, downloaded quicktime and the OtherGuy's video file -- and found it much more fitting and enjoyable.
Then I opened up a txt-file to find out why that is and noted every scene with a few thoughts on what I liked and disliked (/,+,- = neutral, positive, negative).

By doing this, I also got an opinion on what the film is about. To me the content of the short-movie is the fight of logical abstractness (the intellect and perhaps even the pride personal ego that comes with it) versus the real live and nature. The beginning (birth -> egg) of the rational abstractness was one simple (egg-like) round form. The abstractness developed, became more complex and started to consider itself as real important and as a real being (or plural: beings).
Those beings then wanted to become completely real now; or in other words: rational logic wanted to become like nature. The logic forms achieved to travel into the "real" world (which is full of colours and even much more complex, organic, soft, round), but they could not change themselves. The complexity of the real nature was beyond of what the logic (stickman) was able to create in himself - the environment (and the need to become like it to exist in it) was too much for the intellect (stickman).
So the personified abstractness, not able to move its feed or show facial expressions (as feelings are completely unfamiliar to the intellect) finally failed.
Moral: logic is a human and artificial thing. And even if we self-confidently think we do understand everything because of our sciences and intellect, real nature with all its complexity and colourfulness is far beyond anything that our brain can grasp.

Now, here are my notes. Hopefully you'll understand my english:

egg scene; some quickly trembling, fast and subtle movements
- Nikolas: uniform sound atmosphere (steam coming out of a pipe)
+ OtherGuy: a lot of different, fast sounds, becoming fastly louder and softer

little trembling, yet static pieces as atmosphere, camera going down
+ Nikolas: some kind of dreamy, narcotic absence; sound getting louder
- OtherGuy: too dramatic for the beginning after the silence, no reason for that; rhythmic electricity-sound fits to the flashing "sky"

camera goes up, now little cubic forms fly and dance around; everything gets more lively
/ Nikolas: keeps same sound like before
/ OtherGuy: keeps same sound, but fits better now as everything's in movement

abstract birds flying around, camera approaches form with painting/symbol on it
- Nikolas: no decreasing tension; soft echoing piano notes even take away tension
+ OtherGuy: fast paced rhythms, in-fading high strings underline the approach of something big and give the "symbol-building" some kind of importance

symbol close up; trembling lines; (distorted) computer-like display
/ Nikolas: some long faint sound and piano
+ OtherGuy: got those soft and very fitting electronic screen sounds; reversed cymbal (?) announces an open scene to come

(transition to) new landscape scene; abstract stickmen dancing and shaking there bodies
- Nikolas: nothing noticeable marks the new scene; sounds from before are continuing; not fitting to shaking dances;
+ OtherGuy: brought strong percussion and rhythm to the foreground, fitting to a shamanic tribal dance (as that's what it reminds me on);

one stickman loses his body (perhaps as the consequence of shaman's ritual dance which puts them into a different, an astral body; notice the energetic factor/fire on the "new body" and how the environment changed; did they change into a different sphere or are right before it?)
/ Nikolas: explosion of the stickman underlined with a sound; the strongness made me expect that there is no stickman anymore, but there still is at least one (as seen directly afterwards), which has changed its outer appearance
+ OtherGuy: subtle sound underlining the exploding (or form-changing) stickman; rhythms getting faster, instruments more clashing; tension is increasing and culminates in the big fire (which finally "kills" or "transforms" everything)

jellyfish-like beings are swimming down, like on a long journey; camera pans down and follows;
- Nikolas: high pitched, repeated notes are going up; no sound underlining the downward movement (more like the other way around)
+ OtherGuy: got that slow falling-down sounds; camera movement realized by increasing volume

scene leads to a wide sub-marine environment
+ Nikolas: got that submarine feeling by a harmonic melody with fluent string- and brass-notes (?) and even that "submarines-sonar-ping-sound" (like at 1:20)
+ OtherGuy: submarine sounds and far away, underwater-like notes

tumbling and dying in the colourful world
- Nikolas: semi-harmonic music and tones continue; death comes all of a sudden marked by low piano notes
- OtherGuy: very soft harmonic underlining of the environment; no announcement of the death - what is harmonic about that sequence of death?; and what about "silence"? how does it fit in there?

All in all the other guy was very close to my instinctive understanding/perception of the clip. Considering the sense, that I made up while analyzing, it even fits better with its drastic, more epic sounds. The whole movie is like a fight that is lost in the end; visually it has strong contrasts and sharp edges and fast movements. So the rhythmic, impressive music of the OtherGuy fits very well (expect from the ending) to my understanding of the movie and its message.

A dreamy (even if it's more like a nightmare) atmosphere does not really fit to it as I got it instinctively. Also from the point of logical understanding, the aspects "calm, weird, maybe a bit of agony" do not work.

Thank you for sharing this with us. It was/is interesting.

[Nikolas]

Jens, thank you for watching, listening and posting.

Also thanks A LOT for keeping notes. Worked great! Before I go into your points to discuss further, I need to mention a few things...

First of all, the reason for posting here (and other forums) is not to compair my entry with the winners. I was asked to post the winning entry and thus I did. I hold no grudges about not winning, or whatever, I just decided what was at fault (in my opinion of course). now you come to mention some very interesting things.

Also being lost with the visual contents is not my fauly at all I didn't make the animation. It is rather weird, deap, but works after you've seen it quite a few times. At least it worked for me, in the way I interpreted the movie...

So

The very basic dissagreement is on the meaning of life, apart from your analysis in the music/audio part. I found that the movie was about birth, life, the seed which ends up in a digital world, fails to adapt and in the end dies.

The first part (the black and white mostly, until the big bang), is full of agony, full of pain, and I reflected just that in the sounds. The first viewing of the "infant", even as a picture, is reflected by the calm notes of the piano, which evolve to the full birth, a big bang of all! On the contrary, nothing ended, as the sound continues, but something new is being born.

Second part (colour with the parachutes, and underwater), is indeed calm for me. eveyrthing is established and the new person, is enjoying his (short) life. but death is near...

If you want, I can go through, replying in every point you made in your txt (THANK YOU FOR THAT. Really helpful), and see what you think, but I'm not sure if it's necessary. I'll just say that I did, pretty much, divide the short in such short segments, and actually plenty more, and treated each segment differently. So the viewing of the egg is 1 segmenet. The black screen is a different, the inside of the egg different. Chess type with flying cubes different and so on. And I scored it accordingly. (BTW, I know what you mean by "pipe" but I went for some type of white noise, like distortion from the TV or something. I thought it was clear, along with the distortion of the scree)


Never the less, once more thank you for posting so extensively and for keeping the discussion. I appreciate it very much.