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"Listen up buddy, there's two kinds of people in this world: big dumb stupid heads like you, and super beautiful perfects, like me!" Woosh! That's some snarky attitude for a little girl!
Since the other two sound files from Chapter 4 are both also very short questions like the last example, I'm going to move right along to some other sound files that can provide more instruction. To proceed, import BeautifulPerfect.wav from the Chapter 7 folder on the CD into your Box Head scene. I put my scene range at 0 to 250. A finished version of the scene file is on the CD as well: BeautifulPerfect.ma.
Time check: This should take, on your own, about 30 to 45 minutes total.
| I added one little twist in this one, just for the sake of instruction. Sometimes, as with this sound, there may be too much dead space (nothing) at the head of the sound. To move the sound so it starts earlier, right-click the timeline and go to the sound option at the bottom. Select your sound from the submenu and go to the option box. In the Audio Attributes is a value labeled Offset. By changing that number, you can influence when the sound starts; a positive number pushes it back that many frames, a negative number makes it happen that many frames earlier. For this scene, I type in a -30, and am using a range of frames 0 to 250. |
An AVI of each step as it's completed can be found on the CD:
I love to animate to the actress in this sound piece, because she's very musical in her delivery, and you know I like to use those musical sounds. For Listen up, there's an upward shift in tone during listen and it's sustained through up, so I tilted the head up and kept it there. Buddy provides a fantastic shift down, in both her tonal quality and in how sharp it is. The listen up has unwittingly become a great anticipation for buddy. For the next big chunk, there's two kinds of people in this world, there is a nice little punch on her delivery of two, and another on people. You can't hit every shift with the head, but you can stow those two sounds away for different tools, such as some of the later brow and eyelids stuff. I tilted the head higher for the time before people, and then shot back down again on that word. I held that height until after world, where there's a silence, and the actress clicks her mouth.
This is the bread and butter. This is the good stuff. You should hope to always be so lucky as to have an actress to pause and click her mouth between lines. The perfect time to shift expressions is between lines, or phrases, almost never during. When an actor makes a noise, takes a breath, does anything in between lines, you are given a playground to do with as you please. You can bounce the character into an extreme pose, for just that sound, if it's fitting. You have a perfect, infallible spot to change expression, which otherwise can sometimes be hard to find, and that's what we're going to use it for. For this stage, it'll just be moving the head up, but we'll do something at this point on every pass through.
Big and dumb both climb tonally, so I'm going to step the head higher into those both, and then slam it back down with a nod on stupid. Heads like you only really peaks on like, so I kept the head at the same level as after stupid and then popped it up briefly on like, inadvertently causing a nice nod on you.
For the next section, and super beautiful perfects like me, the character is obviously off in world of her own wonderfulness, so I'd say, posing her head toward the sky is a good idea. I stepped it down to ease in the downward movement over perfects, and then brought it back down in another nod on me.
The scene implies that she's talking to someone, and since it's not important who it is or where they are, I just picked a place, somewhere off screen left, that became the eyes' home base. Now, through this performance, she seems pretty sure of what she's saying and who she's saying it to, so I held her eyes pretty much on that one focus. During the spots where she's obviously searching for the words big dumb and super beautiful perfects, I darted her eyes up and around. I picked two spots away from whoever she's talking to. I shot her eyes up and (screen) left for big, then up and (screen) right for dumb. Knowing how eyes move, they only take two frames or so to get to each location, and then hold there until they move again. I did almost the same thing for the second "search" for super beautiful perfects. I returned her gaze to her off-screen focus, for me, as the nod provided a great time to do so.
For listen up buddy, the upper lids, much like the head, shoot wide open for listen up, and are dropped lower for buddy. Later on, with there's two kinds of people, I decided to punch the dismissive, contemptuous nature of the sound, by intensifying her expression with a squint, in two steps, on two and people. From there nothing eventful happens until she looks up on big dumb. For that, I blinked right in line with that clicking sound she makes. I adjusted the lower lids slightly, to track upward in relation to that eye movement.
The eyes return to her primary focus on stupid, so to transition her back into "reality," I gave her another blink. A blink paired with a nod of the head, and a change in focus of the eyes, really starts to show a strong acting transition there, which is good. I also used the blink to drop the lower lids back down-I was starting to run out of range with them so I used the strength of the overall shift to hide a "reset" of the lower lids. Before and after the word you, I left the lids where they were, but punched the word you.
After that there's nothing too major until she looks skyward again with super beautiful perfects. I threw in a blink at the start of that, and shot the lower lids up higher for the duration of that part of the line. It helped her look much prouder of herself, because it created more focus on her statements of her own fantastic amazingness. I blinked on perfects, and here's why: a friend of mine who also knows all about this stuff (and in fact taught me a lot about it) noticed that blinking on percussive sounds gives them a great visual punch. As the mouth closes and releases, so do the eyes. It creates a great whole-face involvement with the sound. I don't do it on all percussive sounds, only on the ones it fits, like the p in perfect; it's almost always a trial-and-error process. From there all that's left is a blink on the return from her gaze up, to whoever she's talking to off-screen.
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Created: March 11, 2003
Revised: November 7, 2003
URL: http://webreference.com/3d/stopstaring/1
