March 4, 2006
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Minor Observations -
Someone says – If you find work you love you’ll never work again…
Untrue. It requires a little more to be perfectly comfortable engaging in a task repeatedly for the rest of your life. Most immediately notcieable to me is that you have to be equally comfortable with the social interacts inherent in your work as you are with the tasks you are set to do. It should never be underestimated how easily a single awkward connection or a feeling real or imagined that you are not respected or underappreciated can make work you love to do feel like work again.Someone asks – Why is so much attention paid to the music in animation, especially Anime?
To me, animation is primary an audial experience. The characters do not usually express the range of depth of reactions that a skilled actor or actress can express nor can we relate as easily to their artistic representation as we can to a human being. Instead the art always seems to be about stress and exagerration. The art seems to pull you toward the most important elements of the characters or the most significant elements of their current mental state but they don’t express more subtle shades of meaning as easily. This is probably in large part due to the speed at which animation is churned out but it is also intentional. Animation is good at simplifying extraneous details so that you can focus on broader concepts. However, as a result much of the more subltle shades of representation in stories told through anime comes from the audial aspects. The music carries you. It helps you to understand the way in which the environment is interacting with the characters. The characters voices make them far more real to you. It makes them far more subtle and interesting. In other words I feel that more than any other aspect, animation requires significant consideration of quality of your sounds and the interaction between the sound and art and dialogue. When these things don’t fit together as well it is a rather poorer experience. This is why some dubs are so painful to experience.
