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Sound Recording How does one go about creating an animated film? Most animated films start with the sound, since, when working frame by frame, it is much easier to match animation to an already established soundtrack than to try to match sound to completed animation.
To record the sound I used a neat little set-up called PDAudio-CF created by CoreSound. I used high-end binaurl microphones both for mono voice recording and stereo environment recording. New Zealand birds are unique and very vocal! They have two voice boxes so can call and answer themselves. This is a tui imitating a bellbird.
Sound Editing Having gathered more material than I could handle, I staggered my way back to Auckland to begin piecing the most interesting bits into a flowing narrative that would lend itself to animation. I originally thought I would structure the film around the around six elements of the wilderness experience described by the New Zealand Department of Conservation: freedom, challenge, discovery, solitude, romance and connection with nature. When I started reviewing my conversations and processing my own experiences in the backcountry, I realized that I couldn’t box these stories into six neat compartments. There was too much overlap and undercurrents. More importantly, there were personal stories. People had shared some of their best memories, most challenging moments and spiritual discoveries with me. I found those to be far more interesting than my intended academic exploration of the meaning of wilderness. Working in Adobe Audition, I started with 15 hours of interviews and slowly whittled it down to 14 minutes. There was a lot of good material that was hard to cut out! But the longer the film the more animation I would have to do so I was motivated to get it down to a manageable length. As I went, I catalogued the clips and began planning the animation to go along with it.
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