Paul Wells, as already mentioned, describes hyper-realistic sound in animation as sound that “will demonstrate diegetic appropriateness and correspond directly to the context from which it emerges.”[1] Generally, classical models of live-action cinema follow a slightly less strict model, where sounds are generally diegetically appropriate, but certain types of non-diegetic sounds (such as a musical score, or voice-over narration) are accepted by convention. Much of the Disney studio’s animation follows a superficially similar model, especially if the films are compared with live-action musicals, where generic conventions allow a looser approach to the “appropriateness” of sound. However, the nature of the animated film complicates the relationship between sound and image, and leads to some subtle but important differences in notions of what is accepted as realistic.

Just as animation does not photographically reproduce any actual real-world location, neither does it record any actual location sound. In live-action cinema, production sound (sound recorded on set or location) is the starting point in building the soundtrack. While it is common for the production audio to be largely discarded and re-recorded (due to problems with the quality of the original audio), it will nevertheless guide the final sound mix, and any re-recording of diegetic sound will obscure its post-recorded nature. The soundtrack is therefore constructed either along with, or after, the image, and the main diegetic components of the sound will either be recordings of the “real” sound or carefully recorded facsimiles. In animation, by contrast, there can be no production sound as the image is constructed purely through drawings: when Snow White opens the door of the dwarf’s house, for example, there is no real hinge to creak. Furthermore, one of the most central aspects of the soundtrack – the dialogue – must be recorded in advance, with a disconnect occurring between the voice and its source. This disjunction allows for the use of extreme vocal styles that would not usually be appropriate when the sound is to remain wedded to a human performer, such as Clarence Nash’s voice for Donald Duck. It also allows certain types of audio processing that would be thwarted by a need to maintain synchronisation with the image, such as the speeding up of sound used for several of Mel Blanc’s vocal characterisations for Warner Bros. In both these examples, however, the unusual voices that result are still quite diegetically appropriate: if we accept the on-screen image of a talking duck, then both Blanc and Nash provide valid interpretations of what one might sound like. The departure from realism here is not due to a loosening of diegetic appropriateness, but instead is an example of the separation of image and sound allowing both visuals and audio to explore more extreme possibilities while remaining mutually appropriate. Such dialogue is therefore a reminder that notions of “diegetic appropriateness,” while useful, cannot be used as the only marker of aural realism.

The use of sound effects and music was shaped both by the means of producing animated soundtracks, along with the historical circumstances of sound’s introduction to the form. Synchronised sound was one of a number of technical innovations that the Disney studio used to distinguish its productions from those of competitors, resulting in an early tendency towards very close relationships between music and sound. In the studio’s first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928), Walt Disney highlighted the technological advance by insisting on an extremely tight musical integration. In the earliest sound shorts this shows off the novelty of synchronised sound, but by the time of The Skeleton Dance (1929) the frame-by-frame construction of animation was being taken advantage of to achieve extremely tightly choreographed musical numbers. Such music-driven action is not universal in Disney cartoons: one of the principle points of difference between Disney’s “Mickey Mouse” and “Silly Symphony” series is the primacy of image or music in driving action, image dictating sound in the former and sound dictating image in the latter.[2] However, it is prevalent enough that the term “mickey-mousing” is still used to describe instances where a score aurally “matches” visuals in a highly literal or descriptive manner.[3] This trait would reach a climax at the Disney studio with the basing of Fantasia (1940) entirely around pre-existing musical pieces, and the studio’s dominance of the industry is such that other studios emulated this practice. For much of the 1930s, for example, Warner Bros.’ “Merrie Melodies” series was dominated by faux-Silly Symphonies. The result was that in this period Hollywood animation was disproportionately dominated by musical forms that were simply one amongst many genres seen in Classical live-action cinema in the same period. This has implications for the type of sound heard in the earliest of the features.

The early Disney features echo musicals in their use of musical numbers to convey ideas, introduce characters, or simply as set-pieces in themselves. Snow White, in particular, relies heavily on songs to carry the action: the introduction of the Prince, for example, is handled almost without dialogue. Rick Altman, writing about live-action Hollywood musicals, has used the term “supradiegetic” to describe the heightened, not strictly diegetically appropriate performative mode found in musicals. The supradiegetic sound creates “a utopian space in which all singers and dancers achieve a unity unimaginable in the now superseded world of temporal, psychological causality.”[4] While the transgressions of diegetic appropriateness that occur in such scenes are readily accepted by audiences, this is not to say that they are accepted as realist: rather, they are accepted as a generically motivated piece of fantasy. In the later features shifts in and out of such modes are very fluid, but Snow White leads in to most of its songs by preceding them with short passages of rhyming dialogue. What is interesting in the context of realism, however, is how purely “musical” the sound outside of the song sequences is. While sound effects are not entirely absent, they tend to be discrete and are far less frequent than would normally be expected, with music usually covering the absence. For example, as Snow White looks down on the dwarfs’ cottage she bends back a branch and releases it: there is no swish or creak of wood. She then proceeds with a host of animals to the cottage door, but there are no animal or woodland noises to be heard, only the lush orchestral score. When she does knock on the door, there is an appropriate sound effect, but after each of her two knocks, the sound effect is echoed by the orchestra, effectively creating a dialogue between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. In such moments, the film is effectively operating in a musical mode, with characters exhibiting a harmony with the music that resembles the supradiegetic mode of a musical, but without the signposted “break” into a fantasy mode that accompanies the songs. It is doubtful whether the absence of many diegetically appropriate sound effects is noticed by most audiences.

The soundtrack of Snow White shows how much variation from diegetic appropriateness can be sustained in animation without creating a readily apparent unreal effect. This is allowed by the separation between image and sound inherent to the form, as well as audience familiarity with the very tight harmony of music and image that had featured in so many of the Disney shorts. It is notable, however, that the substitution of music for sound effects is much less apparent in Pinocchio, Dumbo, and other later Disney features, where the sound leans much closer to full diegetic appropriateness. The loosening of expectations of aural realism seen in the lush musical fairy tale of Snow White seems to have been less suited to the more elaborate and story-driven features that followed, which demanded a more conventional approach to aural realism.

Continue to Part 4 - Realism of Motion

[1] Wells, 25.

Contents

Introduction

Visual Realism

Aural Realism

Realism of Motion

Narrative & Character Realism

Social Realism

Conclusion