Blog #2 image sound, image image relationships

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQcBKUPm8o

the above link will lead the reader of this post to one of Tim Burton's early works in film, specifically claymation.

       The following piece is a prime example of the importance between sound and the image in order top evoke, marry, and narrate a story. On the surface and most obvious level we have literal narration voiced over by Vincent Price himself as he tells the tale of a young boy named Vincent Malloy who imagines himself being a tortured soul of various fantasy scenarios. Here sound in the form of voice is necessary to bring context and add to the content on the screen. For example in the final bit when Vincent is lying on the floor, without the narration this part would lose some of the power that Vincent's voice quoting Edgar Allen Poe brings to the final sequence. However even without the narration, the very soundtrack itself married to the visuals would be sufficient to at least convey the idea that there is a major disparity between the home life experiences of the young boy and his adolescent fantasy world. The pitch of the organ breaking up the silence of the young boys room helps the imagery impress even more so upon us the impression that we have left reality and entered the mind of a demented young boy.
         However strip the video of even the soundtrack and still, through imagery and the interplay between cuts and visuals, the film is able to convey this disparity. For instance we know vincent is a young boy because it is established visually within the first few seconds as we see him dressed in normal clothes in a normal house, with a bored expression on his face. But as we cut to various fantasy sequences the walls sometimes bend or melt, the boy don's a mustache and goatee, and the lighting transforms into extreme chiaroscuro. These visual cues help to convey to the audience a sense that the boy in the film is living a normal life which to him is so dreadful that he spends his time fantasizing in order to escape the mundane. In conclusion I felt this short piece was very appropriate and demonstrated the ability of sound and image, via their correlation and culmination, to bring abstract ideas onto the screen in a way that the brain can effectively understand and enjoy intuitively.