WEEK TWO

When I first listened to the song a few things that it made me aware of were the composition of all of the different sounds, they are built up throughout the song, almost introduced one at a time. It made you aware of what you was listening to, and this was a point that I wanted to bring into my idea, but with a twist.

As electro was music made up of electronic sounds (or at least the majority of it) I wanted to somehow introduce all of the sounds from this song as mechanical sounds – following the same theme. I wanted to create a composition of sounds created by small mechanical devices, or mechanical recreations of existing instruments.

At first a group in particular sprung to mind that do a similar thing, with the same message that music can be made out of anything, and they are, Stomp. They are a group of people that have west end instrumental performances comprising of no known instruments. Instead they use alternatives, but the sound is just as impressive. I am going to try and incorperate the way they interpret music through a range of strange objects the same way in my work.

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It is all set in a small one cell room

All the objects have been made or built

There is an open door with light falling through it and one small window in the top corner of the room. Through it you can see a small mechanical sun, whose rays are being moved and controlled by cogs. Throughout the song the weather outside the window changes, sometimes metal clouds float by.

At the very beginning of the song, before the music starts you see the character altering his machines in some way or another (for instance turning a screw, but i need further thought into this). Then you are made aware of his power source becoming low – maybe indicated by small lights on his body dimming, and you see him plug himself in to the machine. As the music starts you will see indications of his power being re charged due to the music.

You see the majority of the animation through the eyes of the character but catch glimpses of his hands and body etc, which are all mechanical.

Towards the end, you begin to question the point for this character being here, alone (why doesn’t he just leave through the opened door?)

At the very end of the piece the character turns around and you see the power source he is plugged into and realise that if he were to leave he would become unplugged and no longer be able to power up; instead he stays and creates music.

At the very end the camera pans out leaving you no longer looking through the characters perspective but looking at him in this small room. The camera then pans out of the room, still looking inside. As it pans outwards you see that everywhere is desolate, and the only thing visible is the building he resided in and the mechanical sun placed on top of a huge pole.


The idea:

..is that you your made to believe that he is forced to stay at this prison but in fact it is all that is left, and it keeps him happy. I built this narrative from the song words and the sense that song could go on forever. Below I have selected the words in particular that I felt were most important to this song:

...There’s nothing in a world where the melody is broken
...There’s always some way to make the silence be spoken
...I’m found I’m looking for a place where I was once found
...for a mechanical fright
...Return o the nothingness and joy just might be right
...I’m a mechanical music man
...I’m a complicated being with love songs to beat
...mechanical museum
...malfunctioning being
...I’m lost I’m looking for a place where I can get lost


An idea that I’ve had for one of the sounds that is similar to rain is to have raindrops fall from a hole in the ceiling in his room and land onto different sized empty in cans giving a different pitch.
Only the raindrops don’t break up when they land they roll onto the floor as they are made of metal.

This is the sort of idea that I want the rest of my animation to have.

I started to think about what my robot and its environment could look like as I had an idea in my head that seemed to be very ‘retro’, sort of, a room with all of its objects collaged together to function in the same way as before, but look entirely different.

For instance and amp (or speaker of some sort) but that looks like nothing you have seen before, made form only the basic components necessary for it to work. I stated to think about colours and further into style but it was very difficult without a clear understanding of what and how the objects in the room were to fit together – it was time for a tutorial!