With an animation, there's no location audio, so absolutely everything had to be created. Every footstep, every floorboard creak and even the tinkle of a teaspoon on a saucer has to be planned, recorded and mixed in with the dialog and atmospheres.

The short film was funny without audio, but it was a distant, slightly claustrophobic experience (probably due to the dry acoustic environment of the dubbing theatre).

But with audio, the film burst into life. The sound effects, dialogue and realistic reverb gave a context and shimmer to the animation, and it is easy to see why it was so successful.

Finding the right sound

Sound design is rarely just a case of finding the right sound for a screen event. A single sound is often a composite of many. Adrian Rhodes, the dubbing editor for The Wrong Trousers, told me that each footstep taken by the robotic garments was made up of thirteen sub-elements (including a motorised camera drive) that were adjusted individually depending on the context.

Audio is part of life, and here's a good illustration: abstract animated objects, brought to life not just by the skills of the animators, but by their collaborators in this work - expert sound designers.

Plug the subwoofer in and turn up the volume to enjoy this experiment in abstract sound and vision.

Resonance was organised by SR partners.