The Teachers' Animation Toolkit

About music:
How would you describe this music?

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The Teachers’ Animation Toolkit
What feelings and images does it suggest to you? How does the 
music contribute to the meaning of a sequence? How would the 
sequence be affected if the music were absent or different?
About sound effects:
What exactly can you hear?
Are the sound effects used simply to represent an action or do they 
contribute to the drama of the sequence?
About words:
What can you tell about the actors from their tone of voice and what 
they say? How does intonation, accent, volume contribute to your 
impressions of the actor?
About silence:
Why do you think the sequence is silent at this point?
How can silence create drama/atmosphere/tension?
About the sequence as a whole:
What difference does the sound make to the sequence?
What difference would it make if either the music or sound effects 
were missing? How does sound and image combine to create 
specifi c meanings? What contribution is made by each individual 
element? Do these elements change over time? If so, what do the 
changes mean?
Finally, show the sound and image together and discuss how seeing 
the image changes one’s understanding of the use of sound.
Materials:
Data Projector, whiteboard or screen and sound
Resources:
Corpse Bride
, Tim Burton
Spirited Away
, The Studio Ghibli Collection
Belleville Rendez-Vous
, Sylvain Chomet

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Cineliteracy
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Peter and the Wolf
, Breakthrough Films, Director Suzie Templeton
The Sun Was Lost
, Monoru Maeda
Lemony Snicket’s A 
Series of Unfortunate Events, Brad Silberling
(All these titles are available on DVD from Amazon. See also