DD3992: Music, Sounds and Voices

Unusually for an animated film, the voices for 'Gopher Golf' were one of the last parts of the production to be completed. The two main characters, Golfer and Gopher, were voiced by husband and wife Rob Kennedy-Parr and Sarah Ann Kennedy-Parr respectively, who have had plenty of experience in voice acting with roles in shows such as 'Peppa Pig' and 'Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom'.

Right from the beginning, I didn't want the final film to have dialogue in it. I imagined the Golfer and Gopher would make noises to show their emotions rather than use words - similar to how the Farmer and his animals communicate on 'Shaun the Sheep'. By doing this, I can focus a lot more on the slapstick and visual humour. Therefore, Rob and Sarah watched the film on a TV monitor in the sound booth, simply running their own commentary over the finished picture. Every once in a while, the Golfer makes noises which sound like English words such as "yes" and "no", but it felt natural for a human character to make such noises and it made him more relatable. Also, the words "yes" and "no" are now understood in almost every major world language due to the impact of the media - even in languages where the words for "yes" and "no" are different.

The sounds were all royalty free, available from a large library of sounds so I had no difficulty choosing the right sounds. However, when I test screened the film with sound, some of the sounds were too loud compared to the voices and music tracks, which were at the right level. The sounds will be increased when played back on a larger screen at the degree show, so some time had to be spent adjusting the sound levels.

The music is also royalty free, composed by Kevin MacLeod. He had composed his own take on the famous tune, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (German for "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"), which is the track I used instead of the more famous version heard in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey". I also used his music piece called "Scheming Weasel" - I was reluctant to use it at first because it has been featured in countless YouTube videos, but then I remembered "Also Sprach Zarathustra" was even more well known so that argument was invalid! "Scheming Weasel" also captures the style of comedy I'm looking for and matches the visuals very well, so I'm pleased with the end result.