I'm not a big fat panda. I'm THE big fat panda...

I went to see Kung-Fu Panda yesterday which in my opinion was an absolute triumph for Dreamworks. Faultless story telling, great voice talent and most importantly really well crafted animation.

The filmed is sandwiched in between two great little set pieces - the initial stunning dream sequence opener, animated by James Baxter, and the end credits - both sequences take a more 2D approach towards the animation. There's a lot of beautifully illustrated scenes making them resemble the more traditional Chinese arts of shadow puppetry and calligraphy.
Shine were tasked with producing the 8 minute title sequence, partly as a fitting tribute to the 900 people who had produced the movie. Typically, as soon as the first credits roll everyone piles out of the theatre - something which annoys me as I find it disrespectful to the people who made the movie. But apparently that's a fairly unique point of view I hold, as one of our movie going companions said to me last night "What, are you telling me you can read everyone's name on that screen?" and comparing my point of view to "like needing to know the name of the tube driver on every journey you make". Well, that's not an entirely unreasonable request to make.... but he's missing the point a little bit. The entertainment industry loves kudos, and I always think it should be extended further than just to the director and actors.

Shine used a mixture of Cel Animation and After Effects to deliver a stonking end credits sequence which was aimed at keeping movie goers sat down for an additional 8 minutes. The horizontal scroller format is unusual, but in keeping with the Chinese theme, and some of the images developed within the sequence manage to be wonderfully charming without competing with the typography. In fact the sequence is so good, should the credits get a credit sequence?
If you're interested in finding out more about behind the scenes from the team at Shine, there's a good article here about it all.
Personally I'd like to see more imaginative ways of displaying credits, then perhaps more people would see the film through right until the end.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaah...

Popped into my local flea pit the other day to watch Kung Fu Panda, very good, I recommend it. Good animation, good story, good cast, good gags. Anyway I noticed in one of the fight scenes there was a familiar sound effect. A scream to be exact, the sort of scream you hear when someone gets pushed off a high thing.

I looked it up when I got back to the kennel and sure enough it was a 'Wilhelm Scream'.
The Wilhelm scream is something of a sound effects tradition; in 1951 on the film 'Distant Drums' with Gary Cooper, a scream was recorded for a scene where a man gets eaten by a alligator, as with most studio post stuff, the sound was archived and became available in Warner Bros. sound library. It was used again in 1953 in 'A Charge at Feather River' where a solder named Pvt. Wilhelm gets an arrow in his leg. And the name was coined.

The sound effect was then used in many other Warner Bros. releases, until in 1977 a sound designer by the name Ben Burtt was hired to create sound effects on 'Star Wars'. He had noted the use of the Wilhelm scream and decided to use it as his 'nod' to sound designers all over the world. Sort of in-joke. Ben Burtt went on to sound design for many films including the Indiana Jones trilogy and all the Star Wars films, often for Spielberg related pictures.

It gets used all the time these days, and once you know the sound you can't fail to miss it. There are some variations, and there have been other recordings of similar screams. Check out this compilation of the original scream and some of Burtt's uses for it, when they are all put together like this it seems amazing that it's not more obvious, but with years between the releases and hours of screen time, it just becomes another scream.

There is also a metal band called 'A Wilhelm Scream' that just goes to show, all 'metallers' are really just geeks who probably work in IT.

Check this list...