The first animation that I have chosen to examine is perhaps my favourite; Suzie Templeton's Peter & The Wolf. Although lack of dialogue in animations is not unusual, it is not something I have often seen in films of this length or with so many characters. Yet this absence is not keenly felt, largely due to the harmony between what the audience sees and what they hear.
As a composition intended to cultivate musical tastes in young children, Sergei Prokofiev's characterful music is often performed in conjunction with spoken narration which would help introduce the young audience to Peter's exploits. This is not the case in Templeton's interpretation, where the responsibility for telling the story is ultimately in the hands of the animators.
Peter, the eponymous yet voiceless hero. His highly mobile face compensates for the lack of words.
Working with an already established score, there was a need for the
characters to reflect the tone of their own instruments, which inform their
specific movements, expressions, personalities and actions. The animators
manage to convey all of the above with such subtle motions as the twitch of an
eye, or the flick of a paw, tiny actions that make these creatures absorbing
while demonstrating that words aren’t always necessary to tell a story.
“I thought the animators would animate her in a more complex and
interesting way if they thought she was female”- Templeton on the Wolf.
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