Producing movement
Hanna-Barbera Productions turned to its sound effects to bring its cartoon worlds to life. These sounds helped to create a sensation of movement, especially when no visual, animated movement was present. In this section, I closely read a number of moments where sound effects enliven the animated image. These moments were selected throughout Hanna-Barbera's oeuvre in order to demonstrate a consistency to the studio's logic in pairing kinetically anemic visuals with sounds that evoke movement. The movement that Hanna-Barbera's sound effects evoke is most often the trajectory of an object on screen. When cels slide, rotate, stand still, and otherwise awkwardly move, Hanna-Barbera persistently pairs these techniques of limited animation with sound effects that evoke trajectory.
The use of sound effects to enhance a sensation of movement and action did not begin with Hanna-Barbera or limited animation. Rather, it is strongly associated with the classical animation of Warner Bros., in particular the work of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery and the sound effects work of Treg Brown, discussed earlier. Norman Klein (1993: 172–173), in his study of the history of classical animation, labels this the 'zip-crash school', where shorts were driven by the chase as a series of gags and sound effects were used to accentuate the action – a zip of the character off-screen and then a crash. Hanna and Barbera's work with Tom and Jerry at MGM falls squarely within this school of animation sound. Drawing on this history, Hanna-Barbera Productions would popularize this method of sound design in TV limited animation. In their cartoons, sound effects such as zips, skids, and boinks not only enhance the overall sensation of movement but also supplant the visual movement created through animation. Indeed, we might say the visuals enhance sound's creation of movement; at the very least, we are unsure what enhances what.
Building on Michel Chion's (1994: 120–122) claim that animation sound is indebted to children's renderings of trajectory via sound, I offer the term 'trajectory mimesis' to encapsulate Hanna-Barbera's persistent use of sound effects to evoke movement in its limited animation. As mentioned in the introduction, trajectory mimesis is the sonic evocation of trajectory, which is made legible by the minimal movement in the image (Chion, 1994: 121). This term accounts for this evocation and allows for a conceptual recalibration of animation sound, particularly with the rise of limited animation and the television cartoon.
Since what I am calling trajectory mimesis has long been seen under the umbrella of mickey mousing, it will be of use to first address this practice and how trajectory mimesis differs from it. The coupling of sound and image based on movement – a kinetic resonance between sound and image over a representational one – has a strong tradition in animation and has often been thought of in terms of mickey mousing (Curtis, 1992: 191–203). Mickey mousing – or what Scott Curtis, removing its studio specific connotations, calls syncretic sound, offers an aural analogy for visual movement. As the name implies, mickey mousing predates Hanna-Barbera's TV animation and was popularized by Disney. Lea Jacobs (2015: 58), writing on the sonic complexity of Disney's Silly Symphonies, defines it as follows:
[Micky mousing] encompasses a number of different aspects of the relationship between music and action, and music and other sounds. Most important for my purposes is the idea of a tight synchronization between movement and/or cutting and the beat. But it is also used to refer to the musical mimesis of physical movement, as in the use of a glissando when a character slides down a rope. The term is also sometimes applied more generally to any tight integration of music and sound effects, as in the use of what is supposedly a frog's croak in the place of a bassline note.
Mickey mousing denotes a strict wedding between rhythms established in the visual and aural registers. It precisely marks – in terms of rhythm and, therefore, movement – that one of these registers does not outstrip the other. With full, smooth animation constructing the image track and sound tightly accompanying this visual movement, mickey mousing denotes a lockstep sync of sound and image. This mapping creates a strong rhythmic beat to cartoons that deploy the technique. Mickey mousing, however, does not mark an excess of kinesis between the sonic and visual registers. Conversely, Hanna-Barbera's pairing of limited animation and sonic evocation of movement does just that. The studio's pairing creates an excess of kinesis between sound and image. In the visual register, movement is reduced, aberrant, and, thus, continually destabilized, and Hanna-Barbera uses sound effects to infuse movement back into the image. The studio couples kinetically anemic visuals to kinetically excessive sounds. Therefore, there is a kinetic imbalance between Hanna-Barbera's sounds and images. So, while tight audiovisual sync and the sonic mimesis of movement have been terminologically conflated, in limited animation their relationship to the movement of the visual register differentiates them.
Of course, moments of mickey mousing as an audiovisual rhythmic sync appear in Hanna-Barbera's cartoons, yet they define the sound/image relationship far less than the musical mimesis of movement that Jacobs (2015: 58) identifies as a key part of the definition of mickey mousing. Trajectory mimesis's ascension in Hanna-Barbera's cartoons is motivated by the studio's use of limited animation. This style of animation forestalls the fluid production of movement. Its play of stillness and motion continually produces aberrant, arrhythmic movement. The arrhythmic kinetic economy of limited animation does not produce a favorable sound/image relationship for mickey mousing. This is because mickey mousing demands rhythm in the aural and visual registers as discussed above and thus a flow and duration of movement. Trajectory mimesis operates otherwise. It needs neither extended duration nor rhythm. This sonic form emerges most often to glue or stitch limited animation's cels and shots together. Hanna-Barbera frequently and persistently couples trajectory mimesis to moving drawings, that is, pull-cels. In limited animation, trajectory mimesis produces an abundance of sonic movement that attempts to mask aberrant motion and stasis.
Trajectory mimesis flourishes in the moving drawings and quick cuts of Hanna-Barbera's limited animation. This sonic form does not ground its sound/image relationship in cinematic realism and representational mimesis, but rather in a relationship between sound and kinesis. It inundates the soundscapes of Hanna-Barbera's cartoons with wacky sound effects. Throughout the studio's catalog, sounds continually imitate movement. A brilliant example happens in the sixth episode of The Flintstone's first season, 'The Monster From the Tar Pits' (originally aired 4 November 1960). While initially smug and skeptical about Wilma, Betty, and Barney being starstruck and annoyed that Hollyrock is filming a movie in Bedrock, Fred finally becomes enamored by show business when he is offered the part of the titular monster. Fred dons the costume and comes home to greet an unsuspecting Wilma. Wilma screams and, overtaken with terror from the monster on her doorstep, faints. Her body stays perfectly still as she falls to the floor. Her posture remains stiff and her expression changes only mildly. While Wilma's scream contains multiple cels of animation, her collapse is visually rendered through the slow rotation of a single cel clockwise, which then exits from the bottom of the frame. She finally slips from the bottom of the frame – her fall against the floor rendered by a crash of a cymbal and the shake of the camera.
Wilma's rotation against the abstract background of the Flintstone's interior home, devoid of any discernible features, is quite noticeable. A form of stillness becomes visible in the moving image. This constellation of limited animation techniques greatly reduces the movement between and in the frames. Accompanying Wilma's descent, a slide whistle plays on the soundtrack. Music echoes Wilma's trajectory. The downward portamento of the whistle provides a musical mimesis of Wilma's fall. While the musical descent could have been expressed in a number of ways, the choice of a whistle and its ability to continually express a pitch change further adds fluidity to the image. What is most important is how a sonic continuous duration masks the static sequences of images. Lasting only a couple of seconds, this is most often the way trajectory mimesis is used in Hanna-Barbera's cartoons –fleeting sonic instances that help to gloss over the immobility and aberrant movement of the visuals. Continually throughout Hanna-Barbera's cartoons, characters' movements are broken down into a series of frames that are awkwardly wedded. The studio consistently pairs these moments to kinetic sonic effects, producing trajectory mimesis.
Occasionally, trajectory mimesis emerges beyond the instant to a euphonious chain of sounds. In 'Dino Goes Hollyrock', mentioned earlier, Dino plays dead for an audition. Foregoing the typical trained dog act of playing dead, Dino gives a drawn-out death performance à la Shakespearian theater. Emerging from a doorway, Dino coughs and gasps for air, shambles left across the frame, pulling a tablecloth that causes a vase to crash (again off screen). Finding his final resting place, Dino, in an exaggerated fall to the ground, arcs through the air, spins, and crashes against the floor. Dino's arc through the air is visually rendered by the use of a single static cel rotated into six different positions, with each position given two frames. Again on the soundtrack, a slide whistle plays, matching Dino's arc. It slides quickly up, then down as Dino lands on his head. His landing is matched with the hollow sound of a tom drum, comically implying the emptiness of Dino's skull. Visually, the camera shakes up and down. On his head, Dino spins in a counterclockwise circle. The show animates the spin via four different cels: the back of Dino, a right profile, a straight on, and a left three-quarter shot. Adding to the overall effect of movement, circular motion lines swirl around Dino's body as he spins. A ratchet provides the sonic accompaniment to Dino's spin. In a refreshing break from pitch, the ratchet provides a subtle circular rhythm that emerges through its oscillation in tonal quality. Dino's spin ends, and he comes crashing to the ground.
What is so striking here is that little change exists within the cel. With Dino's fall, movement in the image is not produced through traditional animation. The cartoon foregoes a succession of drawings. In place of animated movement, motion emerges through the rotating of the cel. Furthermore, the sliding cel is, again, aurally coupled to a descending whistle sound, followed by a cymbal crash and a shake of the camera as Dino's body slams to the ground. Camera movement ('tracking shots' and camera shakes) and the rotating of cels constitute much of the movement in this scene; Hanna-Barbera animates sparingly. While cost and time effective, these techniques forego fluid, lifelike movement and often produce aberrant, awkward motion. But the aural movement of the sound effects helps the aberrant motion of the animation flow and smooths over the awkward visuals. Arching pitch and timbral oscillation produce an abundance of sonic movement in the absence of visual motion. This aural abundance, coupled with the stilted movements of Dino's death, produces a kinetic asynchrony between the image and sound track. The image presents a fractured arc of movement and the soundtrack plays the continuous durative sound of a slide whistle and ratchet.
The zany antics of the Flintstones and their friends create situation after situation of physical comedy that prompted moments of trajectory mimesis. As Fred and crew zip across the screen, whistles, strings, and percussion aurally underscored the image with kinetic sounds. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! would continue the comedic pairing of pull-cels with this form. In reckless runs from monsters and all manner of meanies, cowardly Shaggy and Scooby haphazardly slide, fly, and tumble across the screen, typically as moving drawings and sonically paired with trajectory mimesis. For comedic effect, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! expands the sonic form to moments of paranormal activity, where aberrant movement appears motivated by otherworldly forces. For instance, as Shaggy and Scooby travel around the haunted fairground in 'Foul Play in Funland', rides, games, and concession stands run on their own. An operational food stand prompts Shaggy to order a malted shake and a hot dog with all the trimmings. As a pull-cel, the food enters the frame, sliding across the countertop. On the soundtrack, strings play a descending glissando, echoing the visual slide.