On animation: The music of the dust bunnies
Inside the creative process
24 February 2020
Sometimes music tells you what to feel. Music sends cues that this bit is fun, this bit is sad and everybody knows what impending doom sounds like. And sometimes the music is a surprise.
Music for tribes or music for characters?
Sometimes I think every dust bunny could get a theme of their own. Much like in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf; Peter had his own tune, the big bad wolf had a tune.
So Rayon, Knickers, Stour, Twill and the fuzzballs could all have their own character expressed musically.
However with John William's Star War's music, The Empire has it’s own humalong motif. Likewise, maybe the Biddies, the dust bunny tribe under the bed, could have a theme of their own as could the dust bunnies behind the computer screen and the kitchen dust bunnies.
The Central Vac presents its own Darth Vader-like musical opportunity. The Wind is the largest yet most insubstantial protagonist in the story but, to a dust bunny, sometimes The Wind's the villain, sometimes The Wind's a saint.
So what song will The Wind sing? Don't know yet but I think it will be sung by aerophones.
What, one might ask, is an aerophone?
For the answer we turn to the Blessed Wikipedia - "An aerophone is a musical instrument that produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound."
Music for rooms, music for mood
Places and settings can have their own music – the haunting majesty of the mass exodus of dust bunnies migrating downstairs in the moonlight, the liveliness on top of the kitchen cabinets and under the fridge, and the eternal emptiness of that sad grey place down the back of the filing cabinet where nobody ever cleans.
Music for movement
Despite being dragged reluctantly to a family outing, I must have salted away a profound memory of the The Royal Ballet’s production of Beatrix Potter’s Tales.
I didn’t want to admit this at the time because pre-teenage boys in 1971 weren't supposed to like this sort of thing but I enjoyed the music, the dancing and the sets very much.
So much so that I have decided I want my dust bunnies to dance.
Is the dust bunny movie actually a dust bunny ballet?
Yes, it seems so. Parts of it anyway. The Wind will be the choreographer. That particular notion comes from a scene in American Beauty (link below) wherein a lowly plastic bag is caught up in the eddies and air currents amongst the gaunt urban brickwork and debris yet dances with elegance, ease and grace.
There are a few scenes where The Wind makes the humble dust bunnies dance according to the mathematics of aerodynamics, both laminar and turbulent. For instance, at Rayon’s moment of creation our newly entangled hero waltzes from his lofty perch on high down to the stark reality of a teenager’s bedroom floor.
The arrival of the fuzzballs in the attic – annoyingly gleeful exuberance but quite lovely. As they descend through the shafts of sunlight, the fuzzballs light up and glow suggesting something akin to Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks but perhaps played on the Andean nose flute.
Cotton’s abduction by the dandelion seeds. An elegant gavotte slowly turns deadly.
There's a big exuberant and joyful finale that will be quite the dance party too.
Should there be any resistance to this concept, I shall refer naysayers to Kubrick's balletic space station docking scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
If plastic bags and spaceships can dance, so can dust bunnies.
