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Mickey Mousing

In animation and film, "Mickey Mousing" is a film technique that syncs the accompanying music with the actions on screen, "Matching movement to music", or "The exact segmentation of the music analogue to the picture." The term comes from the early and mid-production Walt Disney films, where the music almost completely works to mimic the animated motions of the characters. Mickey Mousing may use music to "reinforce an action by mimicking its rhythm exactly. Frequently used in the 1930s and 1940s, especially by Max Steiner, it is somewhat out of favor today, at least in serious films, because of overuse. However, it can still be effective if used imaginatively". Mickey Mousing and synchronicity help structure the viewing experience, to indicate how much events should impact the viewer, and to provide information not present on screen. The technique "enable[s] the music to be seen to 'participate' in the action and for it to be quickly and formatively interpreted ... and [to] also intensify the experience of the scene for the spectator." Mickey Mousing may also create unintentional humor, and be used in parody or self-reference.

Examples
'' (1929) is an early example of the technique. The first known use of Mickey Mousing was in Steamboat Willie (1928), the first Mickey Mouse cartoon by Walt Disney, scored by Wilfred Jackson. In the 1931 Van Beuren Studios animated short ''Making 'Em Move the "Mysterioso Pizzicato" theme is Mickey Moused to the action first to produce a "false sense of foreboding" as a curious visitor enters the animation factory, and then again to accompany the villain in a cartoon-within-a-cartoon. King Kong'' (1933) uses Mickey Mousing throughout, and is described by MacDonald as, "perhaps the single most noteworthy aspect of Steiner's score for King Kong." The descending scale segments accompanying the chief's walk down stairs towards Denham's party continue after the camera cuts to the Denham, implying the chief's continued descent and maintaining suspense. In Casablanca (1942), the technique is only used at the end of the film when Captain Renault throws away a bottle of Vichy water. Paul Smith used the technique in several scores for True-Life Adventures documentary films in the fifties, including In Beaver Valley, ''Nature's Half Acre, Water Birds, and The Olympic Elk''. An example of Mickey Mousing is used in Monty Norman's score to the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962), in which Bond repeatedly strikes a tarantula which had crawled into his bed. Writers have noted its anachronistic appearance in the context of the whole series, as prolific Bond composer John Barry never used it in any of the subsequent films. The technique is also used to accompany Bill Sikes's beating murder of Nancy in the film Oliver! (1968). In this case, the music is partially used to "cover" her cries as she is being struck. In Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Mickey Mousing is used at the opening, with the visual slowed to match the music, producing an intentional lightly comical effect. In video games, Mickey Mousing may occur in dynamic audio compositions, such as in reaction or for indication (for example, in response to character action or to alert the player to the end of a countdown), and is often found in platform games. ==Criticism==
Criticism
The term "Mickey Mousing" is also used as a pejorative to imply that a technique used in productions aimed at adults is too simplistic and more appropriate for a juvenile audience. In 1954, Jean Cocteau described Mickey Mousing as the most vulgar technique used in film music. ==See also==
Source: Wikipedia ↗
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