"We've got ears! Say cheers!" Mickey-mousing in contemporary wildlife films

Abstract

Mickey-mousing is a compositional technique where music is closely synchronized with visual movements on screen, its name and convention stemming from the earliest Disney features. Although its usage has mostly disappeared in live action film, it is still present in wildlife films (or nature documentaries). This thesis aims to answer the questions of why this technique with highly cartoonizing connotations is still used and how it works within contemporary wildlife films, when the film’s motivations or messages might differ from one another – i.e. the implicit meaning of the film and its morals. In this thesis, these messages are ‘entertainment’ vs. ‘environmentalism’.

In order to answer these questions, the history of the wildlife film and its (musical) conventions are thoroughly analysed, before applying Emilio Audissino’s methods of Film/Music Analysis on two case studies: Dancing with the Birds (dir. Huw Cordey, 2019) and Our Planet (Silverback Films, 2019).

These case studies are produced by the same production company, but are made with drastically different intentions. I argue through my analyses that Dancing with the Birds is a film made with the purpose of continuing the conventions of family entertainment, while Our Planet is a series intended to engage and activate its viewers in regards to the environmental consequences of human behaviour and interference, whilst still employing musical conventions of cartoonization. The analyses and the comparisons made in the conclusion reveal the ways mickey-mousing is featured both in the instant it is used, as well as its function in the overarching (emotional) framework of the film or series.