Subtle idiosyncracy: sound and music in the Australian animated short film 'The Lost Thing' (2010)

Sean Tan and Andrew Ruhemann’s collaborative screen adaptation of Tan’s graphic short story ‘The Lost Thing’ is a highly accomplished work that gained international attention following its 2010 Academy Award for best short animation film. This article provides textual and contextual analyses of and reflections on the particular aesthetics of sound and music employed in the film and identifies the manner in which these represent a distinctly local and idiosyncratic approach to auralising the author’s visual narratives. As individual sections detail, the collaborative and interactive aspects of particular sonic components are also notable for representing a subtle compositional integration of elements—rather than a set of relationships between autonomous elements determined in the final sound mix (as is often the norm for cinematic production).