Lecture 9 'The Circle of Life'

This lecture was partly about ideology and what it means and partly a comparison between western animation e.g. Disney and Pixar and Japanese animation.

He showed us extracts form Bambi (Disney) and My Neighbour Totoro (Studio Ghibli) and compared the two. He talked about the way the western animation always had an underlying theme telling children that home is safe, stay with your parents and you will be safe, don't wander into the open on your own. The anime however seems to express the idea that when you leave home and explore the unknown you will have a thrilling adventure, that its OK, the exciting things happen when you are free from your parents.

This really made me think, i can believe that this is true for some Disney and anime but it cannot be an absolute rule. It is certainly true for the Studio Ghibli film 'Spirited Away' when a young goes through a portal and finds herself alone in a magical and disturbing world.

This is also true for the Disney film 'Pinocchio' where the wooden boy is safe while at home but when he gets taken away he has to endure some truly horrific events including being eaten by a whale and nearly turning into a donkey.

I don't think these rules are without exception though for example 'Peter Pan' is a story about some children who are invited away from home by a boy and a fairy to a magical land where theyhave an adventure.
However, being brought up on Disney i do understand what Bill meant by this. Sometimes when i watch anime films i get scared for the characters because they put themselves in dangerous positions so willingly, something you rarely see in Disney. I find myself wanting to tell them not to go through the spooky door or wander off with a monster because i have been brain washed by Disney into thinking that these actions will lead to danger. In anime these actions lead to adventure an excitement.

Lecture 9 'I move therefore I am'

This lecture was about animation, one part that really stood out for me was this quote:

"Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn."
Norman McLaren

I found this really interesting, I'd never thought about animation in this way before, the movements have to have some correlation with movements in the real world to work, the have to be smooth and flow. Bill said that the important stuff its not what is drawn in each frame, but is what happens between the frames.

Bill also explained about the roll of the controller, a god which is in complete control of the animated universe which he has invented. He has the power to change the laws of physics to bend and alter reality as he wishes. The characters may or may not interact with or be aware of this character which all animation shares. A good example of where the characters are aware of this figure in 'Duck Amuck' by Warner Bros.

In this scene the controller has changed the physical area and materiality of the world in which Daffy Duck exists. The universe has changed from an apparently infinite space to a floppy bubble of flat space. Daffy is having to hold up the walls of the universe for it to even exist.
In the seminar we talked about how animation had first evolved and how movement can bring things to life. All living things move, and if something that looks alive doesn't move, or if something that isn't alive moves than it disturbs us. The familiar unfamiliar as Freud put it. This can be thought of as a dead body, we recognise the person as a human but because of the lack of movement it looks uncanny. This could also be said if an inanimate object like a doll started moving. It would be very strange and disturbing.

This is what makes the Chucky movies so scary, how do you kill something that was never alive?

Thinking about that reminded me of a scene in 'Fantasia' the Disney animation, where Mickey mouse enchants a broom to fill the bath with buckets of water and he can't stop it. It keeps going until the place is flooded, then when Mickey tries to destroy the broom each of the splinters turns into a tiny version of the broom each with buckets of water and it goes on and on. It cannot be stopped, how do you kill something that was never alive?

This scene scared me as a child it was like a nightmare, the idea that it couldn't be stopped and anything you did to make it better only made it worse. It's hard to explain, it makes me feel uneasy thinking about it, i wonder how it would feel if i watched it now.

It all links in quite neatly an animated film about an inanimate object becoming animate, haha.

Lecture 8 'Shoot and Cut'

This weeks lecture was on screen violence and the way in which we are exposed to violence everyday through tv, films and videogames.

Bill mentioned the Columbine high school massacre and how the boys involved had been obsessed with the computer game Doom, which i mentioned in my blog two weeks ago. This disturbs me slightly, when i talked about it before i said how the gore and violence hadn't affected me but it clearly affected those two boy to the extent that they committed mass murder. It makes me feel uneasy thinking that i have something in common with those boys. I haven't played that game in years and was never obsessed with it, just to clear that up.

CCTV footage of the Columbine Massacre               Doom Video Game

But it raises the question - are we all affected by our exposure to such graphic violence? Does it make us more OK with violence in the real world. I'm not sure. We are able to watch torture and abuse on screen but if we were to see it for real i think our reaction would be the same, for me at least. Because i can watch gory films but when you see real footage on the news of war or a terrorist attack i have trouble watching, even if the images aren't graphic it's the thought of what happened to real people. In movies it's ok because you know for sure that it is made up, i can watch Kill Bill and watch the crazy 88 get their arms and legs cut off but if i were to see that in real life i think i'd vomit or faint.

I think you'd have to be really hardened to gore, maybe a paramedic or surgeon could cope with an amount of bloody violence in their real lives, but i don't know.

It was not a cheery lecture as you can probably tell.

Lecture 7 'To infinity and BEYOND!'

This lecture was about the science fiction genre and how films can be classed as different genre. About how films don't just belong to a single genre, all films contain elements which relate them to several genre.

An example would be 'Galaxy Quest' which is a spoof of t.v shows like Star Trek, it is both a science-fiction film and a comedy.

In the seminar Alan talked about genre markers, which are clues in the movie which tell us what genre the movie belongs and therefore how to watch the film. These clues are in the soundtrack, cinematography and effects. For example, the eerie music which is played throughout 'Alien' is a sign telling us that we should be scared therefore 'Alien' is a horror film. But we also get clues from the subject matter and plot, even the title 'Alien' is a sign that the film also belongs to the sci-fi genre.

These genre markers can also be far more subtle, the type of explosion for example:



This is a still from 'Saving Private Ryan' showing a shell exploding in a burst of earth and dust.

This is a still form 'TropicThunder' showing an explosion, this explosion is a giant ball of orange flame and black smoke.

You can easily see the difference, the realism in the explosion in 'Saving Private Ryan' tells us that the film is serious and want to be taken seriously. They want to show the realism of war.

The explosion from 'Tropic Thunder' is very unrealistic and this tell us that the film is more lighthearted, it doesn't want to be taken to seriously, this kind of explosion is a genre marker for comedy and action films.

The level of gore and bloodiness is also a genre marker, in 'Tropic Thunder' the gore is excessive and over played which tells us again not to take it seriously, whereas in  'Saving Private Ryan' the gore will be limited, tasteful and realistic, it wont be shown for the audiences enjoyment as it is in 'Tropic Thunder'.

In a film like 'Kill Bill' where there are huge quantities of blood it is a sign telling us again not to take the killing too seriously, it makes it more lighthearted and it keeps our sympathies with the main character.

Lecture 6 'A Brief History of the New'

This lecture was about different approaches to 'new media', mainly talking about how techniques of film making and video games have progressed.

Bill talked a lot about video games he liked from his childhood and today a why he felt they were good, and it was all about the level of interactivity. How the leap had been made from films where the viewer is apart from the action on the screen and cannot influence it, to a completely separate interactive world which the player can enter and change, where you can meet other people in that world and exist with them in a fictional reality.

This got me thinking about the first computer games i played and why i liked them. The first game i remember is Doom95, which was a first person shooter where a gateway to hell has opened and you have to defend earth from the onslaught of demons. I remember my brother getting the game when it first came out and watching him play and being quite scared of the monsters, they seemed really real to me. Now when i look at images of game play i find it strange how i could compare it with real life that quality of the graphics are so poor you can barley see the creatures, let alone believe they could be real.

The game has been criticized for is high level of gore and satanic imagery by religious groups, and thinking about it now i was probably a bit young to be playing a game like this and to be exposed to simulated violence like this at a young age. But i don't remember it like I've just described it, it was just something i used to play, i was so young i didn't understand the gore i just new that when you shot at things they went red, it sounds really weird but i didn't think of it like 'omg i just shot that zombie and he exploded and his guts have gone everywhere' it was just 'huh he went red'. And as for the references to hell, they just went completely over my head; i am far more disturbed by this game when i play it now then i was then.

Other games i used to play were far more innocent, another favourite was 'The Great Green Mouse Disaster' where an orchestra of green mice has been booked to play at a hotel but someone dropped the basket with all the mice in and they escaped. You then had to look around all the rooms in the hotel trying to find the mice.

It is based on a children's story book, the cover is shown above. If you look closely you can see the basket of mice on the steps where it has just been dropped with all the mice running into the hotel. I really liked this game because you could interact with the other characters in it and with the objects in the rooms. This we take for granted in all games now but it was the first game i played where this was an option. I preferred it to Doom because it had a higher level of interactivity which is what Bill was talking about earlier today.

Lecture 5 'Two Sides to Everything (and a bit in the middle)'

This lecture was about Structuralism and the way people view the world in a system of Binary Opposition. We automatically split the world into opposites and decide what things are by deciding what they are not.

We choose to perceive the world in this way but that is not how the world is. For example we may describe something as being hot or cold, but when does hot stop and cold begin. I might say the waters hot when its at 60 °C but the surface of the sun is around 6,000 °C which is much hotter n makes the water seem pretty cold in comparison. The only example i can think of of two absolute opposites is 'on and off'.

Between the 2 opposites is the zone of indeterminacy where stuff is neither one or the other, its a bit of both; and these things in between are much more interesting and exciting.

For example i find the devil child in The Omen quite a dull character because he is evil incarnate and nothing else, he doesn't even do much. Whereas the possessed child in the exorcist is a good normal child which is taken over by evil, making her a much fuller, more interesting character.



Left- child from 'The Omen'                           Right - Regan in 'The Exorcist'

 You will often find the most boring characters in a story will be those who have an extreme personality. They tend to have quite shallow personalities and become predictable and boring. For example, when i was little i used to watch Winnie the pooh on TV and my favourite character was Pooh, but my friends used to like Eeyore which i couldn't understand. He was always grumpy and sad and had nothing else to his personality; he was boring. Obviously when i was little i didn't read this far into it but i can see now that i didn't like him for that reason.

Pooh and Eeyore

 Bit of contrast in my choice of examples; devil children and cuddly woodland friends, oh well you get the idea.

Lecture 4 'Nothing New'

This lecture was an introduction to the concept of intertextuality which is the idea that nothing is truly original, everything is influenced by the past. This suggests that, as a model designer, i will never be able to come up with a new/original idea because i will always be influenced by things i have seen or learned about by way of unconscious intertextuality; this means it is not it my control, it will happen without my knowledge.

The other kind of intertextuality is self conscious intertextuality, this when things are referenced on purpose. This is most familiar to us in films and on TV. Shows like 'Family Guy' are full of references to films, TV and aspects of American culture. This kind of intertextuality only works if the knowledge is shared and the sign can be interpreted by the viewer. This is sometimes a problem with shows like 'Family Guy' which rely on these references (signs) for a large part of the humour and having not lived in America and watched American TV i do not 'get' all of the jokes.



Still form family guy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Family-Guy-4ACX29-Evil-Tree.png

This still from family guy id referencing the scene in 'Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring' where Gandalf is fighting the monster in the Mines of Moria. This i understood and found funny because i had seen the movie.

Still from family guy, http://www.flixster.com/poll/fav-person-on-family-guy

This still is referencing the character in the advert for Kool Aid which we do not have in this country and i had never seen before. This example of intertextuality didn't work on me because i did not have the knowledge to understand the sign.



Intertextuality is not just imposed by the author/designer/film maker it is laid on by the viewer. I may see references in things which aren't intentionally or otherwise there. For example in the lecture Ivan showed us an picture he'd taken of a landfill site which reminded him of the Pyramid of Giza.



Landfill site                                            Pyramids of Giza

This is a reference which Ivan has imposed onto the view, the men working at the site did not intend on creating an impression of the Pyramids and the Pyramids were not designed to look like a land fill site 5000 years in the future. The control has shifted from the creator to the viewer, the artist cannot control how his work will be interpreted no matter how much he tries to push the viewer in the right direction.

Lecture 3 'Reading The Signs'

This lecture and following seminar was an introduction to Semiotics which turned out to be far more complicated than i thought. I went away from the lecture thinking 'yer I've got this' but after the seminar i was totally confused again but whatever. I looked at it again and its a bit clearer now.

For this entry i thought I'd have a go at analysing an model/character because this is what i have to do if i choose semiotics as my essay subject. I have chosen Gollum from' Lord of the Rings'.


Gollum, 'Lord of the Rings', http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/movies/the-lord-of-the-rings_gollum_1024x768_11512.htm

 Denotation - What is it?
Humanoid male
Distorted facial and body proportions - large eyes and ears, small stature, hunched back
Thin
Semi-naked
Dirty

Connotation - What it suggests
He's wild, lives outdoors
Not part of society
Evil or mad
Malnourished
Good hunter - large eyes and ears

Myth - Its ideological/political meaning
A feral creature that would do anything to survive, more animal that human: it would act on instinct and would not understand human emotion or be able to empathise with people.
An outcast from society.
Appears to have once been human but has adapted to its new situation and so its body has changed/evolved to be more suited to a more animal-like lifestyle.


This whole thing is slightly skewed because i have seen the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and know what Gollum is like. I find it hard to distinguish between connotation and myth because one leads to another. I think for the myth you look at all of the connotations you have drawn and deduce the myth from them as a whole.

Once i got my head around the concept of semiotics i started seeing signs in everything, down how people dress and how they walk. they want to send you a message using their clothes and body language which may be subconscious or purposeful. There are signs in what people choose to express and what they want to hide. For example someone might where a t-shirt with the name of a band they like on it, they where it to show other people that they like this band, because they think that band is good. Other people see the t-shirt and draw connotation from this; they deduce their musical preferences and start to deduce their personality.

 For model making semiotics becomes slightly more complex as there are two sets of paradigms; one for the model itself and one for what the model is of. E.g. the materials and workmanship of a model building and the style and design of the building that is being modelled.



Scale model of 'The St Francis Towers', http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=323215

E.g. A model of 'The St Francis Towers'

Model Paradigm                                                            'Real' Paradigm

Accurate proportions                                                     Modern building style

Well made                                                                     Skyscraper

Good use of materials                                                   An office/place of work not

Realistic render and finish                                             a residential building

Lecture 2 'Can You Tell What It Is Yet?'

This lecture was about realism and how it has evolved as technology has improved; from artists impressions of the world, to photography and now to computer graphics and robots.

Over the weekend i watched 'Avatar' which made me think about the idea of realism and whether i thought Avatar was realistic. I know that there is no planet called Pandora and no Na'vi people and because i know that its a fictional story and know that it was created on a computer i can see that it is not real and i notice the CGI effects. But i thought if a complete outsider watched Avatar, who didn't know what CGI looked like and didn't know that it was a fictional story, would they believe that it was real, would they be fooled by the hyper-realistic graphics.



Neytiri, Avatar screenshot, http://www.fanpop.com/spots/james-camerons-avatar/images/9473020/title/neytiri-photo

Because you have to admit it pretty damn realistic, especially in a still from the film like the one shown above. The shadows on her skin and the wispy bits of hair escaping from her braids are just right, and when you watch the film the movement of the characters is perfect, at no point is the illusion broken by jerky or unnatural movement.

I also watched the film 'Coraline' which creates the illusion of realism in a completely different way. Instead of aiming to create a replica of the real world as in Avatar, Coraline's world is obviously an invention.



Coraline screenshot, http://www.andywhiteley.com/blog/category/styles/stop-motion/

It is purposely made to look unreal; the proportions of the characters are wrong and they're movement is unnatural. The plot of the film is also fanciful; Coraline travels to this other world through a portal in her house into this alternate universe where nightmarish events occur, this is again opposite to Avatar where the story (although perhaps a bit extreme) is believable.

And this made me think that if Coraline had been done in the style of Avatar, hyper-realistic characters and setting but kept the same bizarre plot line, how this would change the effect of the film on the viewer. The film is meant for children so nothing that nasty happens or at least the scenes are not made to be frightening. But if it was made to look like reality, i think the whole genre of the film would change from being a quirky kids film to something verging on horror.



Coraline screenshot, http://www.cinemasquid.com/blu-ray/movies/screenshots/coraline?movieid=8685



Model of 'Other Mother' final form, http://paulpapedesigns.typepad.com/nougat/2009/03/other-mother-final-form.html

 The 'Other Mother' shown above is a demon who abducts children, cuts out their eyes and locks them away to die. Her final form has a cracked skeletal face, her body is high up and bulbous like a spiders abdomen and her hands are enlarged and made from lots of sewing needles. The 'Other Father' also shown above, is a creation by the demon and there is a point in the film where it looks as if he is partly melted (its hard to explain, i'm annoyed i couldn't find a better picture) and becomes a zombie character that wants to capture Coraline. Its sounds a bit silly, you kinda have to see the film but i think that this is a fairly terrifying concept and if it were made into a film as realistic and believable as Avatar i think i would have problems watching it.

I find the most realistic horror films the scariest, 'The Ring' for example; a lot of people i've talked to did not find 'The Ring' at all scary because you don't see a lot of the monster. To me this film is really disturbing because it isn't silly monsters under the bed it's everyday life and everyday objects which you can't just tell yourself aren't real. I now have issues with TV's and static which i'm not sure will ever go away, i'm really glad video is dead.

Lecture 1 'This Rough Magic'

This lecture was an introduction to the module and mostly talked about what we are going to learn about. Ivan showed us a few short films of early examples of special effects which where interesting and pretty funny, they looked quite good to me but this could just be because the quality of film was so poor compared to what we are used to today. This got me thinking about how good special effects have to be these days with the kind of technology that is available to film makers.



Children of Men, explosion with Clive Owen,  http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/children-of-men-special-edition.html





Ivan mentioned how in the film 'Children of Men' there is a scene where Clive Owen is on the street and there is an explosion behind him (shown in above image). He said that he'd noticed that the traffic on the road was CGI and that the fact that he'd recognised this meant that the illusion was broken. This meant that all the work by special effects team had been almost pointless, because the moment you recognise that something is special effects and stop believing its real means they've failed in their aim.



Screen shot: Fantastic Mr Fox, http://ramascreen.com/fantastic-mr-fox-2nd-trailer/



This made me realise how realistic my models have to be in order to fool people into thinking they are real or at least suspend they're view of reality, as i did watching the film fantastic my fox. Everybody knows that the film is not the real world but after a few minutes you forget that you know that foxes can't talk and they don't have jobs and go to school. You allow yourself to be fooled and temporarily accept the film as reality.