Comparing Animation

Ok I have to admit this lecture made me slightly angry, I found alot of what Bill said to be interesting though not relevant to model making. but saying the forest is a womb and making Bambi to be this deep hidden message, no...

I do believe there are morals and meanings put into films to question political views, what we believe and feel. but sometimes critics take it too far they look into something too much and see what they want to see. stretch and distort what the makers were trying to show. now I'm not saying this is what Bill's doing. but it did feel like it a little, that could just be down to my lack of understanding.

I watched Blade runner again recently as so many people were talking about it. I then looked up some reviews and found some people had really stretched what they had seen.

http://everything2.com/title/Religious+and+Mythical+Symbolism+in+Blade+Runner

This guy has gone full out. you can decide for yourself what you think the film means but don't be pushing it onto everyone else as truth, its merely your own theory.

Animation

Considering the title of this lecture I didn't think I would get much out of it. Thankfully we had a seminar, taking it further, seeing how it related to us model makers.

Animation has changed over the years, today there isn't so much actual hand craft skills involved as there used to be. and so when Bill talks about animation I think alot of us model makers find it extremely difficult to see how we relate. But if we look back in time we can see Animation started out purely built by hand.

Puppets and Automatons, these devices are what got us to where we are today. One of the most famous and still functioning today is the "Silver Swan". This Automaton was made in the 18th Century, its a which is to scale and moves as a sawn, with grace and beauty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4YggCiDRI0

This Clockwork driven device would have been the pinnacle  form of Animation in its time. Its craftsmanship is still  admired today by thousands. for when it hits 2pm the swan will come to life and the stream will flow.

Violence in the Media

In this lecture we heard about how different types of media can encourage violence, film, games and theatre ect... In our Seminar we looked into this further but from a slight angle.

below are three knives, each one you can see matches the title beside it. why?



1.  Honest Cowboy











2. Sci-Fi














3. Secret Spy












When we look at these knives you instantly link it to a type of character/genre it belongs to. this is due to a set of signs we've learnt. This system of signs has been built into us from a young age. the media uses these signs, for example, your watching a film, its an old western, a new character shows his knife, now if the knife was maybe rusty and had some blood stains on, you would quickly assume that this is a "bad guy" a villain. these visual signs tell us alot. on the other hand if it was clean and well kept you'd gather he an honest, fare and respectable man. Also we could take into account the way in which he's carrying it, how he uses it. without this language it would take a long time for us to recognize the different types of characters being used. And so we depend on this to communicate to the audience quickly and effectively.

Science fiction/Film

One of the interesting points of this lecture I found was, the idea that could digital model surpass handmade model. later we discussed this further in our Seminar. There are clear advantages to digital model and special effects, the fact that we can achieve things that aren't physically possible in this world is amazing. On the other I find most CGI looks quite fake and unbelievable. we talked about this and looked into why this is usually the case. we decided it was because the images/ models are too perfect, to clean, there isn't enough noise to fool us into believing its real, hence the world is not clean and perfect. trying to capture this feeling is difficult and would be better to replicate in model, in my opinion.

Also we touched on Blue-screening, actors having to imagine what's in front of them and giving a realistic response.  now I believe your never going to get the same response as you would if there was some huge dragon stuck in your face but we have to accept this isn't always possible in some instances. A film that used this really well was Alien, the scene where the Alien bursts from a man's chest. None of the actors new, what it was going to actually look like until it was actually happening. This was great, they used element of surprise,shock and horror to get the perfect response that was real! I believe one of the woman actually fell down in shock. This scene was filmed only once, which I think was right, with a second shoot you would lose that surprised response and wouldn't be as real.



 

New Media

Now to start of I didn't actually go to this lecture, however I am listening to a recording of it. I thought I'd do something different and Blog as I listened and see what came to mind.

Ok first of yes I will be looking for his name on Xbox live and if this lecture sucks I will personally hunt him down and kill him (in game ofc) ok so no mention of us model makers yet, a list of useful programs I wont really use. he knows we're here? ah right , it seems this weeks lecture is aimed for at gamers/animators. 

. Ok so I thought I would look at "games" and see how they influence model making.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwNk-ONmZfs

Heres a cool video I found, where a specialist company called Nightmare armour studios have made Gears of war Suites with full war gear props. This is a perfect example where the two worlds of digital and physical cross over and influence each other, today in film generally, neither one can exist without the other.

Binary Opposition

Binary Opposition, what is it and how do we use it?

It is the structures we build, which in esense, help us to understand the world. how? example; we all know the word coward but to understand it surly we have to know the difference between it and its binary opposite, a Hero.

Lets look at another, Nature - Culture. These sit on a scale opposite each other. now its very difficult to be in a place where there is only one if these, to be totally submerged in Nature for example, its seems theres almost always a little cross over. I myself found almost complete nature, a little Island called Yakushima. I went two days without seeing anyone, all I had to guide me was the odd sign post (never in English) and these paths which seemed to be created by the wild itself but even in this dense forest you'd still come across a random hut, these were still small signs of culture.

So it seems we generally sit somewhere between these opposites. this gap in the middle is what we call the "Zone of Anomaly". its neither one or the other and this is what intrigues us the most.

Lets look at how this is used in film. sticking to Nature and Culture let take the film Frankenstein. In this film Frankenstein the creator is trying to create life. when he does this creature is it neither Nature nor Culture, it sits somewhere in the Zone of Anomaly, its a MONSTER! and we love it.

Intertextuality

This lecture had to one of the easier concepts to grasp, mainly because we see it, use it all the time, especially those in the creative industry.


So what is Intertextuality? Wiki says "Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another." So  authors, artists alike use this key term. Being inspired/influenced by another's work, then producing your own is a form of Intertextuality. 


This is term is used hugely in the film industry, in fact some films made depend on it solely, for example Scary movie. This is a spoof. Here you can see clearly the references they're making to the film Scream. There are other films which use this technique but are much more Subtle about it, where only a select few would see it, these times always make you feel clever. One example I remember seeing, in the film Terminator 2, the boy teaches him to look for the keys under the sun screen. In the sequel, the Terminator does this instinctively. this is a great use of Intertextuality and made me smile. (however the rest of that film was pretty scheiss)  


I myself, used Intertextuality the other week, heres the picture.

now the guy on the right is quite obviously the  Mr McDonald himself, however I'm the clown on the left. I took my Inspiration from the clown  below. He's from the film Zombieland and hes a very happy clown.


So as you can see we all use Intertextuality,  sometimes without realising it. Its a familiarity, its how signs relate to each other.