Screen Arts 30/4

Hollywood

Classical hollywood is the period from 1920s-1950s aka the golden age of hollywood. This refers to the style, production values and distribution of the films made in studios at this time. The big 5 Metro Golden Mayer, Paramount, Warner Bros, RKO Radio, 20th century fox. The little 3 Universal, Columbia, United Artists. The studio system was a big part of the success of classic hollywood. This allowed the big studios to have control of their movies. This structure is called Vertical integration because they control  the supply chain from the top.

MPPDA

The major studios consolidated their powers by establishing a trade body called Motion Picture Producers and Distribution Association in 1922. Its functions were to encourage cooperation within studios, to lobby overseas governments that threatened hollywood imports.

Block Booking

A studio would sell a years worth of films to theatres in packages. There would be one good A-budget and the rest lower quality, lower budgeted movies. The big 5 studios owned their own studios that were exempt from this practice. In 1948 in the USA vs Paramount, the decision outlawed block booking and forced the studios to sell their theatre chains.

The Hays Code

In the late 1920s, movies were popular and profitable, but not respectable. MPPDA hired Will Hays to put in a regulatory practice called the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, know as the Hays Code. This code listed a bunch of subjects that films couldnt portray. This code remained in place until late 1960s, the most important being sex and crime.

The Star System

Studios "owned" their stars. The stars were employees, and bound to them by contract. The studio would create a public appearance for the star, regardless of what they might actually be like. Contracts often had morality clauses to try and rein in the stars. This frustrated the stars as they had no creative freedom.

Common Film Techniques

Narrative structure - clearly structured with obvious beginning middle and ends with a definite resolution.
continuity editing - hides any cuts as much as possible
establishing shot - A long shot at the start to show the location of the scene/transition between scenes shot/reverse shot - flipping the camera, usually in a convo between two ppl
180 degree rule - Camera stays within 180 degrees to maintain smooth shot transitions
30 degree rule - camera should move at least 30 between successive shots to avoid jump cutting match on action - linking movements between shots to hide the cut
eyeline match - Two people looking at each other, one in first shot, one in second.

Online Film Terms dictionaries  https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/glossary/ 
 https://filmglossary.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/term/

Golden age of Animation

1927 the sound feature film The Jazz Singer was a large success. This helped inspire Walt Disney in 1928 to turn Steamboat Willie from an unfinished silent short into a synchro sound film, the success meant that Disneys future animations all had sound. This was the introduction of Mickey Mouse to the world. 

In  1929, The Skeleton Dance was the first of the Silly Symphonies that Disney released to help cheer up the people during the depression. The Three Little Pigs in 1933 was the most successsful of these symphonies, winning an oscar for best short film. 1934 was The Wise Little Hen, in which Donald Duck was introduced, overtaking Mickey as Disneys most popular character. The Old Mill in 1936 was disneys foray into realistic animation, using natural sounding effects.

Fleischer Studios

Max Fleischer of Fleischer  invented the rotoscope, enabling animators to use frame by frame over filmed action to create more lifelike movements. Betty Boop is probably the most well known creation from this studio. Popeye was introduced as a cartoon through Betty Boop in 1933, adapted from a newspaper comic strip. He was more popular than mickey mouse by 1935. 1939 Gullivers Travels was their first feature film, they used the rotoscope technique for Gulliver which brought reactions from the public due to mixing him with pure cartoon characters. Snow White in 1936 used similar techniques. Fleischer was the first cartoons of Superman in which he actually flew from 1941. Responsible for "Faster than a speeding bullet" quote. It was this style that influenced the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series.

Warner Brothers

Daffy Duck was created by Ted Avery for Porkys Duck Hunt in 1937. Avery preferred the egghead character in Daffy Duck and Egghead in 1938, who became Elmer Fudd. Daffy has been passed through many different animators, each changing his appearance. 
Bugs Bunny was first drawn by Ben Hardaway, first appearing in 1938. His appearance has also changed a lot over time.
Warner Bros is responsible for creating Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, Sylvester the cat and Foghorn Leghorn.

Walter Lantz

Had his own studio from 1929 -1972. 1940 Ben Hardaway joined Lantz Studio. This was the same year that Lantz created Woody Woodpecker.

Hanna Barbera

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera worked for MGM studios in late 1930s. The first cartoon was Puss Gets the Boot in 1940 which was the foundation for Tom and Jerry.

Terrytoons

Paul Terry took the money making approach to cartoons - mass producing cheap and minimal cartoons. Most successful was Mighty Mouse. 

      Animation Students – Choose an Animator from the Golden age of American Animation and answer the following…


     Ub Iwerks

     What characters did they create? Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Clarabelle the cow, Horace Horsecollar,

     What studio/studios did they work for? Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, Kansas City Film Ad Company, Universal Studio. Disney Studios, Iwerks Studio

     What changes to the character were made over time?

     Emile Cohl

     What characters did they create?

     What studio/studios did they work for? 

     What changes to the character were made over time?

     Email Traci 1 or 2 pioneers Im interested in.

Research 29/4

Creating an Literature Review.

Choose one of the following topics:
• Storytelling and Narrative Structures
• Composition and Visual Layering
• Character Arc and Storyline Development
• Cinematography and Film Craft
• Motivation and Sensory Impact

Use your skills at research to see what online resources there are about your chosen topic. Find at least 10 resources. SAVE THEM

Character Arc and Storyline Development

1 - Polymediated Narrative: The Case of the Supernatural Episode "Fan Fiction" (d/l to d drive)
https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1760&context=etsu-works
2 - An investigation of Vladimir Propp's 31 functions and 8 broad character types and how they apply to the analysis of video games. 10.1145/2336727.2336729
3 - From Storyboard to Story. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tsai-Yun_Mou/publication/244994039_From_storyboard_to_story_Animation_content_development/links/00b7d51d53205d9443000000.pdf
4 - Creative Story Design Method In Animation Production Pipeline. https://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:zpYmQgr0p2YJ:scholar.google.com/+animation+storyline+development&hl=en&as_sdt=1,5&as_ylo=2009&as_yhi=2019
5 - Character Development. http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:615435/FULLTEXT01.pdf
6 - Tales of Our Tomorrows: Transmedia Storytelling and Communicating About the Future. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.567.483&rep=rep1&type=pdf


Chose a second topic. Find at least 5 resources. SAVE THEM

Principles 11/4

More timing, and working on the head turn. Aiming to have that finished before the next half of the semester.

Storyboarding 10/4

Suggestion to use The Sims to plan out floor plan/location for my animation. Maybe even background?

Visual Language(Composition)
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/storytelling/visual-language/v/visual-language



Film Grammar(turning script into thumbnails)
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/storytelling#film-grammar

Digital 11/4

The two final looks for my clock, I ended up going with the second one with the Foxglove flowers instead of the tail. After a lot of dicking around, Im semi happy with the result but its my fault for not planning out my time better.

Screen Arts 10/4

I rediscovered the animations I used to watch about 15years ago before youtube existed. Simple animation style, but catchy loops and funny lyrics are what I enjoyed about this artist. After watching some more of his new stuff, I still enjoy his work as he is quite talented.

http://weebls-stuff.com/

Principles 8/4

More work on the head turn, and recording dialogue for those who are ready. Not ready for vocals yet, but I can do that at home easily enough and bring it in.

Onion skin layers showing the first, last and middle positions for my head turn.

Drawing 2/4

This was a group project with me, Jordyn, and Carel. This was a great experiment using oil sticks to collaborate and blend with colours. I enjoyed layering and smudging the colours for a soft, blended look. I really like how the colours tied in together across the piece as well, and I love how Carel's wings turned out .

Drawing 9/4

Sketching a live model, with ranging time limits from 10min all the way down to 1min. I found it quite a good exercise, in regards to making marks quickly to create the image. Even better, I dont hate the results lol. I can definitely see a difference from last year anyway.

Screen Arts 9/4

Destino

Jan 14, 1946, Salvador Dali and Disney paired up to make the animated film Destino. 8 months of work had produced only 17 seconds of animation so production was halted. Disneys nephew revived the project in 1999 when he was working on Fantasia 2000. Dreams of Dali is a 360 video based on his painting Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus(1935). It was made for the Salvador Dali Museum in Florida, USA. Watching it in class, wow!  It will be interesting to watch it again at home and see how it changes for me.

Monty Python's Flying Circus(Terry Gilliam)

Monty Python ran from 1969-1974, know for its surrealist comic style sketches. He used the "table top/cut out animations" technique which combined images cut out from paper and collaged. Cutouts have a limitation when it comes to smooth movements, but works well for violence due to the short sharp movements. Love love love Monty Python particularly the quest for the Holy Grail and And Now For Something Completely Different.

Walerian Borowcyzk

Polish filmmaker and animator.Features minimal scratchy drawings, animated photo's and deconstructed live action.. Provided inspiration for Terry Gilliam.

Fantastic Planet(1973)
Directed by Rene Laloux. Rene taught at a psych ward in the 1950's and used shadow puppetry and film. This led to him collaborating with Roland Tapor on 3 films.
“On a faraway planet where blue giants rule, oppressed humanoids rebel against their machine-like leaders.”

Jan Svankmajer

Czech surrealist filmmaker. He was denounced by a Czech film critic for his move Leonardos Diary in 1974. He had waves of censorship and was banned from making films as one stage. Created the Dimensions of Dialogue, two clay figures that merge into each other, first showing love and sex, which turns into violence. I have seen this vid before due to it going viral on facebook.

In Lunch(Food 1992) the story was two diners at a table that end up eating everything they are wearing and the table + chairs. To me it appears to be a commentary on the gap between the rich and poor societies.

Jans the Jabberwocky was weird, the animation style evokes a similar reaction to the surrealist filmmakers last work in that I found it hard to get into and enjoy. 

Screen Arts 9/4

Last night I watched Baywatch(2017) with The Rock and Zac Efron. Going into it I ws expecting a full n action movie, but instead was pleasantly surprised with a action/comedy. Using humour was a great way to show the redemption arc that was the overlying theme. 8/10 I really enjoyed this movie and found myself stopping what I was doing on my other monitor to just sit and watch as it drew me in.

Research 8/4

When submitting the essay for the assessment, it must go through blackboard, and safe assign. Need to allow a decent amount of time(30m+) to submit due to the process. I got some good feedback from the tutor in regards to being on the right track so thats good to hear. I will admit I was a little surprised at the path that it took down the psychopathy track, but its definitely a topic that holds interest for me.

Where to find the setup for citations and references inside Word. Use the drop down box to change it to references, and the manage sources button to add/edit any references used in the essay. Place the cursor at the end of any in-text quotes and hit the insert citation down arrow to select the correct on from the list. This means it makes sense to add the full reference first, to make citations quicker when writing.

A cover page is required, with the assignment name, summary and author. A footnote is also needed for the essay with the author and page number included.

Wednesday 5pm is a second chance at feedback before the final submission on friday.

Research 1/4

Picking and refining 6 arguments for the essay. Definitely a big learning curve for me. The next few days is going to involve a lot of rewrites as I get my head around tertiary writing.

http://owll.massey.ac.nz/academic-writing/academic-writing-e-book.php

Principles 4/4

Working on a pendulum timing today using a time chart. Used copy/paste reverse to complete the second half of the animation without having to manually do them.
















Final pendulum animation with colour and timing done,

Digital 4/4

Indesign and clocks today. If I can finish this today, thats one part of the assessment done right out the gate.

4 concept designs for for my clock. The fox definitely is the one jumping out at me, even after trying some colour on the others. However, I want to curl the fox around the clock centre more to try and accentuate the clock shape.

Storyboard 3/4

Tweaking audio files for the example project. It was nice to actually get on storyboard this week. I edited the sound files to fit a lot of the visuals, but I think that might've been the wrong way around to do it. I guess if the timing of the animation still looks good then it shouldn't really matter? Its a little frustrating having people near me that aren't really focusing on classwork but that's the joys of a big class I suppose.

Make sure the little yellow man is highlighted when animating an object. Each object that will be animated needs to have its own layer.

Screen Arts 2/4

Surrealist Film

Surrealism is a cultural movement that started in the 20's. It evolved from the Dada movement (1916-1922). Dada is a madeup word to protest against everything. Commenting on the stupidity of WW1 and was anti-rational, humorous, deliberately shocking and anti art.

Surrealism was founded as a movement in 1924 by Andre Breton who was a major Dada member. He drafted the Surrealist Manifesto declaring surrealism as pure physic automatism. "The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by the reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.
The movement used shocking, irrational or absurd imagery to challenge traditional art functions."

Surrealist filmmakers rejected conventional narrative forms, attempted to disrupt narrative conventions of time and space, plot, character and causality then rearrange them until they made no sense. They aimed to derange, meaning upset disorientate and shock. Emphasis image rather than word. They wanted to liberate Western culture from reason and reveal the true reality.

Un Chien Andalou(An Andalusian Dog) was produced by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. The film is made up from a succession of non conventional dreamlike sequences. Bunuel states the script was inspired by the brainstorms of their own dreams combined.

Jean Cocteau
Director, poet, novelist, painter, playwright, set designer and actor. "When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming"

Man Ray
The only american to play a major role in surrealism and the dada movement. The Starfish (L'Etoile de mer)(1928) and Leave Me Alone (Emak Bakia)(1926).

Maya Deren
Meshes of the Afternoon(1943) was made by Maya Deren and shot by her cinematographer husband Alexander Hammid.

Hitchcock
Salvador Dali designed the dream sequences in Alfred's film Spellbound.

David Lynch
Current "weirdest" filmmaker. Responsible for the original film adaptation of Dune in 1965.

The surrealist film movement is just too weird for my tastes. I prefer films that dont require any brainpower to understand the plot.


BlueVelvet (1986). This film concerns a young college student who, returning home to visit his ill father, discovers a severed human ear in a field that leads to his uncovering a vast criminal conspiracy and entering a romantic relationship with a troubled lounge singer.

What elements of this film suggest that it is surrealist? The macro photography used at the beginning in the grass scene. The story jumps around quite a bit too, leaving scenes feeling unfinished almost. The use of the dream sequence type shooting when the film zoomed in on the ear.

What themes do you feel are explored? Manipulation, questionable decision making.

Principles 1/4

Moving onto the next phase, creating the animation cycles. Time management will be very important, target is one animation per week.

12 Principles of Animation taken from my earlier blog post.

1. Squash and Stretch. Provides realism to movements. Must retain the original volume when transforming the shapes.
2. Anticipation. Gives the audience clues as to what will happen next, lengthens movements. ie a backswing on a punch. Multiple levels of anticipation creates more complex looking movements.
3. Staging. Presentation of a clear, unmistakable idea. Planning the scene to control where the audience focus will be throughout. Exaggeration of features to ensure the feel of the sequence is obvious.
4. Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose. Two methods to animate images. Straight ahead is animating in sequence as you go. Pose to Pose is creating the beginning image, end image, and then going back through and filling in the gaps. P2P gives more control over the finished sequence. Straight ahead is good for unpredictable animations, eg fire, water. P2P has Keys - beginning and end images, Extremes - the furtherest out the movements will go, Breakdowns - the inbetweens.
5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action(drag). Follow through is the ending of a movement, overlapping action is the "repeat" at the end of a movement. Drag helps distinguish between flexible and rigid objects.
6. Slow In and Slow Out. Extending the beginning and ending of a movement to achieve realism. 
7. Arcs. Adjusting movements on the y axis to remove the mechanical feel of a movement. A smear can emphasise movement with less frames.
8. Secondary Action. Gestures that support the main action. They compliment the main action without drawing the focus away from it. Conveys personality.
9. Timing. The number of frames changes the feel of a sequence. Drawing on twos(two frames per image) gives a smoother movement, drawing on ones is better for fast movements.
10. Exaggeration. Every action and pose needs to be over exaggerated to give the best finished feel. Faster sequences need more extreme exaggeration.
11. Solid Drawing. Using volume, weight and balance to make the image feel like its in the 3d space. Use 3d shapes to block out character shapes. Use overlap to add to the 3D feel. Avoid twinning.
12. Appeal. Make the characters charismatic and interesting. Use a variety of shapes, play with proportions, keep it simple.

21 Foundations of Animation: http://www.angryanimator.com/word/2018/04/23/21-foundations-of-animation/

Drawing subsitution is linked to libraries. Can delete frames then use the drawing substitution slider to replace the image in the timeline, to adjust timing.