Screen Arts 13/10

Final presentation + animatic

Screen Arts 6/10

Today was just reiterating our submission requirements for next week including modifications to the original marking sheet. All talking points must be included on the slideshow when submitted, anything not included will not be marked.

I am definitely regretting my choice of director at this stage as there isn't really that much about his style out there. Trying to adapt what I noticed to my game animatic is proving harder than I originally imagined.

Screen Arts 29/9

Writing with Duncan Sarkies

Phone Convo
Characters: Will & Monica
Reason: Monica is calling Will to find out when he is bringing his family over for Christmas.
General feeling: loneliness

*ring ring*
Will: “Hello?”
Monica: “Heya kiddo, what are you up to?”
Will: “Not much really, just got home from the beach with Brodie.”
Monica: “That sounds like fun, did Brodie enjoy himself?”
Will: “Oh.. he was scared of the water mostly but enjoyed throwing sand everywhere.”
Monica: “That’s no good, you will have to teach him that its not so scary, maybe as he gets older”
Will: “Yea.. maybe. Hes fine with baths and stuff, its probably just the waves yknow”
Monica: “Well yea, they can be scary to a wee fella. Anyway I was just ringing to see what you were doing for Christmas”
Will: “Umm, not too sure yet to be honest. I think we are having lunch with Mandas parents on boxing day so we could maybe do tea?
Monica: “Oh yea, me and Geoff are headed to the normanby for xmas lunch with the country music club so that wouldn’t work for us anyway. Tea could be nice, as long as we aren’t too late cos your grandma will want to drive home afterwards”
Will: “mm”
Monica: “Have you heard from your sisters? I want to know what they had in mind”
Will: “Nah, haven’t heard anything”
Monica: “Alright well I can just ring them later, gives me an excuse to talk to the girls anyway. Its been a while since Ive heard from either of them”
Will: “NO! [pause] Don’t! [grunts] OI!”
Monica[laughing]: “Everything ok there Will?”
Will: “Yeeeaaa, Brodies found a way to get into the pantry”
Monica: “Uh oh, hope you have some kiddie locks sitting around”
Will: “We do, hes figured out how to remove it though, was about to pull tins of spaghetti onto his head”
Monica: “Oh dear, little bugger. I remember your favourite thing was to get into the baking cupboard and throw the flour around the kitchen until we shifted it to the top cupboards out of reach”
Will: “Heh, cant say I remember doing that”
Monica: “Oh nah you probably wouldn’t, you were only 4 at the time after all”
Will: “Heh” [clatter] [heavy sigh]
Monica: “Ah well, sounds like I better let you go before Brodie tears the house down”
Will: “Hes not that bad at the moment, that was the cat on the table knocking over mandas vase hah”
Monica: “Shadow or Jasper?”
Will: “Jasper, shadows sleeping on our bed at the moment. Hiding from the kid”
Monica: “Oh, does he bug him or something?”
Will: “Yea, just a little too strong with his pats for him is all. Nothing serious”
Monica: “ah yea, you lot were the same at his age. Poor Alfie”
Will: “I don’t remember that either mum”
Monica: “Ah well. Right so if we make a plan for Christmas dinner on the 25th as long as your sisters agree?”
Will: “Yea sounds good”
Monica: “Ok well ill leave ya to it. Ill see you on Saturday sometime, say hi to Manda for me”
Will: “Will do mum, catch ya later”
Monica: “Love you”
Will: “mmph.. yea.. you too. Cya”
Monica: “Bye!”
[click]

Screen Arts 22/9

Bruce Bickford

Bruce was an American stop motion animator that lived between 1947-2019. His claymation experiments began when he was a teenager but he didnt get famous until Frank Zappa collaborated with him for music videos between 1974-1980. His animation style is energetic and eccentric, almost like an acid trip.

Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations began as a team of 2 animators - Peter Lord and David Sproxton. They started in 1972 only to be joined by Nick Park in 1985. They have a distinct lovable character design and humour. Creature Comforts was a well known series they created, using almost a documentary style with claymation animals making human comments and complaints about everyday occurances. Another famous creation of theirs is Wallace and Gromit. They began working on films in 1997, creating Chicken Run(2000) and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit(2005) which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar. These guys were a part of my childhood quite often, I loved Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out and Chicken Run!

Compare and contrast Aardman and Bickford's animation styles. Do you have a preference?

I have never seen Bickfords animation out of class and I dont really like it. Im not a very expressionistic type of artist and so his themes and nonsensical type animation did not appeal to me. The humorous, relatable characters from Aardman are definitely more my style.

Do you like animation for children or adults or like both equally?

I like both equally. My favourite movies are from Disney, especially the ones that have the hidden things that only adults will notice.

Screen Arts 15/9

I am behind on my project due to focusing on other classes, and being behind in my character modelling for Game Design. One of the downfalls of using the same character rig for the two projects.

Screen Arts 25/8

The Wachowskis

The Wachowskis are american filmmakers that direct, produce and write. Their trademarks are stunning visuals, ambitious themes and nuanced views of gender/sexuality. Both Wachowskis got their start writing comics for Marvel after dropping out of uni before moving into script writing in the 90's. They began directors so they could have creative control over the final cuts.

Some of their most well known work is Bound(1996), The Matrix Trilogy(1999-2003), Jupiter Ascending(2015) and Speed Racer(2008). Personally I enjoyed Jupiter Ascending(for the visuals) and The Matrix 1&2.

What do you think about their directing styles? I love the over the top visuals that is the staple in their films. While it doesnt make up for the plot holes(Jupiter Ascending, The Matrix 3), the films are still enjoyable if watched with no care about the story.

Would you ever work with a co-director or a family member? Perhaps. I dont really have an interest in Film but I would enjoy working with my family in a Game Studio.

Review the movie we watched in class. 

I loved The Matrix when it first came out. At the time it was visionary in terms of Bullet Time and CGI. The theme was one that hit home for a lot of people, and began a lot of conspiracy theories and fears that we are actually living in a Matrix-like world. While that thought is trippy, Im too cynical to believe it could be possible in the current world climate. Keanu Reeves became an icon for his role as Neo and deadpan line delivery. I still enjoy the movie to this day but its not one I would watch regularly, more so once every few years.

The Coen Brothers

Ethan and Joel Coen are brothers that work together as filmmakers. Joel directs and Ethan produces while both work on the screenwriting. They have won 4 Academy Awards out of the 14 they have been nominated for. Their film style is based around eccentric characters, convoluted plots and use comedy and drama together. They won best director, best picture and best actor awards at the 1991 Cannes film festival for the movie Barton Fink, the first time this had happened in the events history. They are known for Raising Arizona(1987), Fargo(1996), The Big Lebowski(1998) and No Country for Old Men(2007). I must confess I have never watched a movie from this duo so the in class sample we watched was a rather new experience and Im not sure on my final opinion of their style.

Screen Arts 18/8

Saturday Morning Cartoons (Woohoo!)

In the beginning animation was created and viewed in the cinemas. It was looked down on as the poor version of film and not considered as good. 1915's Felix the Cat was the first animation to establish a lucrative line of merchandise. Walt Disney is credited with streamlining the animating process using model sheets and cel animation techniques to enable assembly line style animating. This meant the quality of the animations became more realistic and they could focus on the narrative.

The first public tv showing was 1926 in the UK and the first non-experimental broadcast in NZ was 1960. The Paramount Decision in 1948 which prevented studios from owning distribution centres/theaters opened the way for smaller studios to show in the cinema. The lawsuit was brought in 1928 but it took until 1948 for the major 10 corporations to be found guilty. As a side effect of losing the extra money, the big film studios made cuts to their animation sectors. 

!950s animation Crusader Rabbit was animated so that the characters only moved once every 4 seconds to reduce costs. This meant they stayed in static poses for most of the animation. Off the back of Crusader Rabbit, creator Jay Ward went on to make Rocky and Bullwinkle, Fractured Fairy Tales and Dudly-Do Right.

Saturday morning programming consisted of a live host and a studio audience full of kids listening to sponsor product ads inbetween short animation cartoons. One example of this was Acrobat Ranch. Due to film studios not producing animated shorts and theatres not showing them, TV companies started to buy up all the old cartoon libraries. Paramount sold 1800 shorts in 1955 for $3.6mill, CBS bought Terrytoons for $5mill. Mighty Mouse Playhouse began airing in 1955 from CBS.

MGM was a studio in charge of creating animated shorts to accompany feature films from 1937. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were two animators working for MGM when they created Tom and Jerry. They were so popular that Jerry appeared with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh(1945). While they started with a budget of $35k-$45k per 5min short, as soon as they created their own production company they had to adjust to only having $2700 per 5min short. To meet the low budget, they stuck to limited animation which consisted of nothing complex, repeated movement cycles, few expressions and simple graphic forms. A lot of the characters had wide collars to enable efficient mouth and head animating. They were also one of the first to "bookend" old animations with new, to cut costs. The Huckleberry Hound Show was the first half hour animated series to air without a host. The shows were created in colour, anticipating the tvs switching to colour in the future. 

Closer to my childhood was The Flintstones and the Jetsons, both are based on the 1950s sitcom nuclear family with a conservative dad, stay-at-home mum and obliging kids. HB are the creators of Yogi Bear and action-adventures cartoons The Fantastic Four and Scooby-Doo. Pierre Culliford created The Smurfs for HB in the 1980s with a total of 256 episodes produced between 1981-1990, only ending because NBC phased out saturday morning cartoon shows.

Action for Childrens Television

ACT was founded by Peggy Charren in 1968 to ensure diversity and quality control in tv programming that targeted kids and teenagers, and remove commercial abuse. ACT demanded that program length commercials get removed, and studios add educational content to their broadcasts.

Filmation characters would break the fourth wall at the end of the animation to speak a moral message linked to the episode the children had just watched, this was to satisfy the ACT requirement for educational content. Well known series were He-Man, She-Ra and DC Justice League. Ted Turner from CNN wanted a 24hr cartoon network so he bought the entire HB library, combined it with MGM's library and launched the Cartoon Network in 1992. 2014 was the first moment in over 50yrs that there was no saturday morning cartoons on US tv. ACT is credited with dumbing down cartoons from the 1960s, which helped drive the animations to cable tv as it didnt have the same educational requirement restrictions placed on it.

Screen Arts 11/8

 

Screen Arts 4/8

Colour Party Trailer

It is a bright sunny day, Archie and his forest friends are playing together in the Enchanted Woods when one of them kicks the ball into the trees. Archie is last to say "not it" and has to go find it and rushes into the bushes. Just as he finds the ball, he hears a loud magical ringing and his friends yelling. Grabbing the ball, he runs back to the clearing just in time to see his friends in a giant net being dragged through a magic portal. Archie drops the ball and walks up to the portal, inspecting it. He can see the Rainbow Kingdom in the magic swirls so he takes a deep breath and jumps into the portal, swirling before disappearing as he is transported to the other side.

Trailer will be 2D animation, basic cartoon style to match my game level concept art.

Screen Arts 28/7

Documentaries - Animated

Waltz with Bashir(2008)

Ari Folman was the writer and David Polonsky was the art directer/illustrator. Folman was in the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon war and began interviewing men he served with to help fill in the gaps in his memory. He was already a documentary filmmaker before he began interviewing therapists, comrades and a tv reporter. He discovered that he had blocked out a Palestinian refugee slaughter by Christian Phalangist gunmen and the Israeli Defence forces did stop them. There was a protest of 400,000 people in Tel Aviv at the time. He decided to use animation for the documentary due to the fact it was using memories, hallucinations nightmares and dreams as source material. There was a total of 8 animators, 4 illustrators, 1 after effects artist and 1 editor used.

It took 4 years to make with a budget around $1.5mil and brought in $2.3 mil at the box office. There was no rotoscoping and Maya was used for specular turning points. The movie switches to real footage at the end to force home the point that it was based on real events.

Tower(2016)

This documentary by filmmakers Keith Maitland and Sarah Wilson covers the 1966 massacre at University of Texas, using animation to recreate the events due to not being able to get permission to film the actual locations. They began production in 2012, interviewing 20 survivors and first responders, narrowing this down to 8 to write the script. They found actors that looked like the survivors at the time of the massacre to act out the interviews. They created a basic film set in their backyard and then rotoscoped over the footage. Post production was used to add in the geographic features.

The actual filming occurred in 2-3day chunks over the span of a year then handed off to the 18 person animation team, who animated 12 frames per second over the next 18 months. There is 14mins of archival footage in the final film. The animators were given reference iPhone photos from the campus so they can match the backyard shot angles.

Screen Arts 21/7

Documentary Auteurs

Documentaries are films that re-tell Real Life events without changing the events or subjects for the camera. Selecting the topic, editing and sound are all classed as manipulations although how much of this is acceptable is still debatable. Documentaries were previously called "educationals", "actualities", "interest films" or "travel films" in the late 19th century. The term documentary is credited to John Grierson in 1926.

Objectivity vs Subjectivity

Nanook of the North(1922) is considered the first feature length documentary, following a year in the life of "Nanook", an inuit hunter. Filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty directed the inuit to pretend he knew nothing about modern times and to re-enact the traditional routines like hunting walrus with harpoons.

Dziga Vertov declared "cinema was poisonous and dying" and created the 1929 documentary Man with a Movie Camera.

Ken Burns is known for making historical, large miniseries docs that cover a single topic and creating a sense  of movement in still photographs by panning over and zooming in on the details. His style can come off stodgy and very stiff. He is a prolific documentary maker whose works include:

The West(1997)

The Civil War(1990)

Jazz(2001)

The Vietnam War(2017)

Michael Moore is known for making scathing/comic riffs on his subjects. He take son controversial topics, has a liberal political pov, and being a part of the story. He made Roger and Me in 1989 with a budget of $140,000, and it took in $7.7 million at the box office. It was only after news organisations questioned the documentary that he re-labeled it as a movie. He won the Best Documentary oscar in 2003 for Bowling for Columbine(2002). His documentary Fahrenheit 9/11(2004) cost $6mil to make, took in $222.4mil in the box office and examined President George Bush's response to the Twin Tower attacks in 2001. He was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature oscar for Sicko(2008).

Michael Apted is a film maker known for directing TV, movies and documentaries. Some works include Enigma(2001) and The World is Not Enough(1999).  In 1964 he filmed Seven Up! which examined the lives of 14 british children from various socio-economic classes. Every 7yrs he checks back in with them. He has made 9 episodes so far, and 63 Up was released in Jan 2019. They didnt anticipate a series so the subjects never signed contracts, which has meant over the years 2 participants have dropped out and 1 has died.

Screen Arts 14/7

Jane Campion film samples in Upstage

Top of the Lake

The Piano

An Angel at My Table

She certainly has almost a feminist approach to her characters, using brutish stereotypes for her male characters, and strong women leads.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f8/31/77/f83177ee48e5e054666c475282fa00ba.jpg

https://www.sidewalkfest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/The-Piano.jpeg

https://posteritati.com/posters/000/000/008/022/an-angel-at-my-table-md-web.jpg

Screen Arts 7/7

Jane Campion(1954- )

One of Australasia's most acclaimed film-makers. She is known for her feminist themes with strong female leads, original visuals, non-linear editing and narrative ambiguity. Her film Peel(1982) won the Palme d'Or for best short film in the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. Her film covering Janet Frame's life, An Angel at My Table(1990) claimed second prize at the Venice Film Festival. The Piano(1993) won the Palme d'Or Best Original Screenplay Oscar and was nominated for the Best Director Oscar in 1994. Top of the Lake(2012) got her nominated for an Emmy for directing.

She was born in Wellington, studying Anthropology at Victoria University before travelling to Australia and Europe to complete a Diploma in Arts. She is the second women ever to be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars for The Piano. She is also the only woman to ever win the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

Sofia Coppola(1971- )

She is a director, screenwriter and producer. She appeared in many of her father Francis Ford Coppola's movies as a child and studied Photography at the California Institute of Arts. She is known for her long takes, close-ups and languid camera movements, exploring themes of alienation and ennui, and being an outsider that critiques celebrity culture. 

Some films include:

    The Virgin Suicides(1999)

    Lost in Translation(2003)

    Marie Antoinette(2006)

    The Beguiled(2017)

She wrote the screenplay adaptation of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay and Best Motion Picture for Lost in Translation in 2004 and the Cannes Best Director Award for The Beguiled in 2017.

Screen Arts 15/6

Masters of Surrealism - Jan Svankmajer and Terry Gilliam

Jan Svenkmajer

Jan Svankmajer was born 1934 in Czechoslovakia. He is a puppeteer, animator, surrealist artist and filmmaker known for reinventing fairy tales with a dark twist, and 3D avant garde stop motion paired with live action animation. He is known for prioritising visual elements over plot and narrative and his dark fantasy themes.

He spent 5 yrs at the School of Applied Arts in Prague between 1950-1954 then shifted to the puppet dept of the Academy of Performing Arts. His first short film is about 2 magicians who participate in a competition of skill called The Last Trick(1964).

His first feature film was Alice(1988), a dark adaptation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. His most famous work is Faust(1993) which is set in a foreboding puppet theatre and involves giant puppets and clay figures in stop motion. Little Otick(2000) is a dark comedy about a wooden baby that comes to life and devours his parents, heavy inspiration from fairy tales for his plots.

Although he has won more than 30 awards and honours in international film festivals, he remains fairly unknown. His films were restricted from a wider audience after 1968 due to the Soviet Union invading Czechoslovakia and deciding his work is unsuitable for what they wanted. He became more well known once the Soviet Union fell.

Terry Gilliam

Best known for his work in Monty Python - Flying Circus animated sequences and directed The Holy Grail. He also directed The Imagination Trilogy(Time Bandits 1981, Brazil 1985, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen 1989), The Fisher King(1991), Twelve Monkeys(1995), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas(1998), The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus(2009) and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote(2018).

He is known for his surrealist imagery, dark satire, dystopian scenarios and battling with studios over his distinctive artistic vision. He was born in Minnesota and moved to England in 1967. 1969-1974 was when he worked on the Flying Circus shorts.

He co-directed The Holy Grail with Terry Jones but there was a lot of conflict between the two directors due to their conflicting styles. Gilliams focus on visuals and perfectionism hampered shoots frequently. 

Brazil received rave reviews in Europe, but screened badly in USA so Universal Studios made them cut it down to a 93 min rom-com. This film got Gilliam is first Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

The Adventures of Baron Muchausen bombed at the box office, only taking $8 million despite winning major awards and the budget hitting $47 million after blowing the initial sum of $23.5 million. The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys were both massive critical and box office hits, but Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas wasn't.

How to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ7JTB2CaN0

Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Monster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q2WPneqhhs

Monty Python’s Personal Best: Terry Gilliam

Netflix, 55 minutes

Screen Arts 8/6

Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog: New German Cinema

Oberhausen Manifesto

New german cinema was created in 1962 when a group of young film makers created a new film festival document called the Oberhausen Manifesto. German films were declining, low quality and content. Three directors were the lead, Werner Herzog, Rainer Michael Fassbinder and Wim Wenders. The manifesto began it introduce contemporary issues into the film making.

Wim Wenders

Born in 1945, His films are known for the lush visual imagery, experimentation, masterful storytelling and travel. He frequently collaborated with Robby Muiler and is one of the biggest New German Cinema names in the 1970's. He studied film at the Munich Film Academy, directing 8 short films and his first feature film while there. In 1978 he went to Hollywood to direct Hammett. In 1987 he received the Best Director award at Cannes for Heaven over Berlin. 

He also created Paris, Texas(1984)

Until the End of the World(1991)

Faraway, So Close(1993) and

Buena Vista Social Club(1999)

Werner Herzog

Born in 1942, Werner became know for capturing men and women at psychological extremes, sometimes using controversial methods to achieve the performance he wants. He used small budgets, writing and producing his own films. His notable films include Aguirre, the Wrath of God(1972)Fitzcarraldo(1982) and lent his voice to Rick and Morty(2015). He also has  cameo appearance in The Mandalorian. He studied history, literature and music at the University of Pittsburgh. During filimg for Aguirre, it is alleged that Herzog held a gun on Klaus Kinski to make him continue acting however klinski denies this incident happened.

Screen Arts 25/5

Infamously Bad Directors

What makes a movie bad? You cannot assess a movies value on critical or financial success. Batman vs Superman(2016) only scored 27% on Rotten Tomatoes but made $850 million worldwide. Ridley Scots Bladerunner(1982) was a commercial flop and barely recovered its $28 million budget. This movie is now in the US Library of Congress for preservation. The Golden Raspberries is the counter to the Oscars, created in 1981 to celebrate the worst movies in the film industry. Anyone can join and there is even a buy one get one free membership. Movies like Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey and the Emoji Movie have all won raspberries. Sandra Bullock won a golden raspberry for All About Steve the night before she won an Oscar for The Blind Side. She accepted both awards in person. 

A Good bad movie, like an unscary horror movie can switch genres into comedy making the film more enjoyable to watch. Ultimately its completely subjective.

Tommy Wiseau's The Room(2003) cost $6mill USD and grossed $1900 in the 2 weeks it played in the two theatres it debuted in. Cumulative gross worldwide as of 2007 is $7,840,034 total. He inspired a book called The Disaster Artist starring James Defranco. This movie won golden globes for best actor and best motion picture-musical or comedy. It also won an oscar for best adapted screenplay.

Roger Corman was known as the "Pope of Pop Cinema". He has 395 films to his name including Sharktopus, Dinoshark and Piranhaconda. He gave a number of Hollywood stars their first break inc James Cameron Avatar, Martin Scorsese Taxi Driver and Francis Ford Coppola The Godfather. Scorsese had been working at editing when he was asked to direct the sequel to Bloody Mama. Corman gave Scorsese complete freedom on the movie Boxcar Bertha but he had to work with only $60,000. Carman was considered the best post grad training you could have in America. He is considered as incredibly generous and gentle with newcomers. He won an honorary award in 2009. 

Ed Wood Jr. was born in 1924 and died in 1978. He was affectionately knows as the world's worst director.  His trademark wad sci-fi and horror with cheap props and visual effects. Orson Welles is one of his heroes and despite trying to emulate Welles triple threat(writer, producer, director) he was terrible at all three.

Russ Meyer. Born 1922 and died 2004. Meyer served as a combat cameraman in WWII for the US army. After the war he spread out into photography doing glamour shots and playboy spreads. He is known for Vixen!, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

Lloyd Kauffman was born in 1945. He began his career in shock films. In 1975 he funded an independant shock film studio. This studio published Patricks movie Offensive Behaviour.

In 2005 Patrick Goldstein wrote a piece in the LA Times about Hollywoods failure to produce ocscar worthy films. He claims that Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo was oscar worthy. On feb 2005 Rob Schneider bout a full page ad in the Daily Variety stating"Maybe, Mr Goldstein, you didnt win a Pulitzer prize because thy havent invented a category yet for Best Third-rate, Unfunny pompous reporter.

After reviewing Deuce Bigalow, Robert Ebert speaking as someone who has won a Pulitzer prize, stated that in his "official" capacity, "your movie sucks"

How Did This Get Made is a podcast that features a bad movie each

What are some movies that you consider bad?  Why?  

What are some movies that you consider to be so bad they're GOOD?

What are your thoughts on the sexism and politically-incorrect material prevalent schlock/exploitation films?  How do you think schlock/exploitation films have evolved over the decades?

Screen Arts 18/5

Proposal

Screen Arts 11/5

Tarantino and Scorsese

Quentin Tarantino was born in 1963 and is know for his pop culture references, speedy dialogue and violent scenes. He used to work at a rental store called Video Archives, watching movies and writing scripts. 1990 was when he worked for Cinetel production company where one of the producers gave his True Romance script to Tony Scott. 

He self funded Reservoir Dogs(1992) when working with Lawrence Bender(producer). His film Pulp Fiction(1994) was a major success commercially and critically, earning $108 million at the box office - the first independent film to achieve this.

Notable films:

Reservoir Dogs(1992)

Pulp Fiction(1994)

Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2(2003-04)

Grindhouse(2007)

Inglorious Basterds(2009)

Django Unchained(2012)

Martin Scorsese is famous for his dark themes, unsympathetic lead characters, religion, the mafia, unusual camera techniques and contemporary music. He spent a lot of his childhood inside watching tv and movies due to asthma. He also started drawing storyboards for fun. He completed his first film when he was 26yrs old. He has a long history of collaborating with actor Harvey Keitel and editor Thelma Schoonmaker. He was hailed as a living movie legend early on in his career. He justifies the violence in is work with "Deep down you want to think that people are really good - but the reality outweighs that."

Notable Films:

Mean Streets(1973)

Taxi Driver(1976)

Raging Bull(1980)

Goodfellas(1990)

The Age of Innocence(1993)

Casino(1993)

Gangs of New York(2002)

The Departed(2006)

The Wolf of Wall Street(2013)

The Irishman(2019)

Screen Arts 4/5

1980's Computer Animation & Motion Capture

Yoichiro Kawaguchi

A programmer and animator, he was a pioneer of computer software that grows images in an organic way, called Growth Model. His program uses algorithms to generate brightly coloured worlds. 

Dragons Lair(1983) was a video game that was created by ex-disney animator Don Bluth. It caused a stir in arcades due to its full quality animation sequences.

Commodore 64(1983)

. The commodore 64 was one of the first affordable home pcs to be released. This opened up access to everyone and created a generation of computer artists and programmers.

Autodesk Maya

Wavefront Technologies was formed in 1984 by Bill Kovacs, one of the software developers for Tron. His partner Roy Hall developed video manipulation and animation software after Kovacs left the company. In 1995 Silicon Graphics bought Wavefront Technologies and Alias Research to merge them into a new company, that produced Alias/Wavefront advanced computer animation software. After a collaboration with Walt Disney, Alias/Wavefront was turned into Maya in 1998.

Softimage released in 1988 became the industry standard for animation and preferred choice for character animation. The first version of 3DS Max was released in 1990 by Autodesk. Autodesk later purchased Maya and Softimage to become the market leaders in 3D animation software. Maya won the oscar for technical achievements in 2003.

John Lasseter worked for Disney, creating the CGI test version of Where the Wild Things Are however since Tron wasnt that well received Disney decided to can the animation project. Spike Jonze eventually made it in 2008 using facial CGI. After he left Disney he worked at the Graphics Group unit of Lucasfilm. He helped create the first photo realistic CGI animated character in Young Sherlock Holmes(1985). In 1986, his division of Lucasfilm was sold by George Lucas to Steve Jobs as he needed the money. Lasseter worke don short films for the newly formed company - Pixar Animation Studios.

Motion Capture

Rotoscoping was used for the main character in Gullivers Travels(1939) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937).

Jim Henson's Creature Shop worked with Pacific Images to create a digital version of Waldo from The Muppets that could be controlled in real time. Robert Abel and Associates created a motion capture sequence in 1984 called Sexy Robot. In 1990 Jeff Klesiser and Diana Walczak worked on a motion capture music video for Perla Batalla. 1990 was also the year that the first failed attempt at motion capture in a feature film occurred - Total Recall. The Lawnmower Man in 1991 contained short mo-cap shots, just like Peter Gabriel's music videos.

Video games were the first industry to extensively use mo-cap, the first one being Atari's Highlander: The Last of the McLeods in 1995. GTA3(2001) was another milestone for gameplay and mo-cap

The first fully animated film with mo-cap was Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists(2000), Final fantasy: The Spirits Within was the first attempt at photo realistic worlds with mo-cap in 2001. Lord of the RingsL The Two Towers(2002) had Andy Serkis as Gollum  and again as Kong in King Kong(2005). 

Uncanny Valley - Theorised by Masahiro Mori

The uncanny valley is the theory that when AI humans(robots/cgi) get to the point that they are looking and acting like humans, it causes revulsion or and uneasy feeling in the human observers. The valley is the dip in the positive reaction to the robots human appearance when it gets too close. The theory also says that if the robot becomes completely identical to a human, that uneasy feeling disappears and the observer response becomes positive again. David Hanson has done further research into the uncanny and  has discovered that making the robots face look slightly cartoony or stylised makes the observer response positive again.

Uncanny Example

Screen Arts 23/3

Richard Williams

Canadian artist and animator that was born in 1933. At 14yrs old he met Walt Disney before studying art and living as an artist until he went back to animation in the 1950's. He spent time in London working on tv ads and passion projects like The Little Island.

In the 1960's Williams was hiring retiring animators from the 30's and 40's, people like Ken Harris(Bugs Bunny), Milt Kahl(Shere Khan), Art Babbit(Goofy) and Grim Natwick(Snow White and Betty Boop).

Creator of the Animator's Survival Kit(2008), Who Framed Roger Rabbit?(1988) and The Pink Panther Strikes Again(1975).

The Thief and the Cobbler was a passion project of his that he had spent 25yrs working on until 1990 when he made a deal with Warner Bros to finance the rest of his film. Due to his extremely high standards, he did not finish the film in the agreed amount of time as he was repeatedly remaking scenes. Warner Bros pulled out when he missed his deadline and he lost control of the film. It was released in the USA under the name Arabian Night without Williams and changed majorly via dubbing, removed characters and cheaper songs. The film had a $24 million budget and it did not recover that in sales.

- What are your thoughts on Richard Williams level of perfectionism? detrimental. its good to have high standards but his were interfering with his productivity.

- Do you feel it was fair to have his film taken from away him… why? Not really no, he had sunk so many years into the project however I believe that was his fault in promising a deadline that he couldn't fulfill.

- In your opinion, what could have been done differently during production to ensure the film was completed on time? Delegation and loosen the reins a bit.


Hayao Miyazaki 

Miyazaki was born in Tokyo in 1941 and studied economics before becoming an entry lvl animator in 1963. This is where he met his lifelong collaborater Isao Takahata. In 1971 they left the company they worked for and developed his style. He wrote a manga strip for the Animage magazine called Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. This mangas success inspired a film in 1984 and in 1985 the two men created Studio Ghibli, going on the enjoy great success in the japanese market. Some of their films are as follows: Castle in the sky, My Nighbour Totoro, Some of the movie music https://nofilmschool.com/2017/11/very-complicated-explanation-why-miyazakis-films-sound-pretty

- What makes a Studio Ghibli film distinctive? The bright colours, the painterly style backgrounds and the childlike storylines.