☆ ★ Violence in Media ★ ☆

(( Backlogged ))

(( The beginning of this video is sorta funny but it does get gorey))

Over the years censorship in the media has diminished, allowing more and more violence to be shown in films, video games and on the internet. When placed correctly, a small amount of violence can make a film, video game etc more interesting or realistic.
However the line between violence and gore for the sake of gore has become rather blurred over the past decade or so - particularly in the aformentioned genres. It has become the 'cool thing' to watch as gorier footage as possible and be unphased, which I find a little worrying, mainly because it desensitises the audience to death (to the point where they'll hear of a violent masaccre on the news and think nothing of it) and less importantly it makes it harder to shock an audience when making a film.

The idea is that gore and violence in media cause a release of adrenaline in the audience and in a way they feel that they are experiencing a terrifying adventure themselves as they are scared.
Although dispite the growing industry of horrifically gorey films, very few seem to have people raving about how good they were - in general overly gorey films do not do so well in Box Office as those with a well thought out storyline with a few brief violent scenes.

☆ ★ Science Fiction ★ ☆

(( Backlogged from 18th November))

Science Fiction

Science fiction is a genre that embraces advances in cinematics like no other.
Once an acquired taste in film, our new technology has allowed Scifi to leap into the limelight as a staple of cinema.


(A poster for the original 'War of the Worlds' (1898) and concept art for the remake (2005))

Scifi is a child of imagination and so can only be enhanced by new technology (also a child of imagination) - the two go hand in hand, so much so that science fiction often inspires advances in technology. Interestingly, many science fiction films also reflect a fear for that technology.

Science fiction was at first a strange creature, with 'La Voyage Dans La Lune' (1902) (see my first post) generally considered to be the first film in the genre. Other early films are equally experimental including 'Metropolis' (1927);

(trailer of the digitally remastered Metropolis)

It features the first robot ever to be shown in a feature film and is considered by many the 'Bladerunnner of its time'. There's something slightly disturbing and at times frightening about early scifi films whereas now, even though they are more realistic to look at, many of them seem more mellow.

(a remake of Metropolis from 2001)

The film was remade and released in 2001 with a combination of 2D and 3D animation. The film was far more beautiful to look at but retained its disturbing nature. This may be because the storyline is set in the year 2000 and is at times reflects our fears of the near future.
Traditional animation has embraced the scifi genre in the same way that CGI has and I find the mixture of an older media with a futuristic genre can be just as entertaining as a CGI feature.


(concept art for the 2009 Star Trek film)

☆ ★ Structuralism ★ ☆

Our Second lecture with Bill...
And the second lecture that has made no sense whatsoever.

We saw alot of photos of Bill with famous people, then we watched a large amount of pointless and disturbing clips one after another without any link to one another.. not that some of them weren't still sortof funny.. I'm just not entirely sure what I learnt from it?

Wordnetweb (2010) describes Structuralism as:

• linguistics defined as the analysis of formal structures in a text or discourse
• an anthropological theory that there are unobservable social structures that generate observable social phenomena
• a sociological theory based on the premise that society comes before individuals

Structuralism has something to do with semiotics but most of the websites I've found don't really explain it too well so it may forever be a mystery to me?


This is as much as I can make out;

• The Signifier: The way the word sounds or looks on paper.

(ie: hearing someone say 'paper')

• The Signified: The actual meaning of the word.

(ie: an actual piece of paper)

I'll finish off this post with an intertextual reference:

☆ ★ New Media ★ ☆

((Backlogged from 11th November))

The First of many perculiar lectures by Bill Schaefer..

He seems nice enough but I couldn't really make heads or tails of this first lecture, so I researched it myself and lets hope it's all okay! :]



New media is a general term for media such as books, music and film in conjunction with new technology; primarily the internet, but also 3D cinema technology, iphone applications and HD Tv.

Entertainment technology has made leaps and bounds in the past decade or so, greatly increasing our enjoyment of the media. New media has grown to engulf us; it is everywhere, in our pockets, on our streets and in shops and homes. You can't escape from it.. which seems a little scary.
On the other hand it allows us to communicate using the media almost instantaneously. Again this is good but it can be a bad thing in that we can't escape from this media. You tend to see alot of people on their phones rather than engaging with others and others tend to stay in and use the internet rather than go outside or read a book.

On that topic New Media makes it possible to carry around several thousand books in your pocket at once using new iReaders like 'Kindle'. This can be good but it also takes away the need for traditional media.. which was using up alot of trees anyway.

To put it simply there are both good points and bad points to new media.

☆ ★ Intertextuality ★ ☆

Intertextuality is the method of referencing other medias within a film, book etc.
This can be obvious or subtle and it often used in family films to give the older generation something to enjoy.



It is most often used in films and can reference anything from a line in another film to a whole scene. In comedies, famous actors sometimes reference their part in a well-known film, for example in the film, 'Shrek the Third' (2007), Queen Lillian, voiced by Julie Andrews can be heard humming several of the songs from Children's Classic 'Mary Poppins', in which she played the lead role.



Intertextuality is used most often in comedic films (although it can be used elsewhere) and you won't get more references per minute than the opening for Shrek 2 (2004) - including references to Lord Of The Rings and The Little Mermaid amongst others. These references will most likely be picked up by a younger audience but an older viewer can appreciate them too.

Not all references are so obvious, many are put in to affect the viewer's perception of a character subliminally. For example in 'The Lion King' (1994), Scar's scar is a hommage to the scar on the lead in 'Scarface' (1983) - an audience probably won't pick up on the reference immediately if at all, but an older viewer may make a connection between the two characters subliminally.

Backlogged

I am now 21.
Is that a good thing? It feels very odd to say.

Does that mean my work should be a whole year better than when I turned 20?
No wait that doesn't make any sense..

Oh well.
I'm currently backlogged with work so my next blog entry is a week little late but in the meantime perhaps you could enjoy some fish?



This would be an excellent example of interactive media/animation - something so simple and colourful like this is entertaining and nice to look at. Plus you can interact with the media.
Is it perhaps a little worrying that these fish, despite their obvious media, can be thought of in a way as real fish? The world of the virtual, when controlled well, can slide into the world of the real?
How far will media evolve and will it ever engulf reality entirely - will we become so fixated with our creation that we will forget to live?

...

Those are enough dark thoughts for today, now to construct a building from nothing - does that make me an architect and a builder?

Probably not.

☆ ★ Semiotics ★ ☆

The first thing we learnt from our lecture on Semiotics was that Ivan cannot lactate.
..
Which is an interesting way to start a lecture to say the least.


(( A strip by the marvy artist, Jeffrey Brown ))

Aww lookit the kitty! 8D
..but wait- how do you know that's a cat? It doesn't look anything like a cat if you think about it - for a start it's made of ink and paper - cats certainly aren't made of that!

Humans have the ability to very quickly read shapes, smells, sounds etc - to our knowledge this ability is unique to mankind. If you held up a piece of paper to a dog it wouldn't matter what was on that paper, the dog would only see the paper. To a human that same piece of paper could have any number of meaning depending on what was on it.

For example; this is a human face isn't it?
Actually it's just two dots and two lines inside a circle.
We can identify these shapes in this particular layout as human immediately and it is this that allows us appreciate art and drawings. It is also the reason we can pick out shapes in clouds and ceiling artex (you know you've done it).

It also works with words. We can see lines on a page that curve in different ways to form words like 'cat'. When we see those shapes to make up that word, we all think of a fluffy quadruped (some people may think of the construction company but we don't talk about those people).

Iconic - Closer to the actual thing (for example video footage of a cat).

Arbitrary - Least close to the thing. For example the word 'cat'.

Most art falls somewhere in the middle of these. For example the drawings of cats at the top of this post would be quite iconic and a little arbitrary, a photo of a cat would be very iconic and only slightly arbitrary and the word cat would be very arbitrary.

Entropic - unpredictable information.

Redundant - predictable information

As a rule, for something to hold the interest of the audience it must have a fairly equal amount of both entropic and redundant information. The audience needs to be able to relate to atleast some of what they are seeing or they will become detached from it and lose interest. On the other hand they must see something that they did not expect to see for the piece to be interesting.

I'm using this clip from the American comedy-drama series, Glee, as an example.

The audience first sees an American football game being set up, the redundant information here includes an anxious audience, masculine players and opposing teams. The setting is also pretty redundant, there is nothing particularly out of the ordinary about it. This settles the audience into the story as they can relate to it on some level.
The entropic information is what holds their interest, here the masculine-looking players assume a typically feminine dance routine. This is completely different from the usual events of a football game (obviously) so it amuses the audience. Meanwhile we can see that the audience within the scene are also reacting as though they were not expecting this; we would expect this of an audience in reality and so we feel assured that we are seeing the scene for what it is (weird), so this is redundant information.

Another thing we learned is that funny lectures + energy drinks = gigglefits.

Tangled

Glen Keane's art for the new movie, 'Tangled' (Previously Rapunzel) really inspires me and I thought I'd share some of my favourites.





His characters are so expressive and dynamic and his sketching is so clean, plus I really admire the way he can get a character to look like the same person everytime he draws them.
Then again he is a Disney veteran so maybe if I keep at it one day I'll be this good..
*ignores looming shadow of doubt*

Gobelins; L'ecole de l'image

Just thought I'd share a few of my favourite animations from the Gobelins animation school in France. Hopefully I'll get to go to the Annecy festival in 2011 and meet some of the students. I hear they also have an English-speaking summer school program, so I'll look into that.

I like the vibrant colours in this one and the slightly-slapstick humour. The motion is so smooth and the story is told exceptionally well for the short running time; we learn alot about the characters considering how briefly we're introdiced to them.



This is one of my favourites and certainly my favourite 3d-animated student film. The characters are so believable and the story is told very well; this film in particular has a very French feel to it; which is probably a mixture of the music and the Brittany-style town the chase takes place in. It's not the most realistic of films but then that's why i like it.



This is one of those stories you don't really understand until the end and it draws you in as your watch; you want to know why he's in a hurry. The palette is very well matched to the theme and it gives the whole film a warm, homely feel.



The fluid motion in this piece really holds my attention and as with the previous short the story pulls you in. Although not as light-hearted as the previous videos it does not fall into the trap of becoming too serious for a short film.

To sum up; the animation industry in France is full of talent and I'd really like to visit Gobelins and see how they do things there.

Visit the Gobelins website.

☆ ★ The Transdimensional ★ ☆

Today Ivan claimed to be radio-active.
He also stood at the front of the room cradling dolls but that's by the by.

Perception of Reality

Our perception of what is real is often challenged by modern media. The above sculpture by Don Mueck demonstrates this perfectly. Despite the size of the sculpture, the subject itself is photo-realistic - if the sculpture were to be placed in large room without spectators, it would look perfectly real in a photo. In this case I think the warped scale of these figures is necessary in order to seperate them from the crowd of onlookers - if they were actual-size they may easily be overlooked. In their enlarged or shrunken state we can view the pieces as art in their own right, however if they were created entirely true-to-life, spectators may find them uncanny.

The Uncanny Valley

← A character from the 2001 film, 'The Spirits Within'.

There is a certain eerie, soul-lessness about alot of realistically rendered humans. Some people (particularly older generations) can find them spooky.
When we watch a film with a clearly unrealistic human cast (ie; How To Train Your Dragon, The Incredibles etc) our minds fall more easily into the story because we are subconciously sure of the media. However, when a human is rendered to look real, it unnerves us. We are being told that it is real and yet we know it isn't.. yet it does look real.
Is it a lack of soul?
More recently animation seems to have stepped either side of this dilemna; if a film is to be told in a hyper-realistic manner, a fictional character is often graphted onto an actor. This gives the character a far more believable existance and gives it that 'soul' it lacks.

Actors Andy Serkis and Zoe Saldana actings for the films LOTR and Avatar.

Immediacy and Hypermediacy

Immediacy: the medium vanishes, eg; 'getting lost' in a book, suspending disbelief in a film.
(note; immediate in this sense means 'without mediation', ie; real)
Hypermediacy; the medium draws attention to itself, eg; judging a book. The medium becomes obvious through its immediacy.

I like the feeling of 'getting lost' in a book or a film. It allows us to transcend reality for that moment and believe in a world however-technically unrealistic for a while. Almost like a dream.
It isn't real and in the back of your mind you probably know it isn't real; but while you're in that dream it is real to you. I believe media aspires to rival dreams in that sense.

I believe it is the media that makes it real alongside the story and the animation itself. With an increasingly real media (ie; 3d cinema) the most unreal can become believable.
For example; watching a film like Toy Story on an old PAL colour-tv, you are aware that you are watching a film; however watching the same film wearing 3d glasses gives the audience a feeling of being there and in that world.


Perhaps the job of the media itself is to extinguish that subconcious knowledge that we are watching a film? Whereas the job of the animators themselves is to trick the concious mind?

☆ ★ Rough Magic ★ ☆

(( Notes from the lecture on October 7th given by Ivan Phillips. ))

"The human race is hooked on spectacle."



This was probably the best lecture I've ever attended and I particularly enjoyed watching the old films, so I thought I'd start by sharing my favourite one for those who didn't see.

What exactly do you put in a lecture blog?

We looked briefly at cave paintings and venus idols.

I like the idea of prehistoric mankind huddled up in caves with nothing but pelts and stone tools, telling stories through art; it's comforting to think that humans who lived so long ago were so similar to outselves in that way. Their art tells of the way they lived back then and the way they thought, it suggests a sentience we can connect with and transcends both a cultural barrier and a lack of language.
Art seems to be what separates us from other life-forms on earth and at the same time bonds us together as a race. It is a 6th sense that has evolved with humanity; over the ages it has grown to encorperate scale, perspective, colour theory and more recently branched out into an aray of powerful media. With this new media we can communicate with the masses.

..and things that go BANG!

With media we can communicate with people all over the world, regardless of their culture or the language they speak. (almost regardless; the amish are particularly particular about this).
We can portray our most vivid dreamscapes and share our darkest imaginings and people might even pay to see it.

☆★ ☆

Creation of the Impossible

Something I find especially enticing about animation is the way you can pull an audience into your world. Once they are in that world you can suggest any number of weird and wonderful creatures, gadgets or theories as plausable - I like the idea that someone in that audience might invent such a thing.