December 2021 – Guanze Wu (Greg)_MA 3D Computer Animation

20th December 202113th January 2022

Research 02: The ironic nature of mockumentary and how mockumentary challenges audience’s ideas

The ironic nature of mockumentary:

It can be argued that the seemingly credible characteristic of mockumentary provides favorable conditions for its satire on other things. Compared with traditional narrative, mockumentaries often allow for more absurd and ridiculous narrative situations to be more readily accepted by audiences than if the same narrative situations appear in a film produced more in a tradition form. Gary D Rhodes’ mockumentary film Chair (2001), using a realistic narrative and shooting method to tell about various cases that happened to the actor Bela Lugosi’s favorite piece of furniture after his death. According to Rhodes (2002, p.47), “Despite the ridiculousness of the faked story and fictitious characters, some audiences still believe that what they just witnessed was true until the director exposes the scam at the end of the film.” Apparently, such characteristic not only brings mockumentary a great sense of ridiculousness and humor but also exaggerate the degree of satire to the real world.

Through the projection of fictional stories, mockumentary criticizes and satirizes the documentary form and the real world. Apparently, The mimic of specific subjects allows mockumentary to blur the boundary between reality and fiction, which leads to a discussion of documentary’s authenticity. Hight (2014) argues that mockumentary shows audience the possibility of fabricating nonfictional works, which challenges the audiences’ common expectations toward these forms. In the book Faking it: mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality (Roscoe & Hight, 2001), writers separate mockumentaries into three levels depending on the degrees of their satire to documentary: parody, critique and hoax, and deconstruction. Parody mockumentary is more like a comedy film, which contains little satire to documentary. For example, This is Spinal Tap (1984), which critically comment the hyper-masculinity in heavy metal rock area. Deconstruction mockumentary, however, aggressively deconstructs the foundation of documentary and focus more on critiques rather than humor.

**This is Spinal Tap** (1984) critically comment the hyper-masculinity in heavy metal rock area

Mockumentary also criticizes the reality by creating a new world which is almost close to the one people lives in. It uses parody and mimicry to challenge people’s basic understandings of their country, faith, collective history, and their sense of identity(Genter, 2013). American mockumentary Zelig (1983), for example, uses forged pictures, characters and footage to tell the story of an almost real character, Leonard Zelig, who can change his identity and even appearance depending on his surrounding environment. Through the description of Zelig’s story and people’s reaction to his life, film satirizes the public’s psychology of seeking novelty and some ugly nature of humanity. The design of narrative not only enhances the authenticity of Zelig’s world but also create a strong intimation of the irony of real world.

Mockumentary form enables **Zelig** (1983) to build up a realistic world, which reflects the dark side of real world

How mockumentary challenges audience’s ideas:

Mockumentary also challenges viewer’s ideas by changing their experience and status. Such statement can be found in book F is for Phoney (Juhasz and Lerner, 2012), which points out that mockumentary aims to link audience and the fictional world together. “Fake documentaries are most compelling and productive when they double back and multiply the traditional documentary object……All of these elements shift and refocus in their reverberation, allowing the viewer, in the process of such seeing, to also become a stake holder in this lively system.” To sum up, the connection between audience and mockumentary is designed into two levels. Normally, mockumentary talks directly to viewers, which seeks to build up a relationship with a knowing audience who through being in on the joke can appreciate both the humor and the inherent critical reflexivity of the form(Lipkin et.al 2006). This characteristic can be easily found in most of fake documentary comedies like Zelig, The Rutles (1978) and This is Spinal Tap. As for more critical and serious mockumentaries, however, they even let viewers to become part of them. Take film Man Bites Dog (1992) as an example. Man Bites Dog tells a story that several filmmakers following a serial killer and recording his crime for a documentary production. At first filmmakers are observers and just simply recording the crime. However, they gradually become accomplices after they get involved into these violence and chaotic. The subjective shot makes audience become the witness of these crimes and even become part of the production team. When camera records the moments of killing or even participates into these violence, the film is actually questioning audience’s fascination with the macabre and their feelings as accomplices.

References:

Books

Campbell, M. (2007) “The Mocking Mockumentary and the Ethics of Irony”, Taboo, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 53-62.

Genter, R. (2013) “Book Reviews: “Too Bold for the Box Office: The Mockumentary from Big Screen to Small” ed. by Cynthia J. Miller”, Film & History, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 95-97.

Hight, C. (2014) “Mockumentary.”, in Salvatore Attardo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA and London: Sage, pp. 515-516.

Juhasz, A. and Lerner, J. (2012) F is for phony : fake documentary and truth’s undoing. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, p. 16.

Lipkin, Steven N., Paget, Derek & Roscoe, Jane. (2006) “Docudrama and Mock-Documentary: Defining Terms, Proposing Canons.”, Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking. Jefferson, N.C.: Mcfarland, p. 11-26.

Rhodes, G.D. (2002) “Mockumentaries and the Production of Realistic Horror”, Post Script – Essays in Film and the Humanities, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 46-60.

Roscoe, J. and Hight, C. (2001) Faking it: mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality. Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Films

Bad News Tour [film]. 1983. SANDY JOHNSON dir. UK: Unknown.

Chair [film]. 2001. GARY D RHODES and BOB STOVALL dir. USA: Unknown.

Man Bites Dog [film]. 1992. REMY BELVAUX, ANDRE BONZEL and BENOIT POELVOORDE dir. Belgium: Palisades Tartan.

Rec [film]. 2007. JAUME BALAGUERO and PACO PLAZA dir. Spain: Filmax International.

The Blair Witch Project [film]. 1999. DANIEL MYRICK and EDUARDO SANCHEZ dir. USA: Artisan Entertainment.

This is Spinal Tap [film]. 1984. ROB REINER dir. USA: Embassy Pictures Corporation.

Zelig [film]. 1983. WOODY ALLEN dir. USA: Warner Bros.

TV Series

The Office. 2001. Capital United Nations. 9 July. 76 hrs.

10th December 202113th January 2022

Research 01: The impact of hand-held camera and subjective shot on mockumentary filming

The impact of hand-held camera on mockumentary filming:

One of the most unique elements in mockumentary is its shooting style, which mimics the shooting process of documentary to build up an illusion of reality and authenticity. But how does it work? A review of the available literature provides some examples, which shows that mockumentary filming can significantly enhance audiences’ experience of engagement by using hand-held camera and subjective shot.

Issari, M. A. and Paul, D. A.(1979) mention that the recorded footage from a hand-held device reflects more tactile and visual human characteristics. Jean-Pierre Geuens (2015) points out that the placement of hand-held camera humanized the view, making it more personal. “The shot no longer appeared to originate from the eye or the mind of the storyteller, but became rather the direct expression of the holder’s body.” Both of these views emphasize the humanized property of hand held camera. Geuens also uses a war scene of The Anderson Platoon (1967) to emphasize an idea: the viewer is made to experience what the cameraman went through so that viewer can feel how difficult the cameraman’s circumstances are. This idea is demonstrated clearly in a scene of another film Man Bites Dog (1992), in which the camera shakes violently when the cameraman is being hunted by killers. The camera finally rolls on the ground and stops, which implies the death of cameraman. Such characteristics of hand held camera build up a relationship among audience, characters and the fictional world.

The stopped camera reveals the death of cameraman（Man Bites Dog, 1992）

The impact of subjective shot on mockumentary filming:

It is believed that subjective shot is another important element of mockumentary shooting, which has a great impact on visual and mental experience of viewers. Briefly, subjective shot means shooting in first personal view. Gustavo Mercado discusses subjective shot in his book The Filmmaker’s Eye (2011, p.83). He mentions that a well designed subjective shot matches both the character’s emotional and psychological subjectivity and the physical attributes of character’s perspective. He also notices that subjective shots enhance the level of interactions between other characters and audience, which helps them builds up powerful relationships. It is clear that subjective shot has its unique functions, but is it suitable to replace traditional shots? Eugeni, R. (2012) compared first person shot with traditional point of view shot, and argues that the first person shot breaks the rules and grammatical constructions of point of view shot, which also extends (and partially manifests) the principle of subjectivity implied by point of view shot.

However, the use of subjective shot in mockumentary should also be careful. Audience might find it difficult to identify with the character whose subjectivity they are experiencing in a long subjective shot because of the lack of reaction shots (Mercado, 2011). Additionally, it has been widely criticized that the overuse of hand held camera causes too much shake and blur to image area, which make audience feels uncomfortable.

The shake and blur of hand held camera image is always a pain in mockumentary

Ideally, the first problem can be solved by setting camera man as an unimportant character, adding monologue recordings or changing the user of camera frequently. Spanish horror film Rec (2007), for example, set protagonist’s assistant as the cameraman so that protagonist’s nervous facial reactions can be recorded clearly, which reinforces the thrilling atmosphere. As for the second problem, several works suggest that the combination of mockumentary filming and traditional filming can overcome it to some degree. A convincing example is film District 9 (2009), which uses varied kinds of cinematic modes – a corporate promotional film, hand-held documentary film and traditional narrative shots to demonstrate the society and life of people after alien refugees arrived on Earth. The blending of documentary and traditional filming successfully creates a convincing air of authenticity in the first 15 minutes of the film.

References:

Books

Branigan, E. and Rauh, R. (1975) Formal permutations of the point-of-view shot. S.L., Erscheinungsdatum Nicht Ermittelbar. pp 54–64.

Eugeni, R. (2012) “First person shot. New Forms of Subjectivity between Cinema and Intermedia Networks / El pla en primera persona. Noves formes de subjectivitat entre el cinema i les xarxes intermèdia / El plano en primera persona. Nuevas formas de subjetividad entre el cine y las redes intermedia”, Anàlisi : Quaderns de Comunicació i Cultura, , pp. 19-31.

Geuens, J. (2015) “The dismantling of the fourth wall”, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. XXXII, no. 4, pp. 314-328.

Issari, M. A. & Paul, D. A. (1979) What is cinéma vérité? Metuchen, N.J: Scarecrow Press, p. 172.

Mercado, G. (2010) The Filmmaker’s Eye: Learning (and Breaking) the Rules of Cinematic Composition, Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford, p. 83.

Films

District 9 [film]. 2009. NEILL BLOMKAMP dir. USA: Sony Pictures.

Man Bites Dog [film]. 1992. REMY BELVAUX, ANDRE BONZEL and BENOIT POELVOORDE dir. Belgium: Palisades Tartan.

Rec [film]. 2007. JAUME BALAGUERO and PACO PLAZA dir. Spain: Filmax International.

The Anderson Platoon [film]. 1967. PIERRE SCHOENDOERFFER dir. France: Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française.

This is Spinal Tap [film]. 1984. ROB REINER dir. USA: Embassy Pictures Corporation.

9th December 20214th January 2022

Week_10: Camera Rig & Gimbal Lock Research & Performance & Camera Animation

Camera Rig

This week we learned how to rig a camera which can be controled more precisely than the original one. The main idea is data transfer, inherit and attribute connection.

Firstly, set up camera and groups(create+rename):

Create attributes on controler. Use connection editor to connect translation attributes and controler attributes:

Create nurbs plane, set materials, using driven key to connect focal length attribute and plane’s translation:

Remember, set the graph editor line to linear.

Final result:

Gimbal Lock

I also did a further research of gimbal lock. The reason why gimbal lock happens is quite easy to be understand: two rotation plane coincide with each other. But what will happen in animation when there is a gimbal lock?

I find a great video, which solves my problem:

This video mentioned several things, which are quite important:

In maya, local object rotation mode is just a visual guide to demonstrate rotation more clearly, under the hood the software is still using Euler System to calculate data.
Gimbal lock always exist, we can just change the layer of x, y and z axis to decrease its probability.
In maya, Z-X-Y is a better axis arrangement, which can effectively prevent gimbal lock from happening.

From the video we can know that when gimbal lock happens, the rotation of object will have some problem. When people using local rotation to animate one of the demensions(for example, rotate 40 degrees in local z axis from frame 0 to 20 when gimbal z is locked), object will rotate not in a straight direction but a strange arc because the system has no access to the real z axis. Therefore, all axis need to change to fit the animation requirement, which causes the strange arc. That’s why preventing gimbal lock is important.

So how to prevent gimbal lock?

The answer is, find the direction the object is least likely to face and put this axis in the middle layer. For example, in maya ZXY or YXZ are recommended for cameras, since cameras seldom rotate 90 degrees on x axis.

This theory can also be applied on character rigging. When the rigging system used XYZ as the principle, people should use Y axis as the limb bones direction, since human body never rotate his arms or legs in 90 degrees (or the body will hurt itself). by setting Y axis as the limb bones direction, the rigging can avoid gimbal lock.

Camera Animation

Pan Shot:

Roll Shot:

Pitch Shot:

Dolly (and Pan) Shot:

Crane Shot:

Focal Length (Contra Zoom):

Performance & Pre-Viz

Since I did some of my character performance last week. This week I focused more on the details of character performance.

I showed my animation to my classmates and they suggested me to add some breathing animations to the character so his body movements can be more realistic. I also talked with Alan and he suggested me to add more variations on the weight, or the body controler. Their suggestions are quite important and accurate because normally human chest should keep moving because they need to breathe all the time. Also, when people talking or just standing on the ground, the centre of they weight should keep changing, which can make people feel more relax.

Therefore, I used animation layer to add a infinite breathing cycle animation on character’s chest controler. I adjust few times to make sure breathing animation can be noticed but still not quite apparent.

Then I added more variation to the body controler. When character’s upperbody moving forward, the body controler moving forward, too. The weight centre of character also keep changing when character is talking.

I finally checked my mouth animation one more time and find out that some of the mouth movements are too fast. Therefore, I deleted several keyframes on jaw controls and optimized the whole animation to make it looks more natural.

Here is the final result:

4th December 20215th January 2022

Week_09: Phonemes and performance

Research:

Facial animation can be one of the most important parts of 3D animation. Unlike body performance, facial animation focus more on details and emotions rather than body mechanics. How to accurately express character’s emotional feelings and match the shape of mouth with lines are facial animation’s targets.

Facial expressions:

To create organic facial expressions, one of the most important things is to keep all parts of face moving. Sometimes animaters just focus on animating one part of character’s face when they are making facial animations. However, each part of character’s face should affect each other. For example, character’s eyebrows, nose and ears should also move when it’s mouth moving.

Another important thing is paying attention to the shapes, especially the shapes of mouth and eyebrows. Good shapes can clearly express the feeling of characters.

Some other techniques are also useful. For example, exaggeration, squash and stretch, etc.

Reading Lines:

Animating lines is also an important part of facial performance.

There are two ways to animate lines:

Animate by layers (step by step): starting with jaw, then the corner of mouth, then the open or close of lips, then tongue and teeth, then other parts of face.
Animate by parts (finish the whole shape and then turn to another one).

Some tips on animating lines:

Analysis the dialogue before animating. Breakdown the line, trying to find the most apparent changes of mouth shape. For example, the shape of sound “Oh” or “Ah”
Do not breakdown the line by “words” (For example, A, O, I), focus on the “sound”.
Don’t make mouth moving crazy. Do not simply make every shape of sound and then connect them together, mouth is lazy when people talking. Find the transtions between each words and animate them naturally.

The relationship between mouth shapes and words

Challenge 10: Phonemes & Performance (Lip Syncing & Facial Animation)

Part 01: Find audio clip

To make the lip syncing and facial animation, I recorded the audio clip of a line from game The Last of Us. The audio and acting performance in this game is great, which can be a good reference for practice.

The Last of Us (2013) by NaughtyDog Studio

Here is the audio reference:

Below is the original performance, great facial animation (Naughty Dog does all facial animation by hand)

Part 02: Audio clip breakdown

I tried to breakdown the line and analyse it before I make the animation, which can help me to find out what result I want in this animation.

The line is:

Do you even realize what your life means? Huh? Running off like that. Putting yourself at risk… it’s pretty goddamn stupid.

I listen the audio clip for several times and stratify the emotional statement of this character:

Do you even realize what your life means? Huh? Running off like that. Putting yourself at risk… it’s pretty goddamn stupid.

First layer: Angry, but trying to control his emotion

Second layer: Let off some steam

Third layer: Quite angry

Fourth layer: Angry, and slightly mocking

This can be a guidance for me to record reference footage and adjust my animation.

Part 03: Jaw animation

I firstly add the Jaw Bounce animation to build up the framework for this animation, which can help me to get the rhythm of it.

Jaw_animation:

Part 04: Animate mouth shape

After that, I spend more time to animate the shape of character’s mouth to strengthen the emotion of him. When the character speaks angrily, his mouth should move more obviously.

Part 05: Animate nose & tongue & teeth

Then I add some details to my facial animation. For example, add tongue actions, teeth animations and nose animations. This part of animation can make the whole mouth animation look more natural.

Part 06: Animate eyebrows and eyeballs

After jaw and mouth are animated, I start to focus on eyebrows. From the audio clip we can realize that the speaking person is quite angry. Therefore, eyebrows animation should demonstrate this mental statement.

I record an acting video by myself based on the audio reference.

Bad performance actrually,

Anyway, it is still quite useful as a reference.

By using this visual reference, I add more details to character’s eyybrows and mouth. Then I animate some small movements to the eyeballs to make the character more realistic.

Part 07: Animate eye blink and adjustment

Then I add eyes blink to make the character looks more natural. Setting blink attribute to 0.7 can get a good result. However, it seems that the character’s eyeballs and his eyelids clips when the character is blinking. In order to fix that problem, I use the crash correction attribute on eye_head control to adjust the radius of eyeball.

Here is the final result of facial animation:

I also animate the upper body of this character to make the animation more interesting.

Version_01 (still need to be polished):

Recent problems: I think the second half of the mouth animation still has some problem. The jaw animation, which is the fundamental of this animation, is still need to be adjusted. As Alan said in his recordings, jaw animation is really important, which is the guidance of the whole animation. I will check my animation this week and spend more time to practise making jaw animation in the following weeks.

Update01 (09/12/2021):

I add the final part of the animation and adjust a little of the mouth animation. Here is the Version02 video:

Version02: