In this week’s lessons we learned how politics affect audience through different kinds of media. From advertising to games, politics almost exist everywhere. People use slogans and values implantations to guide audience’s wills and actions. Ironically, audience seldom realizes these political implantations.
Film and Television can be the most important traditional political medias. As for films, some films is aims to send political messages, which clearly covers political ideas in its narrative and theme. In China, films which talk about patriotism gradually becomes familiar these years. Some films even covers several hot topics in China like anti-corruption， China’s rising, etc. For me, such kind of films are acceptable because every country has its own policial films, which is quite normal. Also, government has right to propagate their ideology to public to maintain social stability.
Some films spread political ideas in a more clever way, which is showing political purpose by hiding their ideas inside fantastic stories. For example, Avatar, which discussesthe meaningless of invasion wars and may reflect the history of massacre of indians. Another feature film Memories of Murder, directed by Bong Joon-ho, which is loosely based on the true story of Korea’s first confirmed serial murders, discusses about the dark period of South Korea in 1980s and accuses the government of incompetence.
Memories of Murder
Game is also a good media to send political ideas, especially to young people. FPS games like Call of Duty and Battlefield series always send people the massage that American army is saving the world. They tend to sugar up the international image of American armies and mention the justice of holding wars. This kind of works may even increase peoples curiousity of modern war and weapons, which encourage young people’s passion on joining in army.
Such wide impact of politics on media may rises a question: Can politics be removed from media? Hardly not. Politics are just part of media. People have to show their statements when they are using mediato to tell something, which will inevitably lead to personal politics. However, the way of telling political ideas is quite important. People don’t like preaching or forced implanations. How to make them feel empathtic about these ideas is the key of implanting politics in media.
As for me, I keep possitive attitude to political implantations. Political implantations through media is a double-edged swords. A good story telling with some proper political ideas can make the plot more easy to accept and welcome. However, too much political statements in media like film or games will just ruin these works and make people uncomfortable.
As an audience, knowing what is real or fake and what is something that others want us to see is quite important. Keep calm and critical thinking can help people get rid of political influences. Do not feel afraid of politics in media because it has already become more and more common.
Notes:
Politics and Persuasion in Entertainment:
Generally, people can influence or persuade audiences in the following areas:
Social media
Broadcast News and events
Film and Animation
Television
Media platforms that have potential to influence or persuade an audience:
Broadcasts
Print Media
Mainstream Film and Animation
Independent film and animation
Games
Podcasts
Social media / internet profile
Some messages which are used in moving image:
Subliminal or masked content
Overt / Propagandist intentions
Persuasive / commercial targets
Documentary / Investigative
Independent / Personal struggle, observation or experience
Some main topics of politics in film and media:
Political persuasion
Commercial persuasion
Race
Gender
Equality
Disability
Ethics
Animation and Documentary:
Animated Documentarys:
Neighbours (1952 film) (Anti-war Film)
Tower (Kevin Maitland, 2016)
The Sinking of the Lusitania (Winsor McCay 1918)
Fight for the Dardanelles (1915)
Prelude to War (1942)
A Is For Autism (1992)
Waltz with Bashir (2008)
As the creative treatment of actuality (1933)
Chicago 10 (Brett Morgen, 2007)
Montage of Heck (Brett Morgan, 2016)
Taxonomy of Animated Documentary:
has been recorded or created frame by frame
is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator
has been presented as a documentary by its producers and/or received as a documentary by audiences, festivals or critics
Gesture and Pose:
Some important elements for Good poses and gestures:
Better proportion of body parts
Bigger eyes and ears
Spine and fluidity:
charactors spine should maintain it’s fluidity
the shape of spine should be curves
the shape of spine should help charactor balance their bodies
Disney’s hyperealism animation aesthetic is far-meaning and has a great impact on hundreds and thousands of animations. Following with Disneys’ footsteps, many studios and artists applied the 12 principles of animation and the use of traditional filmmaking workflow to their works. However, there is still a small number of animations which didn’t followed these rules but still got great results. Animation Waltz with Bashir isjust one of them.
Waltz with Bashir
Waltz with Bashir is a 2008 Israeli adult animated war documentary drama film written, produced and directed by Ari Folman. It depicts Folman in search of his lost memories of his experience as a soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War.
Animators took four years to complete this film. It combines classical music, realistic graphics, and surrealistic scenes together with illustrations similar to comics. The entire film is animated, excluding one short segment of news archive footage.
protagonist in real lifefilm version
The animation, with its dark hues representing the overall feeling of the film, used a unique style invented by Yoni Goodman at the Bridgit Folman Film Gang studio in Israel. The technique is often confused with rotoscoping, which is an animation style that uses paintings over live footage, but is actually a combination of Adobe Flash cutouts and classic animation. All animations were done with a technique called Cut Art. Unlike classic animation where animators draw each frame all over again, animators of Waltz with Bashir disassembled the original illustrations into hundreds of pieces. Artists then animate them by simply moving these parts to create the illusion of movement. By using this unique technique, charactors are able to show rich facial expressions and movements.
Cut Art techniqueGraphic style
Unlike traditional animation working pipeline, the film was first shot in a sound studio as a 90-minute video and then transferred into a storyboard. After that, nearly 2,300 original illustrations were drawn based on the storyboard, which together formed the actual film scenes using Flash animation, classic 2D animation, and 3D technologies.
Waltz with Bashir is a slow paced animation documatary film with yards of dialogue, which shows an special animation editing that is quite different from Disney’s. Thanks for animators’ hard work, people can enjoy a new style animation and a serious, thought-provoking story.
This article contains both course notes and a short essay about film, animation and VFX. The notes and timelines are at the end of the article.
Mini-Essay:
Apparently, the history of film, animation and VFX are some big topics. It’s quite hard to cover all these historys in a short essay. Depending on my own interests, I would like to share my ideas about the history of film, animation aand VFX.
The film documentory that we have seen on week 1 course is just a brief introduce of early film history and stories of poeple who devoted themselves into film industry. However, we can still feel the passion of former artists by enjoying their film works through that short video. I was shocked by early artists’ creativity and the spirit of exploration. Some people said that the existence of film extends the life of people almost three times, which is defenitely ture. From Sci-fi films to feature films, people can enjoy different kinds of experience and feelings from them. Thanks for Lumière brothers and other film workers’ devotion. It is quite hard to imagine what the life will be if film doesn’t exist.
The history of animation, to me, is also a human visual recording history. Before camera and shotting devices were invented, people collected movements by drawing several painting on papers or small devices. Such simple behaviours final lead to the form of animation. Rencently, animation is far more than a form of art. It has been widely used by advertisement industry, medical treatment area and education. People used to watch animations for fun, but now, they already bacome part of our lives.
VFX(Visual Effects) is also a topic that people cannot ignore when talking about modern movies. It is quite unbelievable that even VFX has already been developed nearly 90 years. VFX is an industry which quite relies on modern techniques. From special makeups, stop motion to degital visual effects, the quality and developing efficiency of VFX has been significantly improved. Does that mean VFX has become better and better? Through out the history of VFX, I can say it is not quite true.
From my point of view, the quality of VFX not only depends on the level of techniques that people used in their work, but also the level of asthetic, hardworking and imagination that they have. Some classic VFX, like the liquid metal cyborg in Terminator 2 (1991) or the horrible creature in The Thing (1982), still makes people deeply shocked even after 20 or 30 years. Former artists devoted themselves into these artworks. They brought their imagination and asthetics into these works and finally gave audience the best visual and sound experience. Some recent films, however, combined with several CGI techniques but still make people feeling boring. Therefore, only VFX which has both great techniques and high-standard imagination can last longer in people’s memory, and that is what I have learned from the history of VFX.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
It is quite boring to repeatedly talking about what VFX artists have DONE before. What the history of VFX will be in the future is something that I’m also curious about.
After the blockbuster AVATAR released, the modern VFX workflow almost became mature. Texture painting software for film production like Mari, was released in 2010. Render engines like Arnold, Redshift and Vray, are all quite capable for film and animation production. From The curious case of Benjamin Button (2008) to Blade Runner 2049 (2017), recent VFX techniques can already simulate high-quality human skin textures and photo-realistic hairs. Based on Facial Action Coding System (FACS), facial actions can be animated or captured with great details. It seems that recent VFX techniques can almost make everything come true, but the efficiency of production still need to be improved.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) degital double for charactor Rachael, made by MPC
As far as I think, real-time rendering will provide a new workflow for VFX artists, which may have chance to become industry standard in the future. The release of Unreal Engine 5 seems quite exhilarating, but there is still some lacks. Visual efffect like particle simulation, fire and water, still not quite satisfied in real-time engine. Improvements may take years, but undeniable, real-time workflow may change the history of VFX in the near future.
Unreal Engine 5 real-time rendering scene
The next step, I think, may be finding a way to lower the cost of VFX. When techniques are no longer the obstacle of VFX production, budget will be the biggest task. It include equipment cost, team employment and place rental cost. To solve this problem, future softwares must be more practical and easy-to-learn. What’s more, a non-linear workflow should be built. Maybe there will be some self-learning VFX softwares in the future, I think.
In conclusion, VFX techniques are going fast recently. It’s hard to predict what will happen in future development, but base on the history of VFX, I am sure that VFX will still astonish people again and again as before.
NOTES:
Mise-en-scène: overall look of film
Mise-en-scène is the stage design and arrangement of actors in scenes for a theatre or film production.
