Yuan’s Blog Post Submission- Animated Documentary

Notes from lecture-

Below is the blogs of two of the six people who were involved in the project below. This project has been shown to us a couple times so it was nothing new but getting the perspective of a person who worked on the short itself rather than a second hand source was very interesting.

As you can see from the short above this is the story of a woman who lost her dog (The dog was 10). What the creators explore is the idea of memory and how a person reflects back on those memories as it has never been proven that you can remember a memory piece for piece but rather in bits and pieces.

What Ryan explained was they had an interview for an hour and had loads of dialogue to use but what they wanted to do was capture her words visually he explains that they were reflecting on the memories as if they were subjective as if they were putting fragments together piece by piece.

He then began exploring how the brain reflects on memories stating that the brain when reflecting back works left to right therefore they wanted the animation to run along the same path. (He states the animation was set up to move in the way the brain works, he states the camera work was extremely hard to do and rendering was a nightmare due to transparent layers they set up for rotoscoping.)

He stated numerous times that they didn’t want this to be the norm this woman’s dog has  died and its sad, he stated he wanted the audience to feel sad for this lady feel sorry for the dog but also to remember what life she had all the good times they shared and tried not to focus on the her end at the end.

Towards the end he started to talk a lot about artists perspective and how you may have a story but that story will alter, the audience will change the story normally they will relate it to an experience they have encountered therefore connecting you the writer with the viewer on an emotional level.

Research on John Grierson-

https://www.videomaker.com/article/c06/18290-a-creative-treatment-of-actuality

  • Again I believe this article is due to perspective. How some one perceives your work  isn’t your choice they will interpret the information you provide them in anyway that they see fit.

Waltz with Bashir-

This article explores the reconstruction of a man reflecting back to the Lebanese War in 1982 as he is now an elderly man he can only remember fragments of what he experienced all those years ago through rotoscoped animation techniques.

“Live-action footage on videotape has been digitally converted into a bizarre dreamscape in which reality is resolved into something between two and three dimensions. Planes and surfaces stir and throb with colours harder, sharper, brighter than before.”

This quote is an area we explored during the presentation however Ryan never mentioned that they had footage for that time period.

Overall I enjoyed the style of the film, I liked the theme of the film and it fit the presentation perfectly. It explored perspective even though the artist/survivor had little perspective on what happened to begin with, so being able to gather enough memory to create a film on this mans experience is amazing.

Walking Life-

I really like the style of this animated film I like how the words reflect the animation how they illustrate the ideas the artists were having when listening to the audio and applying what they heard to what the wanted to see, what they could already be viewing in there mind before they matched it up with the scene. (Cinematography).

Ryan-

We have watched this animated short numerous times but every time its like viewing the short again for the first time, but every time you notice something new either about the environment, the other characters, Ryan and Chris and for me your emotions change your perspective changes.

Jonas Odell Never Like the First Time –

This was probably the hardest to watch based on the 3rd story in this short were she is raped as her first time having sex. I found this story disorienting in reference to the other stories that were included in the short as they were sort of happy stories for people bar the exception of the young girl.

Overall I haven’t really explored animated documentaries before and this lecture opened my eyes to what can be done. The shorts that were shown above to me felt very instructional as they’re all about telling a persons story/perspectives on certain scenarios/situations in there personal lives to me I would say that animated documentaries are targeted at a more personal approach rather than a comic relief (Comedy) or jump scares(Horror) it to me feels more empathic to the viewer but also the “Character”.

References-

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