1601466nuanarrative

[1601466nuanarrative]

The sheet of notes devised from my tutorial with Lynsey

[1601466nuanarrative]

The Writers Journey is a book i plan to quote within my essay, as it is vital for a section where i talk about “The Heroes Journey” within the film.

[1601466nuanarrative]

A presentation on Semiotics by Robin Fuller, while there is no clear use of semiotics within the film i’m analysing, I still plan to reference it in my essay.

[1601466nuanarrative]

The film i’m discussing has scored #1 on this websites list of best animated films, and i’ll reference this at the start of my essay, to prove my point when i say it was received well. I’ll also mention the score it received on the review aggrigation site “metacritic” ( http://www.metacritic.com/movie/its-such-a-beautiful-day-2012 )

[1601466nuanarrative]

Anomalisa, a stop motion film released in 2015, uses a similar technique with faces as my film, and so, i plan to reference it within my essay.

[1601466nuanarrative]

An incredibly interesting video I found, discussing and analysing the meaning of my chosen film. I plan to quote this video within my essay.

[1601466nuanarrative]

Don Hertzfeldt

Don Hertzfeldt, born 1976, is a traditional animator known for absurd and surreal short films. among which, one of them, “Rejected” created in 2000, was oscar nominated. His work is easily identifiable by his use of incredibly simplistic characters, almost like stick figures. Don tends to adress fairly odd topics within his animations too, such as the meaning of life, perception and death, or his distaste for corporate advertisements. His work is praised for its weird qualities, above all else.

While Hertzfeldt is confined to paper, He finds ways to make his animations unique, in strange ways. For example, within “Rejected”, Hertzfeldt showed a collapsing mind, and a collapsing universe by rips and crumples in the paper the animations were drawn on, combining a strange use of 2D traditional, and stop-motion animation. as drawn characters react to the paper they’re drawn on change. Another unique technique he has used is combination of paper 2D animation, and film footage, within “It’s Such A Beautiful Day”. In this, Herztfeldt used a strange spotlight technique, having the whole film be illuminated areas of a black screen, instead of a full shot.

I believe it would be extremely difficult to replicate Hertzfeldt’s films within live action, as the unique animation & artstyle he used, are so vital to his films, and what they mean.

[1601466nuanarrative]

#animation #short films #film #video art #art

[1601466nuanarrative]

an incredibly informative article i found on the film i’m writing about, i’m definitely going to be using some quotes from this for my essay.

[1601466nuanarrative]

an interesting article i found on Don Hertzfeldt, the creator of the film i’ll be writing about

[1601466nuanarrative]

Weekly Summaries

Week 1: This week, we started our new narrative project. We started by looking at what a story and narrative are, and the different types of narratives. We looked at the difference between a linear and non-linear narrative. We looked at what comprised a linear narrative and freytags pyramid., We then tried writing our own linear narrative. We then analysed a sainsburies christmas ad, and tried writing our own festive advertisement, sticking to the rules of linear narrative. While we didn’t go in to it in this weeks session, i’m very interested to learn about non-linear narratives at a later date.

Week 2:

This week, we learnt the difference between story and plot. Being that a story is everything that happens, and a plot is an engaging way of putting together everything that makes a story. We also looked into how animation can create a unique narrative, not available in other mediums. We then learnt about the history of animation, and analysed the narrative of several classic cartoons.

At the end of the lecture, we were told to research an animator of our choice. I decided to choose Don Hertzfeldt, a personal favourite animator of mine, who has an interesting animation style, as well as an odd way of telling stories.

Week 3:

This week, we focused on the narrative within fairy tales. We learnt what makes a fairy tale a fairy tale, mostly that justice is usually served at the end. We learnt about the interesting history of fairy tales, and the dark parts of some old tales. We looked into why animation is used so much for fairy tales, (mostly due to their abstract nature, its much easier to show surrealism with animation than with special effects.) We learnt about how fairy tales have evolved over time, and how companies like Disney have modernised them. We also learnt about the Morphology of the folk tale, and the 31 most common tropes that occur throughout fairy tales. We also looked into Propps’ hero archetypes.

Week 4:

This week, we looked into story shape, and how the ‘shape’ of a story can change depending on what happens within the narrative, and once again looked into “The Heroes Journey”, what it means, and the 12 steps that comprise the heroes journey. This was helpful, as the heroes journey is something vital to reference in my essay. As no matter the question, the heroes journey will most likely be helpful in anything related to narrative. We looked into why stories are told, and the act structure. The different types of act structures, and the benefits of them. 

We also learned of the 6 possible questions we could choose for our essay. I already know from researching Don Hertzfeldt that the film i’d like to study is, his feature film “It’s Such A Beautiful Day” has a unique story telling style i’d like to delve into. Question 4 talks about narratives that are “only achievable in animation” I feel like this combination of topic and film will give me a lot to talk about, as well as being something important to me.

Week 5:

This week, we had a small recap of everything we’d looked at in the past 4 weeks, and re-learnt all the vocabulary for different types of narrative. We looked into Visual Storytelling, a topic greatly important within animation. We learnt about the Kuleshov effect, and everything that makes visual storytelling effective. We analysed the french animated short film “ La Vieille Dame et les Pigeons” for its use of silent, visual storytelling. We learnt the learning outcomes for this unit, so i know exactly what to write about in my essay.

Week 6:

 I had a tutorial with Lynsey this week, and she helped me create a list of points and topics i can talk about in my essay, as well as connections i could possibly draw to other movies. Now i’m ready to start writing my essay.

Final Summary:

I learnt a lot with my essay this unit. Unlike my previous essay unit, I wasn't struggling to find a piece of media to talk about. As i quickly knew what I wanted to focus my essay on, I had more time to research and learn valuable info to help within my essay. I found the lectures this unit important and interesting, and I learnt a lot about narrative, and different ways of storytelling. I greatly enjoy studying narratives, so I felt very engaged during this unit. All of the analysis of short films we did was very helpful, as it gave me an understanding of what exactly I should be talking about in my essay. While I got research done earlier this unit, I had the same problem i had with my essay last unit. I had research, but i wasn't sure how to piece the research into my points, or how the essay should be structured. Because of this, I left my essay untouched and focused on my other work until my eventual tutorial with Lynsey. Just like last unit, my tutorial helped a lot, and gave me the necessary understanding to write my essay. I feel like the essay went very well, as it was both a topic I had a lot of knowledge on now, as well as a topic I care about. Lynseys feedback helped me get the essay to its best possible condition, but i still wish i had started it sooner.

#Weekly Summary