FINAL GRADE UNIT 5 & UNIT 27

FINAL GRADE = Distinction

really thorough work well done.


See individual blog posts for all feedback.

FINAL GRADE = Distinction


Fantastic and very professional work


See individual blog posts for all feedback.

What is a Documentary?

Documentaries

Firstly, what is a documentary? It is a film or TV program that focuses on real life (non-fiction) and includes footage of events as they happened. A documentary style movie about 911 & the war in Iraq might feature actors for re-enactment scenes, real or fictional, in the war scenes recreating certain battles or events. In comparison to this, a documentary film about 911 & the war in Iraq might predominantly feature news reel footage of real fighting, with commentary from experts and veterans who were in the war, ‘Fahrenheit 911’ used this approach, personally I feel this is the best way to do so, because it gets a better reaction from the audience.

It is this attention on documenting on reality, drama or a fictional that typically separates these movies from summer blockbusters and other popular films.

Secondly, the history of documentaries is vast; the first films ever made were documentaries, they were single-shot moments captured on film, for example; a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films; the term "documentary" was not used until 1926.

The first feature length documentary ever made was ‘Nanook of The North’ by Robert Flaherty; it is a silent documentary where Flaherty captured the struggles of the Inuk Nanook and his family in the Canadian Arctic. Robert Flaherty has been criticized for staging several sequences in the documentary and thereby distorting the reality of his subjects' lives, this means it didn’t comply with Cinéma vérité which means ‘Truthful cinema’. Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, using naturalistic techniques combined with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects.

Robert Drew’s chronicle of the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary campaign of John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey is widely considered to be the founding film of American cinema verité. It was the first documentary in which the synchronized sound camera moved freely with characters through a breaking story. "At that time I was proposing that we make a new kind of history of the Presidency," recalls Drew, "that we would see and feel all the things that bore on the presidency at a given time -- the expressions on faces, the mood of the country, the tensions in the room, so that future presidents could look back at this and see and learn." Paragraph from: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/reellife/verite.htm

As I’ve previously mentioned documentaries are about real life, and one of my most favourite  documentaries is called ‘Dark Days’ it shows the gritty, ‘hard up’ side of life, it follows the lives of the New York homeless. It was made by Marc Singer and he was daring enough to document on homeless ‘community’ which live underground in the subway tunnels, I particularly enjoy this documentary because he portrayed homeless people in a way, that makes them seem like any other family and they are humanised instead of put down. There isn’t a narrator in this, the audio comes from the films footage.

In a complete contrast to ‘Dark Days’, I’ve also previously watched a documentary on Paul Smith a English fashion designer, this shows Paul Smith talking about his life from when he started out to present day, he is in front of the camera for most of it telling the audience about his creative and playful world. There is a big difference between this documentary and ‘Dark Days’, but also there are similarities, the main and only similarity really is that they are to inform, nevertheless they have completely different themes; Dark Days is gritty and emotional, Paul smiths is informative, factual and upbeat. I should also add that another similar implement is that they are both shot in a very artistic style, Dark Days is black and white and every object seems to reflect rays of light, which gives a satisfying look to the documentary, and also Paul Smiths is very artistic as well, it is shot in colour and there is frequent use of manual focus to draw attention to certain objects or people.

Another example to show what a Documentary is would be a good in-depth production, which is what a documentary is about its going on a journey to discover unknown things about a specific subject or topic. The 'Classic albums' series of documentaries are great at getting an in-depth understanding on how a specific artist has created there 'classic album', with a documentary about the world famous album of Pink Floyd's, 'Dark Side of The Moon'. Within this documentary it shows a very intimate understanding of how this album was composed, this is done through the documentary makers getting a first person perspective on it talking to the band members, having them explain the process. This is what a documentary is all about its getting deep into a story or subject, getting lots of perspectives on it, usually provoking the audience into making a decision on whether they agree with the documenters portrayal. However in these 'Classic Album', documentary's it already distinguishes that the album is important, just by the praise of the subject in the documentary's title, 'Classic Albums', so this style of documentary is mostly aimed at music fans, as they can learn more and get closer to this specific artist.

Development In Animation

Most of us only know animation to be in film made by corporate production companies such as Walt Disney, Pixar and Warner Bros. but you might want to know that there was animation before we saw it on a television screen, there was many different types of devices that motion picture could be shown on. These devices would often scare audiences because this art was absent before these 'magical' devices, this amazed every audience member. This would frighten many people at this time as there was nothing ever invented like the ‘magic lantern’ manipulates still images changing them quickly to give the illusion of motion to them. Invented around 1650, the Magic Lantern it is an extremely early version of the first kinds of projectors, it was positioned in a preferably dark room and projected on a flat surface (e.g large wall) using a form of light like a couple of candles. People often judged this device as demonic and frightening, they were even convinced this was a witnessing of the supernatural. The early known magic lanterns are believed to of been created by Christiaan Huygens or Athansius Kricher.

There were many other devices similar to this after the magic lantern, these devices have been created by the pioneers in the animation industry and I doubt they would have thought it could ever be as big as it is now. William George Horner the creator of the ‘Zoetrope’ is among these many pioneers, it is  very similar to another device the Phenakistoscope (I shall explain later), The Zoetrope was created in 1834, it is a circular device that spins on its own axis having several frames of animated prints around the circumference of the circle. Next to each printed image it had a small peep hole type of like slot in the material, this hole was there in order to allow the viewer using this device to be able to see the images through the other side when it is spinning at a rapid speed, creating the illusion of motion. The Phenakistioscope created before the Zoetrope in 1831, it was almost identical to Zoetrope, so as you can see William Horners design for the Zoetrope was defiantly influenced by Joseph Plateau’s Phenakistoscope.    

Another Pioneer for animation would have to be Emile Reynaud from a French origin created the ‘Praxinoscope’ in 1877. This device was also influenced by the Zoetrope combining the circular design of the Zoetrope nevertheless, mirrors were placed around the hand-drawn pictures, this was done to show the drawn images in a clearer way than the previous Zoetrope did. Emile Reynaud then decided to make a much improved version of this, enlarging this device naming it the 'Theatre Optique' which could now be projected onto a screen.

 

 

 

 

A 'Zoopraxiscope' was the name for the next device produced, created by Eadweard Muybridge in 1879. This device was considered the first movie projector. This device consisted of revolving glass disks with hand-painted pictures on them. These disks were moved at a rapid rate to create the illusion of motion through still pictures. A interesting fact about the Zoopraxiscope is the ‘Zoo’ in the name was used within it as it the device mostly premiered pictures of animals in motion.

 

In 1888 animation started to get some recognition as the animation industry started to get competitive, this was because the famous inventor Thomas Edison changed the industry completely decided to generate a device named the Kinetoscope, it was a very early motion picture exhibition device. What this device allowed was for short animation films to be able to be viewed by an individual at one time. This was done by looking through a small window hole. This illusion worked by the movement of conveying a strip of perforated film holding sequential images over a light source with a high speed shutter. This device was much more advanced than the other devices at this time, which made it a breakthrough in the world of animation. Thomas Edison was the inventor of the Phonograph he describes his ideas for this device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear" record and reproduce objects in motion.

There was yet another breakthrough in animation and projection after this. The Lumiere brothers invented and worked out how to project film onto a screen and also created the first motion picture camera in 1895. This would have been the most thrilling moment in cinematography history as no one had ever dreamt something like this could have been created. This projection device made by the Lumiere Brothers had the same affect on it audiences as the magic lantern as no one had ever seen anything like it before. You can see that from this point the cinematography and the animation/film industry has been evolving using previous inventions to improve on there own media devices are now developed up to  a high standard from all of the past inventions from the other pioneers of animation.

 

 

After the Lumiere brothers brave milestone another man who changed the film and animation industry books was George Pal a film producer of a Hungarian origin. Pal was best known for his creation of his animated shorts called ‘The Puppetoons’ these short cartoons films were pioneering in the way of using the Stop Motion animation technique. The puppetoons cartoons have defiantly developed animation today, they most likely have inspired and influenced the person who pioneered animation for the 20th century it would have been unheard of to create full-length animation films. However Walt Disney must’ve found some inspiration to create his first full-length feature animation film by watching these Puppetoons films, when he made Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Developers

Willis O’Brien was a pioneer for stop motion animation who was recognised for his work in animation, creating films such as ‘The Lost World’ (1925) and the world renowned ‘King Kong’ (1933) Especially in 1933 there was a lack in animation technology and to create such films as these it answers why Willis O’Brien became a pioneer as he was able to create these pictures that shocked audiences gluing them to there seats, it was most likely similar to the feelings that audiences got to the magic lantern from the shock of witnessing something so new and revolutionary its frightening.

Also another animation pioneer has to be Ray Harruasuen who was most famously known for his first colour animation film ‘the 7^th Voyage of Sinbad’ and 'Jason and the Argonauts', which famously contained his scene ‘the fight with the skeleton warriors’ this particular scene was extremely popular as it contained actual moving skeletons having a sword fight with the starring character. This was seen as ground-breaking to audiences as visually the pictures were life-like stop motion characters that had facial expressions and body movements.

 

 

 

Jan Svankmajer born in Prague was fascinated by puppetry, making him into a pioneer of modern animation. Some of his greatest known work is his own film ‘The Last Trick’ (1964) Svankmajer was a pioneer due to his technique in stop motion, He was able to create surreal and humorous work. His work used funny exaggerated sound effects, one of the most noticeable ones was during eating scenes within his productions. Svankmajer's work was usually only made using stop motion, however He rarely also used clay within animation similar to how the famous Aardman studio's in England created (Wallace and Gromit) and other productions.

The last considered pioneer of the modern animation/film industry is Tim Burton. Tim burton was most known for  his specific style of animation with its aesthetical visual appearance. Many of his films such as Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas these are hugely popular claymation films with cult fan followings. I feel that burton is  a pioneer in the animation industry due to his own style of rather gothic animation. Corpse bride is a very good example of this style sharing attributes with gothic culture. Most animators had ever thought about combining a completely 'off the wall' style to there animations and with Tim Burton doing this he has created a whole new dimension to animation, this style of animation has become popular throughout the world, future generations of animators will look to these pioneers to create there own style of animations that will in-turn create a new dimension to the animation industry.

How Disney Influenced Animation

Within this essay I'm going to explain how Disney has had an enormous impact on the animation industry, influencing basically every animation you watch to this day, and also about how they have highly influenced large animation companies such as Warner Bros. and Pixar.

 
 
 
 

 

Two brothers Walt and Roy Disney created Walt Disney Productions on October 16th 1923. The Disney company are highly regarded within the animation sector, considered to be the pioneers of cartoon animation. In the 1920s there was a miniscule amount of technology world-wide let alone specific technology to create cartoon animations. All Walt and Roy had only basic drawing utensils to created these iconic characters you see today. The Walt Disney Company were also the first animators to create a full length animation movie called, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves", in 1937. This movie to this day it is seen by vast quantity's of people and is known globally as it is an iconic movie that took the world by storm. Making Snow White has had a huge effect on the way people viewed animation as it was now considered a very serious component to the arts specifically the film industry as they work adjacent to each other. This movie has influenced other recognizable companies such as Pixar that have gone on to make global animation movies such as the Toy Story series. The magic to Walt's success is that he targets his movies specifically for children, nevertheless the movies touch not only the children but the adults too, the reason why they are so very successful is because there just isn't anything like a Disney Production and parents are happy to let children view this content, which is very memorable making it into a traditional film to play for youngsters.

Walts most ambitious project making Snow White and the Seven dwarves was the first full-length cel animated feature film that was released in 1937 was a break through as no one had ever attempted before this tiresome accolade, because there wasn't any computer generated animation technology back then it was made up from tens of thousands of drawings, it has been named as the greatest American animation film of all time in 2008. The movie contained speech for the characters which was rather new within the animation 'scene' as it was extremely hard to synchronize in the edit. The sound/speech was created  by people doing voiceovers for characters these tapes of audio were cut into the production without having to use text in speech bubbles to explain the situation. Because of these never before chartered territories in animation with the lack of technology and the costs of an ambitious project like this, it shocked audiences that this could be created, audiences loved this film and audiences today still love it and is a family favourite in most households.

 

However before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney had already created another milestone in animation making the first animated short to synchronize sound with the relevant action in the frame. This was “Steamboat Willie”, it just like Snow White amazed its global audience, This didn’t have any synchronized voiceovers in it nevertheless it had FX sounds clips (a example of this is: when the iconic Disney character Mickey Mouse is having a tug of war with a goat, a FX sounds has been added so you can hear the sound of something stretching.)

 

Most if not all of The Walt Disney Company's early productions were Cell animations this means that the animation is made up of a extremely high amount of drawn pictures, the way a cell animation works is the same way as a flick book where there are drawn images and they get flick rapidly giving the illusion that there is a fluid motion when really they are just still pictures. To create the professional and polished look Disney animators have done they would draw an image of someone moving slightly over each time on each sheet of paper. As you can imagine this is a very long time consuming process you could say Disney did cut some corners by because to save creating a lot of backgrounds for each individual scene, They only make the characters move to create the illusion of motion throughout each scene as if it were changing. This is an earlier traditional way of animation because of the lack of computers and other technology, but in the current most animation is done with the aid of computer technology to generate characters, scenes etc... Also the editing software on computers today is very advanced and you can make decisive cuts to footage, whereas previous to computer technology editing would of had to of been done by hand editing raw film reels.
 
Another reason why Snow white broke the boundaries'  was also the very first full length animation feature film to have Technicolor technology within it. This was a huge breakthrough in animation  technology and even film in the 1930s, this was I feel a vital part to Walt's success because most of Disney's storylines are based on fantasy and because of this new technology it emphasised the magical new revolutionary side to the brand, which people where happy to buy into.

After The Walt Disney Company released Snow White, they were seen as the pioneers of animation at the top the league, making many others influenced to make animated films such as the Disney productions, witnessing how successful Disney was with Snow White and various other shorts. Warner Brothers  joined in and had a crack at the industry, they started to make cartoon shorts in the 30s known as Looney tunes and Merrie Melodies. Warner Bros were definitely influenced by Disney as Warner released there first Looney Tunes 'cartoon' in 1930 (shortly after Steamboat Willie in 1928), Loony Tunes was also a cel style of animation (created using drawings). Also because Warner Bros. were trying to be a competitor of Walt Disneys, Warner named Loony Tunes, Looney Tunes because it is a variation on Silly Symphonies, the name of Disneys series of music-based short films. Despite Warner being new to the Industry from 1942 until 1969, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were the most popular cartoon shorts in movie theaters, exceeding Disney and other popular competitors. Visually Warner had shown a lot of influence from Disney as it contained similar Disney styles of animation, the sounds for example: when one character starts to play a musical instrument, a tune has been edited in so the instrument starts to play, visually with musical notes coming out of the instrument. Something else we see from this cartoon that seems influenced from Disney’s shorts is that they also have the typical style of story where two main characters chasing each other around with extra background character’s within the story.

Large production houses still find inspiration from these Walt Disneys productions. Although Disney has collaborated with Production companies as well, Disney approached Pixar to make a full-length computer animated film, seeing as how successful the earlier short Tin Toy in 1988, as it won the first Oscar to an animated short. Pixar has achieved a high accolade in them being the first production company to win an Oscar for an animated short. Pixar have definitely been influenced by Disney being the first to make a full-length animation film, Toy Story was Pixar’s first time making a full-length animation film, which has gone on and now there is a series of Toy Story films. By Disney approaching them to make a full-length production, they may have looked at Disney for inspiration on how the generate their ideas for sections of the storyline and also Disney can give guidance to Pixar as Disney has been in the same position creating (Snow White) their first animation film. Disney have definitely inspired Pixar to make their first animated film despite the use of computer to generate it and the different aesthetic to the film visually, Pixar have now been making full length animation films since Toy Story which was a huge success making them both share quite accolades similar of success.        
 
 

To conclude this I would have to say that Walt and Roy Disney starting up Walt Disney Productions In the early 1920's has had a huge influence on not only animation but on all of its viewers, personally I couldn't imagine my childhood without a Disney production in it, and I think this is the same for the majority of people. In the early 1900's Walt Disney saw potential in the animation strand of the film industry and Disney was the only production company really attempting to experiment with it, the turning point for animation was when Disney started using film production techniques in their animations such as audio and colour visually, these were both made very apparent in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, let alone the fact that is was the first full-length animation movie. From Walt and Roy Disney's humble origins on a farm they would have never dreamt the empire The Walt Disney Company is today. Disney has also influenced other production company's into making theme parks as Disneyland is a world renowned holiday resort. Disney has created an empire that is a pilgrimage to his initial ideas that are a huge part of western culture, When I say pilgrimage it is very similar to religion, we buy the books and films to get closer and educated on the characters and 'everything Disney', and then followers will go to a Disneyland resort and this is like the pilgrimage you go to this resort to ultimately get closer to everything Disney, but it is a fun experience nonetheless.

Concept Pitch/Proposal

Our  group (Robert Welland and Oscar Artini) decided to create our presentation on Microsoft PowerPoint. (Note the language shown on the presentation is not all that was told, Que cards were integrated highly within this pitch)

Pitch Feedback and Justification of Ideas

Pitch feedback and Justification of chosen idea

The following images show the feedback sheets given back to me and group member from the audience analysing this pitch. We have looked through them and analysed how we could possibly improve on our presentational skills .



















Justification of chosen idea


As aforementioned within our presentation we just conducted, our group had decided to follow though with idea #3 (shown below) this was due to it having the largest potential on helping us achieve our main goals for this project. Which was creating an animation for Crisis that stresses their main target as an organisation, as well as making it appealing to teenagers.

From the storyboard below it shows our idea, the main levels of material will be Lego for this idea. This will be extremely helpful to our group as they are already freestanding characters and so it will be much easier to create stop motion with them, this will be much less time-consuming than our other chosen material Clay. There may be a negative side with using Lego in terms of generating a serious matter that is important. However our group made absolutely sure that we could create a very realistic 'street environment' set which helped gain back the importance element of the charity. For example the brick wall with the Crisis logo spray painted onto it or the general public walking by and taking no notice of the homeless character. These small elements help maintain the charity's importance to many people across the United Kingdom. Our group feel that these points justify why we have chosen this idea and also think this idea shall look professional.

Storyboard

Shooting Script

Documentary

Due to the length of the documentary, I have had to burn it to a CD which is located in my Mr Morrisons Film Folder,

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Evaluative Commentary

Stop Motion Presentation (Guide)

Feedback questionnaire for animation